All kinds of new information on Pokémon Black and White was leaked today! Scans from a leaked copy of CoroCoro magazine revealed the three starters, as well as designs for the new Trainers. I know I’ve been talking a lot about Pokémon lately (not just here, but on the Twitter, Facebook and forums. Sorry!), but in the interest of being current I wanted to talk about it again today.

(Also, Serebii webmaster guy. Disabling right-clicking on your page stopped being cool in like 1997. I stole your pictures anyway out of spite. Deal with it.)

So we have the new starters. We have Seductive Lizard, Fire Pig, and Abomination. I’m being a bit harsh, but they really do seem like the least inspired set of starters thus far. We’ve already had a grass lizard starter before, and the new water starter has the exact same silhouette as Piplup. The fire pig is the most original design, and for that statement to be true you know something’s wrong. Anyway, their Japanese names are Tsutaja, Pokabu, and Mijumaru. They all have significance, but the only one I know off the top of my head is “buu” is the Japanese onomotopaea for a pig noise.

(I found this comic on Kotaku that made me feel bad right after I wrote this. Beware, rough language.)

I’m going to try to keep from making a final judgement until I see their evolution lines, because hey, I’m not going to be battling people competitively with an unevolved starter, but as it stands right now I begrudgingly take the fire pig. But now that I think about it his final form is probably an awesome lava boar. Which is rad. Okay, this can work.

Then we have the new trainers. I like them a lot! CoroCoro says they’re older than previous playable characters have been, which is pretty cool. They look about the same age as Wes and Rui from Colosseum, which can only mean good things because even though the gameplay of Colosseum sucked, the storyline and setting were a lot grittier than the handheld games have ever been. I like the girl trainer a lot because she reminds me of Christina. Her hair gets all wavy like that.

I don’t really know what kinds of changes they can make to the battle system, though. The physical/special split of Diamond and Pearl was really the last major overhaul I think would be possible. As far as I’m concerned, right now the mechanics are perfect.

I would, however, like to see some new type combinations. You know, just to spice things up a bit. We definitely need more Fighting types. Why not Dark/Fighting? Fighting/Ghost? The possibilities for type combinations are endless! Just, no more Dark/Ghost types. Sableye was rad and looked cool, but he was really weak. That’s fine. Then we get Spiritomb, who is like a defensive beast with no weaknesses and it pisses me off. Plus he looks dumb. There, I said it. The fine folks over at Smogon (which is basically the largest collection of Pokémon battling knowledge in the entire internets) have been creating Pokémon with new type combinations for their custom battling program, and they look awesome. Fire/Grass? Yes please.

I’d really like for them to do something with HMs, too. I’m sick of getting pretty far away from a Pokémon Center only to run into a boulder that I can’t move, or a wall I can’t climb, or a bush I can’t just kick over by myself, and then having to slog all the way back to the Pokémon Center, having to leave one of my USEFUL guys behind so I can bring something that serves no purpose other than those things that I should be able to do anyway. It’d be one thing if the HM moves were actually USEFUL in battle (Surf and Waterfall being the exceptions, of course) but right now they’re nothing but an inconvenience.

They need to do another console companion game, but make it as awesome as Stadium 1 and 2 were on the Nintendo 64. Put in fun minigames. Put in a “classroom” mode like in Stadium 2 so you can learn the finer points of battling (because honestly, I did learn a lot from that mode back in the day). And for the love of all deities everywhere, PUT IN RANDOM ONLINE 6 VERSUS 6 BATTLES. Battle Revolution did what the DS games didn’t and let us have random online matchmaking, but only 3 vs. 3, forcing you to gimp your team and hope you picked Pokémon that were better than the three your opponent picked. It killed the strategy aspect of a regular 6 on 6 team, and while I’ve still put over 100 hours into online battling on that game, it could have been much, much more satisfying.

I obviously love Pokémon very much, as I’ve stated numerous times in the past. I look forward to Black and White as much as I have any other game in the series. I’m not tired of the formula yet, because the formula WORKS. I just hope that they can really make this the PERFECT generation, because they’ve been getting oh-so-close lately.