Hey everyone, sorry I've been rather busy recently. The Pokemon Video Game Championships have been going on over the past few weeks and there's been a great turnout there! Pokemon Trainers from all across have been duking it out and competing against each other to find out who is the toughest Trainer in their region!

There are still three more Pokemon Video Game Regional Championships left for this year before the big Pokemon Video Game National Championships in St. Louis, Missouri this year in late June that players can compete in for a chance to go to the last of the series this year, the Pokemon Video Game World Championships in San Diego, California!

You'll definitely want to check out the official website for the 2009 Video Game Championship series over at PokemonVGC.com. It has everything you need to know about the upcoming tournaments, their locations, as well as all of the rules you'll need to know if you're interested in participating.

One other really cool thing is that everyone attending the event will receive a super-cool Shiny Milotic just for showing up! Again, check PokemonVGC.com for full details, but that's still pretty awesome!

Anyway, that'll keep me busy for awhile, so I apologize if updates may be a bit slow around here. Hope to see you there!

Hi everyone, sorry that I've been too busy to squeeze in an update. Most of it has been behind the scenes stuff that hasn't been update worthy. Yes, the Walkthrough for Platinum is getting there and I should hopefully have more of that up next week for you. My apologies for the delay.

Anyway, we'll start with the standard news. Because I like content updates. And Pokemon cards.

There's now an entire spoiler for the newest Pokemon TCG set, Platinum: Rising Rivals, available on Pokemon.Marriland.com! I have scans of nearly every card and am only missing a few which I should hopefully get scans of sometime over the next few weeks. I'll be busy with stuff, though, so I can't make any guarantees. But enjoy checking out the new cards for now!

In other news, it's official. They are releasing remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver. It was announced in Japan on TV that the two remakes, Pokemon Heart Gold and Pokemon Soul Silver, will be released in Japan sometime in Fall 2009.

Yep, well that's some pretty big news. I'll try keep you posted if I hear any other big news and will just keep plugging away with the work I've been getting to.

I've been so busy this week playing through Platinum and recording my entire playthrough on it to provide awesome videos for you all to watch! Because that's been nearly all I've been doing (aside from a few hours of sleep here and there), I haven't gotten all that much else done on the site's Platinum coverage, but since these videos will help a lot of it anyway and I need them to get good screenshots, I figured that would be my #1 priority.

So, I've uploaded the first 30 episodes of my Pokemon Platinum Video Coverage to YouTube and have now posted them on Pokemon.Marriland.com, so you can view them at either location!

There's also a new playlist feature, that will let you view all of the episodes sequentially, without having to even leave the page! That's great if you have nothing better to do for about 5 hours, or if you'd just like to see a lot of the gameplay and changes before you get the game!

Anyway, I'll be working more on the site's walkthrough (the one that isn't a video series) over the next few days while also trying to complete the video series. A lot to juggle, that's for sure!

Hopefully I'll have another update later today. Oh, and I apologize in advance for any lag or downtime. The "Platinum Rush," as I like to call it, is being unleashed in full force over the weekend, since no one has school. I'll be looking into a few solutions for that and try to implement them if I'm able, but a lot of it is just due to the massive volume of traffic. You know how it goes.

With Pokemon Platinum's release date only a few days away, this update came just in a nick of time to make sure you'll have all the right stuff to help you see what's up with the third game in the DS series! Though it's been awhile since the last update, that was mostly due to the large amount of behind the scenes stuff, data gathering, coding, etc. Finally it's been refined enough to release! Thank goodness it made it out before Pokemon Platinum's release on March 22nd. (This Sunday!)

First up and most certainly most exciting is the totally redone Pokedex for Pokemon Platinum. Rather than just using the same design for the old Diamond and Pearl Pokedex, I figured it's time for a really good look at what can be done to improve it and make it even better than ever before. Hopefully this new look and all of the new features will help you get all the scoop on any Pokemon you were interested in for Pokemon Platinum! It should also be compatible with Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as well, and you'll be able to see some of the differences listed in the Pokedex (typically a yellow color for rows and stuff means it's exclusive for Platinum whereas a blue color means its for Diamond and Pearl).

A lot of things have been added since the old Pokedex, so here are some of the things that have been added that I can think of off the top of my head:

• Layout and design, duh.
• It now shows a nice little graphical stat chart up top so you can see a quick glance at a Pokemon's stats rather than looking at... a bunch of numbers.
• Abilities and Evolution information should be fixed from the old Pokedex.
• Footprints of the Pokemon and Pokemon's cries have been added. (The cries require Flash in order to work and it's recommended you use Firefox or a Mozilla-based browser. Just in case.)
• Some Pokemon will have a link to Suggested Movesets on the side that takes you to that Pokemon's moveset page on the Marriland Forums under the Moveset Compilation Project. (More will be added as we get more awesome movesets pumped out for Platinum! Maybe old D/P ones should be added, too, since there were a LOT!)
• Pokemon with multiple forms, like Deoxys and Shaymin, now list all of those forms on their page and it's easy to switch between them.
• Replaced the "Physical", "Special", and "Status" text with the icon in the game because graphics tend to catch the eye a bit better than text.
• Any moves that get the Same Type Attack Bonus have their power bolded.
• You can hover over a bunch of things, particularly things with a little black dotted border beneath them, to see some help text as you hover over. (Requires JavaScript.)
• Move Tutor moves from Platinum, as well as Diamond and Pearl, have been added, as have Move Tutor moves from any of the 3rd Generation games (shouldn't be any more questions like "How do I get Seismic Toss on Chansey" now).
• Added a ranking for each of the Pokemon's stats.
• Clarified and rewrote all of the Location Data.
• Added Pokemon Platinum Pokedex Descriptions, too.

I'm sure that there's some other updates from the old version, as well as just some cool stuff in general. I'm also sure that I'll be tweaking things and upgrading things here and there over the next few months. Any input I can get on it would be great!

For the second of the big three updates, I've added a preview of the Pokemon Platinum Walkthrough to the site as well. It's not complete right yet, because I needed to focus on the Pokedex, but it focuses a lot on explaining individual Pokemon's strengths, weaknesses, and overall usefulness for your in-game adventure. That can be particularly helpful when trying to decide what you should add to your team.

I'm still currently using sprites from Diamond and Pearl until I get the newer ones (you'll notice the change on Rival, who wears long-sleeves in Platinum), but oh well, you'll get the idea for now. It covers all the way up to Eterna Forest (that's where I had to stop) and it's really detailed. Yeah, there's tons of tables and Trainer data and stuff like that in there, too. I'll add pictures starting from after Platinum's English release as I post videos.

Oh yeah, speaking of videos, I added up a quick little Platinum Videos section. Right now it just shows the Japanese version, since that's all that's out right now, but it does at least show a lot of the major changes to the game up to getting the 8th Gym Badge. Pretty nifty. I'll be sure to add plenty of videos of the English version as well, though I might not do an "Adventure Series" until later on, just so the coverage gets out pretty quick.

In other news, there are two pretty big events going on! Yeah, two more on top of Platinum's upcoming release!

For one, you still have until the end of March 21st to stop by your local Toys R' Us store and get yourself a Regigigas! If you're planning on getting Pokemon Platinum, you're definitely going to want to get that Regigigas, because with it you can unlock special event fights against the other three Regi- Pokemon in Platinum.

Also, this Saturday is the Illinois TCG State Championship for the Trading Card Game. It'll be a huge Pokemon card tournament that I'll be helping judge, so I figured I might as well give it some extra exposure. :) You can find out more information on it here. If you're new to the Pokemon TCG or haven't even played before, you can still stop by and play in the tournament or get some deck help by all of the friendly players that like to help out.

And then, the very next day... It's Pokemon Platinum time!!

As promised, Pokemon Platinum TCG Spoilers have been posted to the site's spoiler section! You can find spoilers and scans of all of the set's 133 cards (127 numbered + 6 secret cards). Yep, should have all of that stuff up!

Quite the exciting set, indeed! Be sure to take a peek at some of the cool new cards featured in it!

Well that's all for now. I just had to get that update in. Enjoy, folks!