PDA

View Full Version : IGN Article on Pokemon World Championships


bullados
08/17/2011, 07:53 AM
Another very nice article (http://ds.ign.com/articles/118/1188271p1.html), which I'll post a couple excerpts from here.

More than 400 competitors from 27 different countries filled the Sapphire Ballroom of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. Most of them had a handheld glued to their hand. Some had a Pokemon trading card deck sprawled out before them. Though they were of different ages, different walks of life, and even spoke a variety of different languages, one unifying goal brought them all together: the desire to be the very best.

...

The crowd itself was enthusiastic, loudly cheering on their competitor of choice. The Pokemon community was well-represented by intelligent and well-rounded entrants. Even as they faced each other in the early rounds spirits were high as the kids laughed and joked with each other, even knowing that most of them would be out before the day was over. In fact, when one kid lost his DS and game cartridge the night before the Nationals, a handful of his challengers lent him one of their spares and stayed up for eight hours to help him train up a new team. The kid ended up finding his system (and went on to win the Nationals to compete in Worlds), but the fact that his rivals were willing to help him to such an extent really demonstrated the caliber of participants in this mammoth event.

Gotta be the nicest gaming community out there. I can't think of another community where somebody would willingly help an opponent just cuz they can. The rest of the article is just as flowery as these quotes.

Check out the IGN article for more!

Prodigiosus
08/17/2011, 08:10 AM
Wow, I can't believe the mentioned that incident at Nationals! My friend Henry M., who ended up winning the whole competition in Juniors left his DS at the convention center and we were all freaking out about it and helped him gather a team at around 11 PM that night so he could compete. He found it at the lost and found the next day, but it's still awesome that they mentioned that, especially since Henry went undefeated the whole tournament and won the whole thing :D

Team Rocket Elite
08/17/2011, 04:57 PM
Awesome article. I would have loved to have been at the Worlds.

Tagrineth
08/17/2011, 08:34 PM
Wow, I can't believe the mentioned that incident at Nationals! My friend Henry M., who ended up winning the whole competition in Juniors left his DS at the convention center and we were all freaking out about it and helped him gather a team at around 11 PM that night so he could compete. He found it at the lost and found the next day, but it's still awesome that they mentioned that, especially since Henry went undefeated the whole tournament and won the whole thing :D

He won and went undefeated with Eight Hours.team? Dang.

Prodigiosus
08/17/2011, 08:37 PM
It actually took us less than an hour to reconstruct his entire team, but he found his DS the morning of the competition so he went with his original game. Still, I have no doubt he would have won the whole thing either way.

DarkBlade
08/18/2011, 02:44 PM
Wow, so many articles, Pokemon is gonna get so much more popular.

bullados
08/23/2011, 08:32 AM
And a couple more from IGN...

The first (http://ds.ign.com/articles/118/1189087p1.html)is basically a picture collection, but there's some cool pics in there for those that didn't attend. A nice little recap if you've got some time.

The second (http://ds.ign.com/articles/118/1188532p1.html), however, has got some real meat on those bones. IGN interviews J.C. Smith, Marketing Director for TPC. First off, I find it rather strange that IGN specifies that they're talking to TPC and not TPCi. Is he really from Japan? Secondly, there's the admittance that TPC and GF use the World Championships as a means of evaluating the games and understanding where things can be tweaked. I just wish that they used fan surveys a little bit more often. They'd be surprised by some of the things that people are telling them.