Pokemon Rival Destinies Volume 2 to be released 3/25/2014

Amazon has recently put up a listing for the second volume of Pokemon Rival Destinies on DVD. The two-disc set is due to be released on March 25th, more than six months after the release of volume one last year.

Pokemon: The First Movie Remastered Showing on Cartoon Network 1/4/2014

Transcript:

Hi everyone, Steven here. So a few days ago Cartoon Network put out a press release announcing the official start of the Pokemon X Y Anime on January 18th. While I'm certainly looking forward to that, what's more interesting to me is the second paragraph, where it states that a digitally remastered version of Mewtwo Strikes Back will be shown on January 4th. This is significant for a few reasons. First of all, those of you that have seen my "Arceus Gap" video will be aware that The First Movie has essentially been out of print in the US since late 2009, and this marks the first major exhibition of the film since that time. This would seem to imply that whatever issues that caused it to go out of print have been resolved, and this could possibly hint at another retail release of the movie sometime in 2014.

Another interesting point is that the movie has been digitally remastered. Now, a remastered version of the Japanese edition has existed for a while, so it's possible that they'll be using that version intercut with the title sequences from the dub. It's also possible that the full English version from 1999 has been restored as well-we just don't know yet. Either way, this will probably end up being the best-looking version of the English dub of the film, so it should be worth checking out.

"Sky Ball" - The parody you'll never hear

Okay, so after about three weeks of owning Pokémon X, I finally got through the main game and beat the champion, and did some of the post-game content. Overall I’d say the game was pretty good, but I do have one major complaint. So, there are these new things called Sky Battles where flying and levitating Pokémon are used. They’re not super different from regular battles, but the part of it I find truly disappointing is that to catch Pokémon for these battles there’s no Sky Ball in the game, and…I really wanted to write that Adele parody. Those of you that know me know that I like to write song parodies, and I wanted to write one for this new generation, so when I heard about Sky Battles, I started to get some ideas on what I could do for a “Skyfall” parody. Prior to the game’s release, I bought the song and started listening to it to see how I could transform the lyrics. I won’t share everything I came up with, but here’s a brief outline:

So, the original song starts with a 25-30 second instrumental passage. In a parody there needs to be some indication that this is not the original song, so rather than leave it as is, I planned on putting in a conversation between two people that goes something like, “Did you hear about the new Pokémon games?”, “No, what are they called this time?”, “X and Y”, “What, did they run out of colors?”, you know, stuff like that, then towards the end it’s, “They’ve got this new thing called ‘Sky Battles’”, “Lemme guess, is there a new Sky Ball you can use to catch Pokémon?”. That would serve as sort of the opening to the piece.

Then the actual song would start with, “There is no end. Hold your breath here comes 6^th gen.” Throughout the first verse the theme was going to be, “Here comes more Pokémon-there’s nothing you can do about it-I’ve come to dread this moment-I love it and I loathe it”, which leads into the chorus, “here’s a Sky Ball, for your trouble, we will stand tall, and catch ‘em all-together”, and so on.

The second verse was going to focus on the singer adjusting to the new game’s features and such. I didn’t have too many ideas here-“so why is Honedge weak to dark?” was one of them, but leading into the second chorus I was thinking of using something like, “here’s my charge card number, you can take my cash, ‘cuz we’ll never grow apart!” As if the singer was giving in to their love of Pokémon and buying the game.

After the second chorus, the original song goes into this mostly quiet portion for about 20-25 seconds. I was planning on using it for more exposition-most likely another conversation between the characters from the beginning. After that you have the bridge and the final chorus, and my plan there was to wrap up and have the singer express how they liked the game and how it made them feel as a Pokémon fan, but by this time I really was pretty sure there was no Sky Ball in the game and I put this parody on the back burner, and to be honest, unless the TCG bails me out with a Sky Ball card in one of the first few XY sets it’s just not going to happen.

So, that’s “Sky Ball”, a parody you’ll probably never hear. On a happier note, be sure to check out my interview with Jess Domain from last week if you haven’t already. Thanks.

Musician Interview: Jess Domain ("We're Coming Home"-Pokemon Movie 16 Ending)

Here's an interview with Jess Domain, writer and performer of "We're Coming Home", the ending theme for Pokemon movie 16:



Jess's Channel

Pokemon Movie 16 DVD Releases December 3rd

Amazon has recently posted a listing for a DVD of the 16th Pokemon movie. According to the listing, the DVD will be released December 3rd, roughly a month-and-a-half after its debut on Cartoon Network on the 19th of this month. This marks the shortest gap between the premiere of a Pokemon Movie in the US and its DVD release in the post-Arceus Gap era.

Geek.Kon 2013 + More Pokemon TCG for Game Boy

Ever wish school was more like a video game? This might be the teacher for you:

There's also a new chapter in the saga of the Pokemon TCG for Game Boy:

More Worlds 2013 + Plasma Blast

First off, in case you missed it, we had a ton of coverage of Pokemon Worlds. First, here's a tour video:

An interview with one of the VGC winners:

And another interview with one of the TCG winners:

In addition to all this, we have an interview from one of last month's Pokemon TCG Plasma Blast Prereleases: