pokemon-heart-gold-and-pokemon-soul-silver

You know, if it’s something I still take to heart, it’s Pokémon. Although it doesn’t rank that high on my to play list anymore, I’ve been faithful to the franchise since the original release of Red & Blue back in 1998. It’s the RPG that got me hooked on RPGs.  Then in October 2001 came the high point of my Pokémon “career” with Gold & Silver. Although I found it to be much, much easier than the first generation games ever were, I played the absolute hell out of it.  By far, out of all the Pokemon games my gold version has the most hours logged.  There’s just too much to do; The first real ever implementation of a real time clock meant you had to play the game at different times in order to complete the game.  The fact that you could go back to the first region also meant there were a staggering sixteen badges for you to collect.

2004 saw Fire Red and Leaf Green recreate the original experience. Now, the second generation gets its turn as Pokémon: Heart Gold/Soul Silver for the DS was officially announced by Nintendo of Japan yesterday, with a fall 2009 Japanese release. (This probably translates to Q2 2010 if you live in the US.) Both games will be a remake of Gold and Silver respectively with the obvious graphical upgrades to Diamond/Pearl standards, touch screen functionality which I would assume would be used in the same functionality as DP, with the Pokégear replacing the Pokéetch on the bottom screen. Not to mention there’s always a chance of new content like what they did with Fire Red and Leaf Green.

Although I’m much older now, I honestly can’t wait. I’m sure that when I get my grubby hands on this, I’ll be playing the hell out of it.

It’ll be just like old days.

UPDATE: Apparently serebii.net got a hold of the first screenshot from the game, which can be seen here. It’s currently unknown whether or not the screenshot is legitimate, though.