5 of the Dumbest Mistakes Nintendo Ever Made in Regards to Pokémon

1. The Miramax Mistake (2002)
For whatever reason, Nintendo and 4Kids switched distributors of the wildly Pokémon films, and the fourth film, Pokémon 4Ever, was sent to Miramax, where, unlike the first three films, which were big hits when released nationwide, went for a limited release in the US (and no theater release for the UK). This was seen as a decline to the Pokémon brand which was in big decline at the time. By the sixth movie, Jirachi: Wish Maker, it was DVD only.


2. Backwards Compatibility Loss (2003)
There was and is backwards compatibility between all "generations" of Pokémon, but not II (Gold/Silver/Crystal) and III (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald). Why? Who knows! I think they wanted to make money off of remakes (which they did). Now some people say that this backwards compatibility issue is "forgiven" because of the remakes, but why purchase another set of games to collect more monsters you did years before, not to mention losing all the event Pokémon like Celebi and Mew. And wouldn't it be cool to keep transferring that Pikachu you got in Yellow and illegitimately taught it to learn Surf? Hm?

To make matters more irritating, they discovered several G/S/C music pieces inside R/S/E. Perhaps they could've made an e-Reader card, something like the Eon Ticket. The "GS Card" would allow players to go to "Transfer Island", where they could listen to the old music and get their old Pokémon. Irritating (using the e-Reader) but probably worth it. Unfortunately, no such card was ever planned.


3. Revoking Wizards of the Coast's License (2003)
Wizards of the Coast was the original manufacturer of the famous Pokémon TCG, and things seemed to work out between Nintendo and WOTC okay. But for some reason, Nintendo wanted to revoke the license of WOTC and take back the cards. While this worked out okay in many terms, it was still very bad for a few reasons. WoTC had built up a forum that communicated with fans, with weekly chats every Friday. They had planned a new set that would be released: Jamboree, a set that would be a mix of the unreleased-in-America "Vending" cards, and possibly others, including other Japanese cards that had not seen a release to that point (including "VS" and "Web"). They were also going to create their own cards. But Nintendo was greedy and revoked the license. As a result, Skyridge, the last set, was never reprinted and became quite rare, while Jamboree was cancelled altogether. Thanks a lot.

4. Pokémon Center New York Closes (2005)
When I was a kid, Pokémon Center New York was the end-all of coolness when it opened in November 2001. Probably in response to September 11th, with Toys R Us Times Square opening at about the same time, it was a whole building dedicated to Pokémon. It even had an online store with much more. But unfortunately, it closed about three or four years later to be converted to "Nintendo World Store". Disappointingly, when I finally visited Nintendo World in 2007, the store was rather small and crowded. It was much smaller than a department store, and a crippling attack to the wonders that I saw on the Internet of the original Pokémon Center.

5. Nintendo Takes Over the Animé (2006)
4Kids had been ruling over the Pokémon animé since it debuted in 1998. While 4Kids was a controversial company (it mangled some other animé dubs it had been in control of, most notoriously, One Piece), a lot of fans had respect for it. They grew accustomed to the voices, including Veronica Taylor (voice of Ash), Eric Stuart, and others. And for some reason, Nintendo decided to replace every single voice actor. This created a huge uproar in the eyes of fans, and to this day, whenever I see a clip of post-2006 Pokémon animé, it sounds like some bad fandub. I have other problems with the rest of the animé, but that's another story.

Pokémon TCG Online

The Pokémon TCG Online play (http://pokemontcg.com) is actually pretty fun.

Notes:
- The Flash based interface is slow and annoying. Especially coin flips.
- The first opponent kept using an insanely powerful Chansey card that handily won on the first battle I did all the way through, but the second time I got the jump on him and used a Seaking to kill it.
- In the future, you can build decks and play against real opponents!
- However, "real opponents" doesn't mean good chat support. Likely they'll be poor preconceived phrases, to cut down on trouble from random creeps: pedophiles, foul-mouthed 12-year-olds, you know the type.
- Furthermore, it would be nice if they had Unlimited format, but that means re-introducing the hundreds of cards before it, like the Wizards of the Coast cards (and the Japanese cards, too...hello Vending series!)
- Hopefully, all this would convince Nintendo to make a great game for the 3DS (and I might just buy it, given my 3DS thoughts)

Pokémon TCG Online Censors Certain Towns

If you play online at Pokémon TCG, you can write in your favorite town. Unfortunately, due to more common meanings, some places are banned from being written. Of course, you would only do that to mess with the system, so why bother?

I Got to Kikyou!

Way back before Gold was released, I remember playing a ROM that was a poorly-translated version of Gold. The player name was only five letters or so, you got your Pokémon from UTSUGI, and towns had different names. Violet City was named KIKYOU or something like that, and I remember running up to my brother saying something like "I GOT TO KICK YOU!"

Ah, good times.

I'm pretty sure it was some poor translation hack someone made up in their spare time. Anyone else heard of it?

The Pokémon Prize Pack

A long time ago, in the realm of 2000, there was a mystical thing called the "Pokémon Prize Pack". It was on Kids WB! a lot, and had lots of various Pokémon stuff come on screen, including Chikorita and Pikachu plushes. A Pojo.com text clip I got around that time mentioned that it "[included] Pokémon T-shirts, a Sound & Light Pokémon Yo-Yo, a Pokémon Walkie-Talkie set, a Pokémon mousepad and a Pokémon Triangle Gift set."

Now, I actually had a chance to win one of those things, because during the premier of Pokémon: The Movie 2000 (which I did go to), in the newspaper, there was a thing of how you could design an original Pokémon and win the prize pack. There were probably lots of great entries, and I ended up submitting a Pokémon based on a bottle of glue. While it was probably ahead of its time, after all, there's only now a garbage bag Pokémon, I think there only two things wrong with it.

1. The head was at the orange tip of the bottle, and had a face like Ditto's, not the anime-like eyes of other Pokémon.
2. The name. In a play on the word "glue": Glute. Unfortunately, you might guess how this could be seen as a bad thing.

I honestly thought I would win, but I didn't, and I'm betting the winner ripped something off. Ah well.

Where all the Pokémon books nowadays?

So I was thinking, why aren't there any good Pokémon books out there nowadays? I mean, even the Player's Guides have been offed for Prima guides (which are extraordinarily inferior), but where are the books, the ones that explained everything? I think the only non-guidebooks are Pokémon Visual Guide and Pokémon Ultimate Handbook. Nintendo has done a good job of squishing anything unofficial. Possibly because the fandom died down from the initial 1999 fervor, but one of my favorites is the "Pokémon Trainer's Guide" (Sandwich Islands Press, 1999). It's rife with minor errors and lazy writing, but it was a gem. It covered the first 52 or episodes, a section on toys, a walkthrough with information on Red, Blue, and Yellow, a Pokédex which covered movesets, Pokémon Snap, and a very abridged version of their guide to the TCG. Brian Brokaw, a contributor to Pojo.com (don't know if he still does) and creator of the "Haymaker" deck, wrote the TCG section.

I want to create a Pokémon book that covers everything. It would be quite a task--to envelope that era (1996-1999) in an even more awesome book that can tap into the nostalgia market and yet Pokémaniacs who were not yet conceived at the time. I wrote about it on Bulbapedia to get feedback, but they locked it, so I did what they said, transferred it to my blog. It would draw information from many sources (all cited, of course) and be pretty much the book I would've always wanted. I need a co-author, though. Any takers?

Pokémon TCG Online? Meh

Seems like Nintendo is finally creating a way to play Pokémon TCG online.

Now, this sounds like a great thing to us older fans, because...
1) We can finally play the TCG against other people, like kids, without looking like a pedophile
2) We all have fond memories of Pokémon Trading Card Game, the Game Boy game that had you battling computer players with Pokémon cards, with practically every single card available (that was released in America at the time)--plus some others.

Now, as for the reasons it's going to suck.

1) You have to buy preconstructed decks of the upcoming Black & White themed expansion to unlock the deck in it.
2) You can't build your own deck.

Of course, one way to fix this is to win cards after you win a match (a la TCG). That way, it's beneficial to play against multiple people. Flood the system with free virtual booster decks often so everyone wins. Appeal to the older players by releasing "retro cards" (remember the Fossil expansion?), and add in music. This music will feature rockin' music from original (maybe). And add in CPU players, too. And an offline playing feature.

Alternatively, they could just eschew all of that and release a brand-new Pokémon TCG game for the Nintendo 3DS. It would be a re-boot of the original game, with brand-new characters, hundreds and hundreds of cards (from Basic to Black & White), and all possible with the 3DS, with its rumored 8GB storage capacity. Fight your way through dozens of battles, only to find your most challenging foe at the end of the game: Mark, the guy from the original Pokémon TCG

It would be awesome, but unlikely. Let's face it, for all Nintendo is concerned, everything Pokémon from 2003 backwards is dead, ancient history. That was when Ruby & Sapphire came and made irrelevant Generation 1 and 2. And that was wrong.