Nintendo Confirms Existence of Sun & Moon Demo

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In advance of Italy’s annual game show Milan Games Week, Nintendo of Italy issued a press release with an interesting tidbit: the show wouldn’t feature the demo version of the upcoming 3DS release Pokémon Sun & Moon.

le demo di Pokémon Sole e Pokémon Luna […] non saranno pronte per Milan Games Week.

While this is perhaps disappointing for Italian gamers headed to Games Week, it does confirm in a roundabout way that there is a demo for the pair of games and may just make its way to gamers at a later date.

Nintendo & Pokémon offered no such advanced notice of the absence of a demo in the case of PAX West, which took place in Seattle, Washington at the beginning of September.

With the Korean Ratings Board already having passed judgement on a “trial” version, it does seem like we’re going to see one… but when?

<3 PJ

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389 thoughts on “Nintendo Confirms Existence of Sun & Moon Demo”

  1. Quite a few pros of cons of a demo, maybe we’ll see it this coming month for a limited time, also if there’s gonna be a demo exclusive item akin to the Mega Stones

    Really wanna play S&M, see how it feels & looks
    But if it’s like ORAS, everything will be out there (which will annoy some people, not me tho), plus it’ll make me want the whole thing already!
    November can’t come fast enough

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  5. Cool. At least we could get a feel for S/M before it’s release. Honestly, they need to leave out a lot of stuff from Demo. Nobody wants S/M to be data-mined by impatient people. I could see the Demo releasing around the release date of the game in November to dissuade data-mining until the actual game releases.

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          • I guess thats the good thing growing up in a time without internet! I never had the urge to be connected all the time, thus it easy to avoid the places that i know will spoil me!

          • I still use my computer every day, but I don’t go on the internet on my phone and I’d have no problem avoiding the social areas of the internet because I don’t use facebook and I only occaisionally visit Twitter (I don’t have an account).

  8. Hi guys, could someone enlighten me?
    I live in brazil and there is a 0.1% chance that i can play the game on the release with a physical copy!
    So i will get sun digital, and wait for moon to arrive…
    But, will the game be available in the eshop on the 18th 00:00h ?????
    Am i going to be able to download it and play on the date?
    I still need to buy nintendo coins…. Been procrastinating this cause its a little expensive to get 50 bucks(turns something like 200)
    Another question, is there a pre download if i buy online? Or something of the sorts?

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    • It should be up at midnight for the 18th. It potentially might be a little off since you can imagine a lot of people will be downloading the games, but typically the downloads start as soon as the actual day starts lol As for your’e second question it really depends. Idk if all regions get pre downloads or whether it’s just some. I know Japan usually has the pre download option, but I can’t say for other countries.

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    • Hey, I live in India, but my region settings are in the US (primarily because there IS no regional option for India)… my eshop is also set to the US, but my card info gets rejected for some reason and so i’ve been unable to purchase anything online… could you tell me how you buy stuff on eshop?

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      • I buy the nintendo e shop points in a local store, or on my local ebay! I dont have a valid cresit card adress in te us, so thats the only way i manage to buy online

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    • Incidentally it won’t make a difference for me, the UK gets the game 5 days later than Japan and ‘murica so the ‘muricans will have spoiled it for everyone getting it on the later date by that point anyway.

      If the datamining happens I’ll be happy in a way since it will spoil it for everyone and not just one group.

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      • The only thing I really dont want spoiled is plot details, which are going to be hard to avoid because it’ll take me a while to finish the game. I’m in college and the release is near finals, of course. Perhaps we can see if PJ has any solutions to this. Maybe an article where people can go to talk about spoilers and then regular articles for talking about the non-spoilery news and such. Just a thought.

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        • Or confining spoilers to the forums for a month.
          The forums need more love anyway.

          There definately needs to be something, espeically for that 5 day gap.
          If they had something in place I wouldn’t need to completely blank them.

          I’m also not as worried about pokemon being revealed because I’ll probably end up peeking at moves and evolutions anyway so I can decide what to teach my pokemon. I still don’t have the motivation to go in completely blind 😛

          P.S. I still find the American education system weird.

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          • Yeah, forums would definately work.
            They could have an entire section dedicated to spoilers and ban them elsewhere so it’s nice and easy for everyone else to avoid them.

            Mainly the terminology and the way it’s organised.

            College in the US means something very different to college in the UK.

  10. Well I can’t say I’m surprised that the demo itself is actually real. After the rating in South Korea happening and now this it’s obvious that there is a playable demo of some sort. The question is whether the demo is for home use or will be shown off at a con or something. Do we know of any big conventions or events that will be happening before the games come out? Games week happen on October 14th-16th I believe so that’s pretty late into the month as it is. I can’t imagine them releasing demo too close to the actual game release so I’d imagine it’d have to be close to a month before November 18th if they wanted to get it out. I think we may hear about it pretty soon. Even if the demo comes out later in October they may start talking about it sooner rather than later. Otherwise I can’t see a reason to informally state that it exists, but also deny that it’ll be at an event that’s happening almost 3 weeks away.

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  11. The only thing that keeps me from being excited for a demo is data mining. They ruined everything that was left in ORAS. Sure there wasn’t much, but Hoopa Unbound would’ve been a cool surprise. As long as the demo they release isnt built on the full version of Sun and Moon, we should be fine.

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    • I think one thing people need to keep in mind is that the data mined info can be avoided to a degree. Sure you can’t stop people from talking about it, but iirc all the info from the ORAS mine was simply put up on a pastebin. In order to actually have first hand spoiling happening you’d had to go to the page and read it for yourself. At least that’s how I remember it anyways. lol

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      • Literally every pokemon website reported on it. Plus it’s all over my twitter timeline when something happens, so yeah. It’s more than just paste bin. Especially since there were models for Hoopa Unbound found in ORAS and models, names, and moves found for Volcanion, Diancie, and Hoopa in XY before they were revealed.

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        • The websites can report on it without actually spoiling it though, they can tell people the info has been leaked, but if people choose to read the info they are doing so with full consent.

          Twitter is easy enough to avoid, just don’t go on twitter until after the game is released.

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          • It’s harder then you think
            Information on a game everyone wants is just like cocaine
            You get a taste, den you’re hooked
            You say no I’ll just avoid the stuff
            But deep down it nibbles away your restraints until BOOM you’re soaking up every fraction of info and you never leave full

          • Solution: more self restraint.
            You can’t complain if you knew in advance that you were about to read leaked information.

            I managed it with XY, I can manage it here again.
            A few weeks of avoiding Pokemon news is easy enough.

            I plan to blank Pokejungle the moment America gets SM anyway because I know everyone here will be discussing their games and ruin it for all the people who have to wait 5 more days.

          • Easier said than done considering I use it to promote my sales, keep in contact with people, get instant news for TCG, etc.

          • Proof that putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea.
            Hence I try to use different services for different purposes.

            Also I would never use social media for anything business related if I could help it.

          • When Volcanion etc were first leaked, I thought they were just fakemons hacked in until I went to the trouble of looking for an article.

            Didn’t really spoil anything for me though, if I hadn’t found out until close to them being released I still wouldn’t have been that excited because they’re just event Pokemon.

            I wish they’d go back to when event pokemon actually involved navigating a dungeon to earn them instead of the modern approach of ‘insert code, out comes pokemon’, it means obtaining them is more of a non-event. The first event pokemon I ever got was Deoxys and I remember having to actually battle and catch it on Birth Island, that made it more special.

          • Yeah, though I found out about them as soon as they were leaked from datamining, I didn’t care about the event legendaries because the game was out and the real blowout had already happened. Actually when it comes to things like hidden pokémon I really enjoy the datamined aspect because it still gives them an aura of transgression and mystery.

            I couldn’t agree more on the idea of reintroducing event legendary quests as well, that was half of what made them exciting tbh. It’s nice to still have an NPC or two tell you about the lore, but honestly GF have just dropped the ball by getting more and more lazy with event content since gen IV. Gen V had a few related sidequests to get items/moves, but gen VI literally only requires you to visit a pokémon center or shop.
            As you say just dumping in a code and getting a pokémon is pretty boring, and though it works fine for Whitney’s Miltank or some Charizard with a special move, it honestly feels like a waste when applied to mysterious new legendaries we know nothing about. They used to have event items too, those were great fun! Plus having exclusive hidden locations for the legendaries made them feel like part of the region’s lore, whereas nowadays they’re just artificial gifts.

            My first event was also the deoxys event on Leaf Green, and I remember the exciting boat trip to Birth Island, the weird puzzle with the triangle, and the epic fight to capture deoxys clear as day… That’s another thing actually, back then we had to earn it by catching them.
            Sadly though I’m pretty sure Game Freak isn’t going to go back to that, it wouldn’t be coherent with their current or general behaviour.

            Also, where the hell is Eternal Flower Floette??? I still want it!

          • I would also prefer that method of obtaining the event Pokémon because it would make SRing for the one you want way better.

  13. Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but will Alolan Vulpix have a different evo method? Not sure if a fire stone makes too much sense anymore, but who knows…

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  15. Top 5 things I want in Sun/Moon
    5 An extremely difficult to obtain 1 per game Item that turns 1 Pokemon shiny
    4 Hidden ability capsule
    3 Improved GTS (Prevent requesting legendaries for normal Pokemon, shows us the Nature and IVs of offered Pokemon)
    2 Destiny knot to pass all 6 IVs
    1 Destiny Knot to pass the highest IVs from each parent

    People might say this makes the game super easy and less people will feel interested.

    I say it will give more people the chance to enter the competitive side of the game and will only make 6IV breeding the entire pokedex easier lol

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      • Well you seem like a much more hardcore fan so I guess you know what’s best for the series. What do you think about putting the IV Judge in the Day care?

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    • The “extremely difficult” way to get a shiny is already in the game in the form of full odds encounters. Naturally, you’re going to choose the method that is the easist and w/highest odds. Since this item would be difficult, I believe the Masuda method would still be easier.

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      • The key is that it takes an already existing pokemon and converts it, which means you could use it on something with max IVs, a good nature and a good ability.

        It would be a good reward from the Pokemon lottery or something.

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    • 5 I’m indifferent
      4 Would be handy
      3 Most wanted
      2 Would probably end up making IVs worthless in the end. We’ve already got the bottletop mechanic so it’s not really needed
      1 Would ruin the fun of spending hours breeding pokemon with high IV levels, might as well just have a machine that accepts a pokemon and spits it out with full IVs at that point

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          • Yes, I feel that’s a different issue in a way. Bottlecaps might *help* resolve the 6IV legendary problem, but again, depends on how readily available they are to us. I always felt that they needed to crack down on generated mons but I know nothing of programing so I don’t know how they would do that

          • If you know how to cheat, cheating will always be easier than actually doing the in game stuff because writing to the game’s memory is quicker than navigating a bunch of in-game menus.

            It’s quicker to load a pokemon by cheating than it is to go out and catch one and it’s also quicker to fill all your PC boxes with Shiny 6IV Arceus through cheating than it is to catch a single non-shiny non-perfect IV Arceus through an honest method.

        • Ummm…what’s fun about grinding your Pokemon to a certain lvl? Should be able to automatically level to whatever level you want.

          Breeding is part of the game in my opinion. Taking that away is like removing a massive portion of the game…

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          • Well of course it’s fundamentally part of the game….but that doesnt mean that it needs to take numerous hours and days for one pokemon. Some people are okay with spending that much time and others aren’t. I dont think there’s anything wrong with wanting it to be easier. A lot of people who want to do competitive just dont have a lot of time to waste and I think that should be respected because many of them are adults with jobs and lives. There’s always the long way if you really want to do it that way.

          • I just say “5IVs is good enough” and it usually is.
            It takes longer to train them up to level 100 than it does to actually acquire the 5IV correct-ability correct-nature Pokemon in the first place.

            ORAS gave us a 2-3IV detection feature on the Pokemon radar anyway, and XY has friend safari (which also means hidden abilities, but punishes those who don’t collect friend codes) so getting a head start is easy enough. From there on out it’s just strategy, maths and a little bit of luck. Getting your first group is always the hardest, but once you’ve done that, you can start spreading out.

            For example, when I first started IV training, I focused on Swablu. When I had a 5IV Swablu (Flying and Dragon groups), I cross bred it with Pelliper (Flying and Water1), which meant I could build up a 5IV Pelliper in half the time. From there on out, I just used the other dual-grouped egg pokemon to bounce the IVs across until I had full coverage of all the needed egg groups. Once you’ve got that, it doesn’t take that long to get a new family of 5IV pokemon of the right species, then it’s just a matter of getting the Nature and Ability right, but you can always hoard Natures too and use Everstones to pass them on, meaning the only issue is the Ability.

        • Because if you could just hand a pokemon to an NPC and have them give it back to you with perfect IVs, IVs would become meaningless, they might as well get rid of them completely.

          If there’s an element of randomness such that there’s a 1/32 chance of getting a pokemon with 6 perfect IVs, it at least gives the IVs some meaning.

          Also having to breed for IVs means you accumulate Pokemon along the way, and they often end up with different natures and abilities, which means you can then use them to breed with other species to get 5 IV versions of another species quicker than you would if you started out with the 3/4 IV ones you can catch in the wild. Basically once you’ve got a handful of decent pokemon from various egg groups, it’s no longer hours, it’s 10-20 minutes, in some cases less.

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    • #5 is stupid. People will find a way to cheat and clone those items, therefore effectively ruining shiny pokemon. Same with #4. #3 maybe someone is trading it to themselves? #2 gamebreaking. Makes competitive play too easy.

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      • If they’re using cheat devices then they can already turn any pokemon shiny.
        Otherwise they’d need a cloning glitch to be in the game, and the last time (that I can remember) that we had one of those was Gen 4, and it was risky and involved the GTS.

        Again, if they’re determined enough they can just alter pokemon to use their hidden abilities.

        As for 3, anyone attempting that would be pretty stupid, they can trade with themselves locally, they don’t have to use the GTS.

        Agree with the other two though, that would make getting 6IV Pokemon too easy, getting 5IV Pokemon is easy enough as it is.

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  16. If you live in North America, and missed out on the Darkrai event earlier this year, the second chance event just went live.

    Mystery Gift>get with code>Darkrai20

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    • Well lets compile everything we know so far about Z-Moves and Z-Crystals
      -One for every type
      -Wrist mounted inhibitor
      -requires a pose and movement to activate
      -There exists some that are genetically attuned to specific Pokemon
      -can only be used once per battle
      – “combines the power of both the trainer and Pokemon’s wishes” to attack
      – so far Kanto specific Pokemon
      – Use of the letter Z
      -Hala gives you a Z-Ring after the first Island Challenge
      -Professor Kukui studies these attacks
      -they require the same type of a move or specific move to be used

      Anything else I’m missing

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      • Somebody on Bulba forums thinks he figured it out.

        This particular Kanji means ”Human Z”. In Pokémon terms, this would mean ”when Pokemon and humans are perfectly synchronised” this could of course result in several things, but the before mentioned ”Z-forms” might be a possibility now.

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  20. Omode (the person who wrote most Amourshipping moments) just dropped a tweet saying she has one more amourshopping moment to write and that she’s very sad about it. So this is final confirmation that Serena is gone after XYZ. To further wound the amourshipping fans ;(

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  21. Its basically dead on here, but I wanted to share this either way.

    The version mascots have partly Latin in their names
    Sol=Latin for sun
    Lun=Latin for moon

    Now, we know that Marshadow is a trademarked name for Pokemon. Guess what Mar means in Latin? It means sea. So literally it translates into Sea Shadow.

    Marshadow is a part Water-type legendary, calling it now.

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    • They Love that thing in Jap tho.. but YESSS
      That’s maybe why their new console in basically an enhanced to be presented as something new

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    • The Vita is the best! the only reason it didn’t sell well was because Sony is dumb and didn’t put enough resources into it’s marketing. The actual system is really solid and it didn’t get what it deserved. The Wii U on the other hand all kinds of marketing going for it, but it still sold crappy…..says a lot don’t you think? lol

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    • The only reason people buy vitas is to hack them open and do homebrew. If I remember rightly, the idiots used webkit in their web browser. Webkit is (so I’ve been told) one of the easiest things to use as a backdoor into the OS of an embedded system.

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    • its interesting to note though that it is well known now that the Wii U is at the end of its life, many people considering purchasing one now know about the NX so they don’t end up purchasing one. At this point the Wii U’s sales numbers will pretty much almost stand still as the NX really isn’t that far away, its only natural for other consoles (that do not have a replacement coming) to start outselling it. Its also interesting to note that the XBOX One only passed the Wii U itself at the very end of the year, 2 years ago, which is interesting as it is said to be a more powerful console and was expected to sell as well as PS4, where as at the same time PS4 sales were already double that of both the Wii U and the XBONE. Seeing as how nintendo offers a unique experience on their consoles more so then say xbox compared to PS I think that when the NX does release, it will dominate alongside PS4 while XBONE will continue to fall behind.

      Also at the end of this article the guy basically calls LOZ: BOTW flop looking…. Ill just let that sink in…

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