Maxim

Hey Maxim, Happy New Year.

Weren't you a mod or something?

You're... 103 years old? Well, congrats for making it to triple digits.

want to have a battle on pokemon online?

Yes, because children are so forgettable they have the air the episode they already aired three days ago. <.<

You were right.

We'll find out soon enough.

http://www.pocketmonsters.net/articles/1238/

Check the article for yourself, it's at the bottom.

Unless they did not edit the episodes? :/

Yes. We get an episode in each PokeSmash episode and they always preview it before they air the episode - but this time they left us wondering what they'll actually air. They mentioned how it'll be a special broadcast; a surprise of some sort. But yes, it WILL be an anime episode.

To be honest, I always thought they would rework the episodes to make them fit into the continuity but airing them this way would allow them not only to have Team Plasma debut but also to let us viewers know what happened in those two episodes. Unless they truly edited and it's the edited version that we're getting in PokeSmash.

Or maybe I'm just too optimistic? xD

It would be a perfect holiday present for us who desire to see the episodes. The episodes would serve as the debut episodes for Team Plasma AND they would be able to give more focus to the team. I mean, if you look at in whole, everything seems to fit it. I wouldn't be surprised if we got a Plasma title sometime in February.

More Team Plasma speculation for ya!

On December 18th and December 25th PokeSmash will be airing special Pokémon episodes though they did not show us any preview like they always do. They just said that we shouldn't miss those episodes because it's a special broadcast.

I wouldn't really have much of a problem with that. But out of curiosity, what manga are you talking about? (I'm guessing it's pretty obscure if it's that old and hard to find)

I'm using the Japanese Yahoo Auction for my search. There are enough used Crystal games, but the question is if the GS Ball was downloaded to at least one of the save files that are still working.

By the way, there were quizzes in 2002 where Blue and Blaine were the characters that asked the questions (Blue asked about Generation I Kanto, and Blaine about Generation II Kanto); I'm guessing that their dialogue was temporarily modified. For all we know, this happened with several characters, and it is also possible that Chieko was not the only new character. Personally, I'm holding out hope for Professor Silktree.

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I’m sorry to inform you that there is no flagged event in Azalea Pokémon Center in any version. Crystal US, Crystal JP, and Gold US all have an identical format of one nurse plus three normal people who monologue but otherwise provide no interactivity.

There is a script that does nothing. This exists in Azalea Pokémon Center (and not other Pokémon Centers) in all three versions I looked at, but since it is in Gold as well it is probably nothing significant to the Mobile Adapter.

I did not search for text. Three characters will provide too many false positives, and the language barrier is too great for me to determine whether something is real text or pure gibberish.

It is conceivable that the Mobile Adapter could “hot‐patch” a script into the game. I do not know if it actually does so in Crystal, however.

The holy grail would be an existing save file taken from a Japanese Crystal that had communicated with the Mobile Adapter. Analyzing it could answer many questions.
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Now to find a suitable cartridge...

Her mini-games weren't pre-programmed, but the flag of the event could have been. Looking at IIMarckus' forum, it doesn't seem that anyone there has delved into Japanese Crystal.

Yes. It used to be called Tohjo Falls.

Look here: "The GS ball event got reprogrammed and adapted to a regular PokéCenter. This event can be activated by setting the byte at 0x3E44 in a regular (v1.0 U) savegame to 0x0B. This was possibly done to use the GS Ball as a Pokémon Day Event Give-Away Item."

I think they're right. The GS Ball event was reprogrammed not to use the PCC, even though the PCC was mostly localized. This makes it possible that Chieko's data is included in the Japanese version.

Wait. The best person for the job is most likely IIMarckus, who is the one who dumped the English text. Judging from the forum on his site, he is still active.

Considering he found an unused Entei event in Gold and Silver, I think he'd be glad to help.

Do you know any hacker who can either extract a Japanese text dump or locate flagged events in Azalea Town? I'll try asking Veekun's Eevee, but he doesn't seem to be into obscurities.

Oddly enough, Meowth346 never mentioned Chieko to me, and we used to talk often before his retirement.

I've discussed a potential re-release with Ash_Pokemaster. At first I was pretty adamant that the Mobile Adapter features might be restored since there is a Virtual Console game with Wi-Fi features (the original game didn't have any online features), but then I realized that the Wi-Fi servers for the Battle Tower and PCC would probably be too much hassle for Nintendo to handle just for a port. Unfortunately, we're past Crystal's anniversary, so it is more likely that Emerald will be given such special treatment instead (and I hope it will, to render remakes redundant).

I still don't believe Game Freak wanted to retcon out the GS Ball, because I don't see any reason why they would. As I see it, they knew that Celebi would be distributed at the tail end of Generation IV, so they only accommodated a movie-related event where the GS Ball wasn't needed since Celebi was directly distributed. In retrospect, they should have distributed the GS Ball in 2009 upon HGSS' release or Gold and Silver's anniversary, since they certainly had no problem to make Victini available before its movie. But still, I don't think they really wanted to get rid of the GS Ball.

What I'm hoping to see is a new game with the GS Ball event with actual time travel. After all, there probably won't ever be another Celebi movie, but it should certainly be re-distributed eventually.

By rematch I was referring to the mini-game she played when she first introduced herself.

I still find it odd that Chieko's data wasn't pre-programmed, and I'm actually wondering if it actually was even though the English text dump doesn't indicate that. According to this website, there was definitely a mini-game and/or quiz every month; this page even has links to the text dump of the news in the last six months of 2002. But I can't tell how the mini-game and quiz worked - did a new character like Chieko appear every months or was everything done via the News Machine? I suspect the latter, in which case Chieko was an exception. Of course, for all we know there may have been at least another character in 2001 or early 2002. The website states that the GS Ball event was special, but fails to mention Chieko.

Unfortunately, the text dump does not seem all that interesting. The only thing that caught my attention was that wallpapers (for the cellphone?) were also downloaded occasionally, and the very last News Machine update included a wallpaper featuring Suicune, Unown and Celebi together. But things were probably more interesting in 2001 when Crystal was still big news.