Pokemon news discussion: USE SPOILER TAGS WHEN APPROPRIATE

OK, the news:

A piece of software called pokemon bank will be released, allowing you to store up to 3000 pokemon online. You have to pay a yearly subscription fee to use it, and possibly pay to purchase the software in the first place.

A second piece of software called pokemon transfer comes free with bank, which lets you send pokemon from BW and BW2 to your pokebank account and from there to X and Y.

You get the kalos starters from a friend; the professor instead gives you a kanto starter that can megaevolve. MegaVenusaur, MegaCharizard (shakes fist at sky) and MegaBlastoise were shown.

Okay, since the Kanto starters are all getting Mega Evolutions, it's looking more and more likely that every starter will. Not quite sure what the difference for Mega Venusaur is, but I've only looked at Serebii's screenshots so far. It's possible the video has some better angles. The official XY site has much better images of Mega Venusaur.

EDIT: Apparently Mega Charizard gets Drought (self-explanatory), Mega Venusaur gets Thick Fat (two weaknesses taken care of), and Mega Blastoise gets the new Mega Launcher ability, which boosts "pulse" moves. I don't even play competitive and I can already tell that Megas are getting their own tier.

Well, Drought got a better user than Ninetales. It's a shame that it's Charizard. MegaVenusaur sounds alright, but I suspect Chlorophyll will remain more popular competitively. MegaBlastoise sounds like a decent spinner, I guess? Tiers are a little iffy right now; I'd say some will be in Ubers, but not all; Megavolving is kinda just shouting "POWER CREEP" to me, and I suspect OU will be even sillier than it is now.

Also, bank sounds cool. I'm a bit iffy on the subscription fee, though. (500¥ is pretty cheap for a year, I think)

EDIT: just checked Serebiii, and apparently you can only have one Megavolution on your team? Is this confirmed?

A few minor things I forgot to mention:

Megavolving has additional requirements, but they sound easy enough:
1) The trainer must have a megabracelet. Presumably this is just a key item you get halfway through the game to stop you megacharizarding the 2nd gym to death.
2) You need a good relationship with the pokemon. This either means happiness or some mon-ami thing.
3) You gotta believe.

MegaVenusaur is the coolest. MegaCharizard looks great in its sugimori art but dumb in 3d. MegaBlastoise is a toy.

Despite being the same height and visibly thinner then charizard, megacharizard weighs a lot more. Must be really dense.

If you lose your copy of XY you can connect a new game to your old bank and keep all your mons. You can also share between multiple copies, so no more needing multiples ds's to trade with yourself.

Bank will have a free trial period.

Bank may not let you deposit or move hacked mons. (Now I really hope my celebi and that shiny gardevoir are legit).

Edit: And something they snuck in: Pikachu is not fairy type.

Edit 2:
Magnezone now identifies as a woman. I hope we can all support her in the decision.

Thick fat.

THICK FAT.
GODDAMMIT IT'S DW ABILITY IS BETTER.
Mega evolution: gets fatter. Way to go. GRAAAAH And I liked Venusaur! (Not that it's any worse. It's just... Charizard gets Drought and Venusaur becomes, well, worse. Mind you, remember: Stat boosts have to either up speed or be better than Life orb to be worth using competitively since Megas can't have items. In that regard... I don't see Blastiose as being much better even it if gets a built-in choice-specs set without locking, short of it having massively improved defenses or the Steel typing. Bonus: It's weird how the ones that looked best in-game (Blastoise and Char looked p.neat, well I thought so anyway) have the most awkward looking official art. MegaVenusaur's art keeps all Venusaur's old glory but improves on it. The other guys look... Dunno really? Not bad, just... not to the proportions that gen 1 made us used to. MVenusaur didn't look bad either in-game, it was just hard to tell it'd changed.

Also. You know all that stuff I said about MegaStarmie?
Specifically, how any Mega Weather would be game changing? I lied a bit. Charizard getting drought is cool... except... unless it has vastly better stats then it's better off as a regular Charizard (it's best set abuses sun + Specs + Solar Power, think of the power loss) and you really can't have only one weather inducer when that weather inducer is 4x Weak to SR (and hence can't repeatedly switch in to change the weather). Unless it's suddenly a Dragon type. Then i take it back.... it'll still have to be a lead though. ON THE OTHER HAND, the one-mega-per-team means maybe Venusaur is SUPPOSED to be used as it's regular form.

BONUS NEWS: Copyrights were taken out for a bunch of pokemon, most likely the next ones to be Mega Evolutions, this isn't really news since it's both kinda old and not at all confirmed. But basically, Pinsir, Heracross, (eeep!) Medicham, Houndoom, GYARADOS (woah... no ability changes plz they are both cool as is) TYRANITAR??????? Gardevoir, Lati@s (consider that Soul Dew as an item makes them ban-worthy... weird) and a few others, inc. 2 of 3 of the Kanto starters. Note: The list doesn't include some confirmed ones, so we could still get more. I mean... No gen 5 megas? :(Also Vivillon should get a Mega Evo.

On the topic of Tyranitar: Weirdly, it's ability has little to do with it being really good as a Mega? It's just gone from usable to very usable if so. Because if it LOSES Sandstream then it's a give-and-take, if it gets a sand abusing ability, then that means cool strategies but a weakness to other weather teams, It's hard to imagine, to be honest.

Finally: MegaScizor for Ubers, no exceptions!

http://www.pokemonxy.com/en-us/pokemon/mega_pokemon/

The Mega Kanto Starters all retain their old type. No dragon type charizard for you.

Also according to smogon, 3000 pokemon are only about 400kb of data, so even at £3 a year, pokemon bank is ridiculously expensive as cloud storage.

Edit:
They've ruined charmanders cry. RUINED IT.

Maybe I'm odd but they said the pokemon were only ever stored on handheld devices.

Spoiler:

Well, I guess the Gamecube is a handheld device now

For literally ONE FRAME in the video at 15.11 you can see a new pokemon.




Also two more things from the direct;
The videos of sceptile, infernape and feraligatr on older games have them with all caps names, and then they have proper case names when on XY. Since its implied its the same pokemon, this might mean they change the names of unnicknamed mons. Or they might have been lazy on the video.

They mention being excited at seeing what all pokemon look like as megas, so even if not all of them can go mega in XY, they're going mega eventually.

It seems as if Mega Venusaur is supposed to be a tank. Boosted defenses plus effectively cutting its number of weaknesses in half? Also, according to the official site, not all Pokémon can Mega Evolve. Whether this means that it's only a certain number of evolution lines or just fully-evolved Pokémon is unclear.

Venusaur isn't a bad tank either, think about it, you use chlorophyll to set stuff up and then Megaevolve to lose half your weeknesses as well as probably boost your defenses.

It's not probably. The official site explicitly states that Mega Venusaur gets boosts to Defense and Special Defense. Mega Charizard gets to enjoy an increased Special Attack. Interestingly, Mega Blastoise is the one we know least about. We've only got a vague description for its ability, and no info about stat changes. Also, Mega Charizard's design reminds me of something:

Although it's more like taking parts of Garchomp's general silhouette.

It's weird, with the streamlined nature of mega Charizard, it seems almost more like Charmeleon to me. Which is to say, far less bulky and menacing.

Well, I have to say, while the designs for MegaBlastoise and MegaVenusaur are okay, MegaCharizard looks really stupid with it's new head and those arm thingies.

Also, aren't pulse moves those moves that can reach any enemies in tripple battles?

HELL no MEGA CHARIZARD IS THE BEST

seriously its my favorite mega evolution up to now
im so gonna choose it as my kanto starter

well i think i can already say FOR SURE these are gonna be just the best pokémon games up to now

I for one welcome our new Mega overlords.

Man, putting together a team is getting hella difficult.
Colon Opening Parenthesis

I assume there'll be a way to transfer pokemon other than the pokemon bank? Still, even if there isn't it'll probably be fine, so long as you make the most of the free trial time.

phantasmalDexterity wrote:Mega overlords

It's okay pD, just call me OJ, no need to get fancy.

Also, I am unsure which starter I would pick but I think I'd probably go for Charizard as well, I'd just avoid Megaevolving it. Charizard is awesome for flying around, it can learn some really sweet moves and most importantly, while I love Venusaur, I'd already pick Cespin and having two grass starters might be a bit... odd...

But heck, the bank might make it possible to trade with yourself, that's huge news for me

^yes you can do this, that was confirmed. Except it's not a trade so it won't trigger trade evolutions.

Yes I also thought Charizard was slimmer and kind of less impressive! Not bad, but all the gen 1 starters were huge brutish monsters. Only Venusaur really got that.

BTW where's everyone getting this 'boosted pulse move' info?

OverlordJ wrote:

phantasmalDexterity wrote:Mega overlords

It's okay pD, just call me OJ, no need to get fancy.

Heresy



I heard that the bank costs like 500yen a year.
That's like 5 dollars.
That's not expensive for this, actually.
Especially that there is a free trial month, so you have time to decide if it's worth it.

Oh man, I've been so inactive. Everyone is having bigger posts numbers than me.
#story of my life #sign #orangejuice, pm me when you're ready to pester me.

From the official X and Y site, DWhat

And I agree that Charizard is a bit slimmer, but I don't think that's a bad thing! It gives more of a powerful and badass look, as well as faster in a way. And considering Mega Charizard apparently focuses a bit more on the flying part of Charizard (The more dragon-like appearance, the extra wings, and also its description on the site), making it slimmer only makes sense.

phantasmalDexterity wrote:

OverlordJ wrote:

phantasmalDexterity wrote:Mega overlords

It's okay pD, just call me OJ, no need to get fancy.

Heresy

Well, alright then, old chap

That said, yeah, Blastoise sort of still got the huge monster thing but Charizard definatly looks like a generic dragon with a weird head and even weirder arm wings.

And yeah, while I think that it's a bit odd that you have to pay for it, I'm mostly okay with it. I do wonder though what'll happen if you don't pay...

Also, I can't wait for Mega Feraligatr.
And Mega Swampert.

OverlordJ wrote:

phantasmalDexterity wrote:

OverlordJ wrote:

phantasmalDexterity wrote:Mega overlords

It's okay pD, just call me OJ, no need to get fancy.

Heresy

Well, alright then, old chap

Jolly good, my good sir.

Mega Swampert definitely. Mega Sceptile could also be really cool, and Mega Typhlosion has a lot of potential as well. Meganium and Emboar could actually redeem themselves somewhat with Mega forms.

Spark Eletran wrote:From the official X and Y site, Drega

Well I NEVER.

For one thing, my hair is not white, nor am I Irish. SPARK, I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS.

I'm fine with paying $5/year for 3000 pokemon storage, regardless if it's less than a whole MB or not.

We should hope that storing 3000 pokemon means that if your young sibling/cousin/family friend/dog/SO/ex-SO starts a new game and "accidentally" erases all of your saved progress, you can still keep your treasured favorite 'mons in the cloud.

I'm not usually a fan of cloud storage because I think having an external hard drive does a better job, but I don't really care if the NSA combs through my collection of shinies to try to determine whether or not I'm a danger to political power. (Hint: the more shinies you have, the less of a threat you are because it means you've been playing too much)