Hi folks, the Pokemon National Championships wrapped up earlier this week in Indianapolis, IN, and boy was it a time to be had! There was some fierce competition in both the Trading Card Game Championships and the Video Game Championships, that's for sure!

Now that that fantastic event has passed, I should have some more time for updating the site. I have plenty of plans for it over the summer, so I'll see what I can get done before the release of Pokemon Black and White in Japanese, which has been announced for release on September 18th, 2010 (Japan only; Spring 2011 is the only US/EU/AU date).

Anyhow, I strongly recommend checking out the awesome coverage of the Pokemon National Championships over at Pokemon.com's 2010 National Championships page. There are pictures, interviews, videos... pretty much the whole shebang!

One other thing that I would like to take the time to promote as well while I'm here... ExtraLives.org is going to be holding a really cool Pokemon Marathon. They'll be playing through a wide selection of Pokemon video games for charity. There are so many great reasons to watch them play and, better yet, take the time to donate to a worthy cause - helping improving the lives of children in those countries around the world where playing Pokemon may be just a dream due to poverty, lack of education, any number of things. Free the Children is the name of the charity and you can find a lot more information on ExtraLives.org, so hopefully we can help raise money for a good cause, right? Go on and get watching! The marathon begins on July 2nd!

Alright, that's all for now. I'll have more updates coming up this summer with any luck, including revamps of a lot of calculators and such.

Whoa, HUGE announcement today! The official Pokemon website just confirmed Pokemon Black and White, as well as it's release date! Pokemon Black and White are going to be released in the US in Spring 2011. That's right around the corner!

Additionally, the Japanese website has confirmed the Japanese release date as September, 2010. That is much sooner than even I was expecting, so that's pretty sweet!




As well as that, two more 5th Generation Pokemon have been revealed - presumably the cover legendary Pokemon for each of the games. On the site, you can see them as Reshiram and Zekrom. They certainly look quite fitting to the versions, that's for sure! The three starter Pokemon have also been revealed, too; Tsutaja, Pokabu, and Mijumaru. I'll have pictures of all these five up later.

I'll be sure to be covering the game when it's released come September, but in the meanwhile, let's all drool over this fantastic information!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been very busy over the past few weeks at the Pokemon Video Game Championships and boy, I gotta tell 'ya, the events are a blast! You simply have to see if there are any in your area and make a day of going, because there's so much to do and so many skilled Pokemon enthusiasts there that your head will spin! The next one, as mentioned on the official site, is in the Dallas, TX area - or, for those of you reading this in Europe, you'll find the first of yours around Birmingham, UK. Again, the official website has full details, but you should definitely check it out if you're in the area!

Not only that, but you can get yourself a Shiny Eevee just for going! Sweet! It is level 50 and can evolve into any number of its various evolutions. Just remember, you can only receive it on a US copy of HeartGold or SoulSilver. Nothing else.

While the Video Game Championships are going on, you can also download the Winner's Path Pokewalker Route from Nintendo WFC! All you need to do is go to Mystery Gift, then choose Receive Gift, and then Get Via Nintendo WFC and you'll be able to pick it up. Then you just need to talk to a man in a green suit inside of the Poke Mart to receive the Route.

There are the full instructions on the official HeartGold and SoulSilver website, as well as some of the things you can find there.

Lastly, more information about Pokemon Black and White has slowly been trickling in. The new starter Pokemon for the new region - which is now called "Isshu" in Japanese - have been revealed. You can find more of the newly revealed information for Black and White over at another pretty cool site, Legendary Pokemon, which has some pictures of the new starters, scans of the CoroCoro comic showing that, and also some links to videos, too. Definitely check that out, because it's more than I can cover in a single update, haha!

Well, I've gotta hit the road again. Updates will most likely be slow around here until the VGC series wraps up, but I'll try to make a few updates here and there. Thanks!

Just a quick, but extremely important update while I'm on the road...

Pokemon Black and White have been officially announced! They are going to be the 5th Generation of Pokemon games (like Diamond and Pearl before them) and will be for the Nintendo DS.

You can find the official teaser for it on the Japanese Pokemon site, right here on this page: right here.

Looks pretty sweet!

Well European Pokemon fans, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver are finally available for you! Australia got their version just the other day, so it's pretty much worldwide now.

From the sounds of it, though, there were some technical difficulties in regards to the Dutch version of the game affecting players in the Netherlands and Belgium. Apparently there was an issue preventing players from saving their games. This update on Bulbanews has some more information on it.

But still, it's a big step forward for HeartGold and SoulSilver! Even though Pokemon.Marriland.com focuses primarily on the American versions of the game, I'm proud that there are so many international viewers and visitors to the site!

Anyway, congrats, Europe and Australia. Now, speaking of HeartGold and SoulSilver, you'll be pleased to know that the HeartGold and SoulSilver Walkthrough has gotten a huge update! It now has the proper English names for all of the Trainers and Items and such in the Johto half of the game. For that matter, it includes all of the Trainers rather than stopping after the Radio Tower, and it does a much better job at showing you items and other cool stuff! It's a really thorough guide for HeartGold and SoulSilver now!

I still need to do some more thorough coverage for the many minigames of HeartGold and SoulSilver, but I did go ahead and add prizes for a lot of them anyway. And, of course, I still need to finish the Kanto portion of the walkthrough. It's there, but it could use some improvements.

Well, one more rather large update that you may or may not notice, but you'll certainly appreciate it nonetheless. After a lot of wrestling over the past two weeks or so, I managed to make an excellent tweak to the site's servers today that should significantly improve the loading times of images and keep the servers more stable.

I made an attempt the other day at it, it did cut back on server load, but images were being weird and loading slow on the new server. That issue should be behind us now. I'm hoping that the pages and images will load lightning quick, even on the weekends! Keep your fingers crossed that it all holds up over the weekend, because they are the biggest traffic days, that's for sure!

One last bit of information to pass along. The newest Pokemon TCG set, HS: Unleashed, will be released fairly soon. Sometime in early May. It'll feature a lot of cool Pokemon from HeartGold and SoulSilver, including more powerful Pokemon LEGEND cards. I'll be sure to provide scans and spoilers as soon as the first prerelease wraps up!

Take it easy and enjoy HeartGold and SoulSilver! Remember, Lapras tonight, and Bug Catching Contest Saturday!