Journey of Pocket Monsters: PokéJungle @ Pikachu Outbreak!

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Today we are very excited to announce a new PokéJungle project!

We are incredibly fortunate to have two members of staff reside in Japan, the home of Pokémon. As some of you may (or may not?) expect, Pokémon is absolutely huge in Japan.  Almost everywhere you turn you can expect to find something Pocket Monsters-related, from station signage to vegetable juice drinks. It’s everywhere.

Because of this, we wanted to try something new for the site, and as such we’re proud to announce our Journey of Pocket Monsters project. Based on Instagram (for now) we will post daily photographs and stories on anything and everything Pokémon-related we find in our daily lives. In addition to this we will have accompanying articles for special Pokémon events hosted in Japan right here on PokéJungle.net.

So please, go follow the Journey of Pocket Monsters Instagram account and enjoy the journey! You never know, you might catch a giveaway or two! Let us know what other exciting projects you’d like us to undertake next… a Pokémon merch store? A subscription box?! Maybe one day…

PokéJungle @ Pikachu Outbreak 2017

As some of you may be aware, Yokohama is currently home to Japan’s 2017 Pikachu Outbreak event and yesterday we were lucky enough to attend.

Upon arrival at the nearest (ahem…) station to Yokohama’s Red Brick Warehouse Park, it was obvious that this event was hugely popular. Crowds of people filled the streets, every single one of them playing Pokémon GO despite being an almost 15 minute walk from the Kanto Park area. As we walked nearer and nearer the crowds became even larger and and it soon swelled to become a sea of cardboard Pikachu hats.

At the Red Brick Warehouse Park only Pokémon from Kanto could be found and, as such, it served as an excellent spot to find the previously unavailable (in Japan) Mr. Mime. The park itself held a few stalls selling Pikachu goods, refreshments, one specifically for the Pokémon GO Plus accessory and a few Pikachu-themed vending machines serving Pikachu vegetable juice drinks. Let’s not forget the giant inflatable Pikachu too! After walking around Mr. Mime finally appeared and after catching HER—yes, a FEMALE Mr. Mime (Miss Mime if you’re nasty)—we decided it was a good time to move on to a different area.

Next, we headed to the World Porters building in Minato Mirai. Along the way crowds thickened and it was possible to catch a glimpse of several smaller event locations as well as the Pikachu blimp in its land form. Inside the building crowds were gathering for a Hawaiian dance which involved three humans dancing with two giant Pikachu. The dance itself wasn’t all that entertaining, but the Pikachu prancing about in leis and grass skirts? Priceless. These type of events are the kind of thing that gives a sense of scale to just how big Pokémon is in Japan.

After more browsing and catching Pokémon in GO, we finally headed towards the Johto Park near the Cup Noodles Museum. Upon arrival, we spun the the special Pokémon Park Gym and picked up the badge and proceeded to catch as many Johto Pokémon as we could. The Johto Park wasn’t filled with any stalls, but instead held a few special replicas of PokéStops and Gyms from Pokémon GO, and also a special GO-themed WiFi hotspot truck. The park was probably the nicest area of the event as the crowds were much more relaxed and you could really feel a sense of community, even with everybody having their heads down in their phone. The view also particularly nice, looking out on Tokyo Bay with cruise liners and passenger boats passing through.

Finally, we decided to head home via Minato Mirai station. Just before passing through the ticket gates we noticed yet another giant inflatable Pikachu and moved towards it, discovering a small Pikachu goods pop-up store and a wall of Pikachu heads.

While we didn’t stick around for any of the scheduled events (parades, stage shows, etc) besides the Hawaiian dance, we did get a good taste of just how crazy these Pikachu Outbreak events are. If you ever happen to be in Japan next year, definitely be sure to check it out as it’s an experience you won’t forget.

Be sure to follow our Journey of Pocket Monsters Instagram and stay tuned for our next look into a Pokémon event here in Japan. Thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to Like us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter! While you’re here why not also visit our forums and come along to have a chat?

 

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556 thoughts on “Journey of Pocket Monsters: PokéJungle @ Pikachu Outbreak!”

  1. Found some more interesting possible leaks, but it all sounds like garbage

    Trial 1 contains fighting a handful of Pikipeks, after which you battle Totem Trumbeak
    Trial 2 remains the same
    Trial 3 remains the same, but Totem Salazzle received a buff to withstand Water types
    Trial 4 remains the same, but Lurantis is replaced by Shiinotic as the Totem & utilizes more healing moves
    Trial 5 remains the same, but the Totems are different, depending on version. Passimian for US, Oranguru in UM
    Trial 6 is Bug type themed, Totem is Golisopod
    Trial 7 is Normal type themed, Totem is Bewear
    Trial 8 is just a battle with Kommo-O
    Trial 9 is Mina’s, Totem is Mimikyu
    After the ninth trial, there are 3 more Totems you can challenge freely as sidequest
    Togedemaru
    Pyukumuku
    Lycanroc

    Aether Paradise undergoes a similar change like Team Plasma in B2/W2
    Lillie only has a few cameo appearances
    10 new Alolan forms, spread out over gens 2-6

    Ultra Solgaleo and Ultra Lunala go berserk at a certain point in the story, and the PC has to tame & ultimately catch them
    New Z-Crystals which have the effect of boosting a certain stat by x points
    New Battle Tree trainers, including Sycamore and Wallace
    New area, only accesible if you have UB-03 and UB-05 in your active party

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  2. Can anyone please with bottom of my heart battle me in smash or pokemon. pleeeease. Just once more! Just for old times. We can do shinies babies, or legends or anything. Jus anything! Or else I will leave for a long time!

    Reply

      • *inhales* YOUR MAIN WAY OF PROGRESSING THROUGH THE GAME WAS A LAST MINUTE DECISION THAT YOU COULDNT EVEN GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO DESIGN THEM?

        WTF IS GOING ON AT GAME FREAK

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        • Further proof that gamefreak is extremely incompetent. Hate to say this, but unless they get their shit together by pokemon switch (I don’t expect usum to be any good) I may leave Pokemon..

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          • As long as they continue to develop the games for 10-12 year olds, nothing will change or improve sadly

          • Worrying when Masuda said that a BotW style game would not work for Pokémon. It tells me that they’re also not willing or maybe afraid to change the formula in fear of losing the fans

          • Pokemon is waay to popular to actually ‘fail’
            I just hope they realize it’s time to change stuff up like botw did for zelda and odyssey seems to for mario

          • Calm down fam, They’ve still make great games and in the end that’s what matters! Don’t worry so much, Pokemon Switch will be amazing and you know that inside

          • No I don’t actually. Because game freak is an indie company that got success quickly because it was picked up by Nintendo. They never got to fail. They never had to learn good design. Their games suffer for that and Pokémon Switch will be a disaster if thy don’t get it together

          • I disagree that they’ve never learned good design because you could argue that every Pokemon game was good; but we all got our favourites. It is true that they have never had a game fail at all! Still, they certainly listen to fan-feedback, but lack what fans want sometimes (ex. Battle Frontier in OR/AS). It’s perplexing, but I doubt Pokemon on the Switch would fail. I’d love to see them do more with the standard Pokemon concept.

          • How so? All Pokemon games are definitely structurally sound. I doubt their going to make a “Sonic 06” Pokemon game. Pokemon is Nintendo’s prized series, they cannot have a inherently bad game.

          • Again, debatable. I personally enjoyed X/Y. It’s what assisted the 3DS strongly and brought a lot of people back into Pokemon. I think there great games, but lacking in what some fans like you desire.

          • It just depends how much work they’re will to put into it! If they’re moving it to the switch then I hope there’s a distinct difference between the DS and Switch games. I don’t want it to feel like I’m playing it on a DS. I want to feel the power of the fewer limitations that the switch would offer. I’m certainly not asking or expecting anything like BotW lol, but it needs to be different, jaw dropping, and game changing. They didn’t need to say “lower your expectations,” but instead “don’t expect an open world game” or something like that.

          • Not being rude, but your not affecting a massive company by you solely leaving Pokemon. I don’t think GameFreak is “incompetent” as we don’t have full details of their development process. It takes a team to create a game, so nobody could be “incompetent”. Still, I don’t understand how trials were added so late? Like how are you going to progress without them. I’m assuming that they used Gyms (which as UnburdenedLegume said would explain the squares on the map) and the Trial Captains were leaders, but he swapped them for what we got in S/M.

          • Obviously it doesn’t affect them, but lately every pokemon games feels incomplete too me so if I don’t like the one on switch I’ll leave as simple as that.
            And they are incompetent. It’s not just the trail thing, it’s Every thing they’ve done since XY.

    • I mean…..If the Trials and their captains were really a rush job then good on him! The captains (minus Sophocles) are all pretty great. I love the trial concept and honestly hope they refine it going forward. Mixing things up this time around was a good choice.

      Reply

          • Stop blindly ignoring everything they do right. The list of that is longer than the list of what they did wrong.

          • No offense but outside of giving us possibly the best roster of actual Pokemon yet, what did gen 7 do right?

          • I’d say Gen 4 or 5 did that tbh. The only great things gen 7 really did was bring BACK day/night (so that doesn’t really count because it’s not new), be better than Gen 6, have good characters (though some were not great), and dismiss HM’s (which was pretty awesome).

          • A good story and the best world (as in stuff like Pokemon cries and the culture you can feel in each area)

            But for the most part it didn’t do much spectacularly

          • This is a website that allows discussion. Honesty, I like seeing people surface the negatives of a series. It adds to the flavour of video games. I love GameFreak, but they do sometimes make questionable choices.

          • Is it though? Not having the core progression system of the game established until so late you can’t even get them designed by the right people is embarrassing and shows how bad they are at planning these games. The trials were simplistic and were only really interesting because of the location, trial captain and the Totem.

            They fuck up so much shit every single game and they don’t care. They will just remove the good stuff from the last game and introduce new mechanics that aren’t fun. They are incompetent.

          • Exactly this. They take out the good and leave the mediocre. They practically NEVER build on the good things they do.

          • -Walking with pokes (they literally put the work in TWICE now to bring it back and haven’t done it TWICE)
            -Soaring
            -PWT
            -Pokeathlon
            -Actual event pokemon
            -much more if I weren’t so tired

            Like why are they taking steps back!? If it just means we have to wait longer to get the next pokemon game then so be it. Just put the damn work in.

          • I think that they were using Gyms before trials. But that’s just a theory… a Game Theory. lol. Let me get serious a bit. I’m stunned as well that they implemented them so late and couldn’t find people to design them. The team was fifty people, so I wonder what they were doing.

            I don’t think every Pokemon game is terrible all because they don’t change much. Look at series such as Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei; they don’t change much but have such an amazing series. Yet, I do agree with some of your qualms. It’s like the listen to fans and ignore them at the same time (which is sometimes good and bad).

      • The concept and characters are great. I’m sure he did the best he could, but they are still very clearly rushed.

        It’s amazing they couldn’t get the actual people needed to design them. That’s a failure on their part

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        • Yeah it’s a weird that they did it in such a way. You’d think such a huge part of the game would be solidified earlier on rather than it being something they through in. It’ll be interesting to see how USUM are with the trials now that they’d have them a bit more refined. Hopefully refined anyway lol)

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    • What was in place of trials before? You literally have to progress the game completing trials. I’d say that trials came out quite well, so he did do a decent job creating the Captains. Still, seeing how late they arrived is baffling.

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  7. Nintendo needs a new Direct next week. Get that hype up for Rabbids, show those indie games for Switch, release date for Xenoblade 2,… Feel like we’re in a news lull.

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  14. Kinda wish Pokémon had a little more maturity nowadays
    Not like edgy Rejuvenation “WOW THE BADASSERY GUYS” kind of mature …

    Gens 4 and 5 had it, hell even ORAS had some due to dialogue changes in the climax… I wish the games felt more real with their NPCs, and the biggest battles in the game actually felt more impactful!
    Imagine if the champion was the head of the evil team and your elite four journey was a desperate journey to incorruptible the Pokémon league or something!

    Reply

    • I liked SuMo’s scale tbh, besides Lusamine trying to unleash UBs on the world (which even then isn’t as apocalyptic as other evil team plans) it felt like a personal journey for both yourself to become stronger and for Lillie to become a more independent character

      Also the NPCs were hilarious

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        • I don’t see the need for it always to be on a bigger scale, the small scale really worked and helped with the idea of growth of oneself. Lillie, Hau, and Gladion evolve as characters whereas you get stronger because you’re a blank self insert without a character in the first place

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  16. I find it HILARIOUS that Masuda…..the MUSIC DIRECTOR doesn’t know how to play piano/keyboard. I’m not knocking him as the music in the games is typically great, but I just find it funny hahaha

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      • I mean he can probably play other instruments or can just use the music software very well? I mean it’s funny because how much Pokémon uses piano sounding noises but the series has never used actual instruments iirc

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      • Oh come on…..Like I said it’s not a knock. They do music for the games very well. It’s not like him not knowing how to play means he can’t put music together. It’s just a bit humorous.

        Reply

          • Jesus….It’s amazing how a few months of no info on a game will make people turn on GF lol

          • I’ll admit the recent interviews were a little shaky,but if it weren’t for them would people really be shitting on them this much? I feel like people are being overly critical of them for no reason at all. It’s so weird.

          • Fair. Either way my point is if you like SM in any capacity then what’s there to worry about future games? We have no knowledge of USUM and while I’d be disappointed if it’s just a rehash of SM so soon after their release last year it’s not like that would necessarily reflect badly on the Switch game. I think part of the reason they sounded shaky on the Switch game was because people are expecting too much and they don’t want people to think the game will be more than it actually is. It’ll be a Pokemon game and if it’s anything like the past games it’ll be more or less a success.

          • …that’s a really solid explanation
            I’m just worried they’ll always be so close to being perfect but barely miss the mark
            I guess I just want another Gen 5…

          • That’s fair. I really like gen 5 a lot too. That said gen 5 isn’t without it’s faults too, but I hear where you’re coming from

          • I don’t hate S/M, just hate their anti-post game efforts. It ruins the lasting effects of pokemon games. So over time they don’t become as fond as when first playing them

          • The thing is tho, post-game for this series has a track record of being bad. Gen 1, Gen 3, Gen 6, Gen 7. Post-game isn’t always their focus, and when post game is their focus (Gen 2 and Gen 5) it tends to be that it effects the game in a way (Johto has its absolutely horrendous level curve, and Black/White (at least imo and from people I’ve talked with, this might be utter bullshit to you guys) has a fast, linear main game).

            Could they make it better? Yes. But they’ve shown themselves to not be as great as they could be with it already so I don’t see why people set themselves up for the disappointment of an amazing post game.

            And imo, Gens 2 and 5 still didn’t have amazing post games because neither had stories and didn’t make that great of a use of being in a new region/new part of a region. At least Gen 6 had all of its competitive-aimed features and Gen 7 had a return to an effort in story telling + different bits of post game activity sprinkled after Champion

          • You’re right, my expectations are perhaps high considering their track record. It’s just disappointing everyone keeps asking for post game effort and they’re ignoring us

          • Because they’re focusing on side features, mechanical features and main game (as well as their version of comp) which are all more important than post game too them (and probably to the fandom too tbh)

          • They have a relatively small team especially including the non-coding members, they’re constantly changing direction in terms of design outside of their battle systems, and genuinely there’s no point in sacrificing a decent main story (what most people will be playing) for the post game

          • Lol GameFreak has always been this ‘bad’, it’s just that it’s starting to show more + your nostalgia is wearing off

          • My nostalgia is not wearing off at all , it’s just… gf is now literally waving their stupidity in our faces

          • The ones that said that we shouldn’t hype the switch game up so we don’t end dissapointed? I mean, things shouldn’t be hyped a lot, specially when they’re doing a first timer (making a main series in a console)

          • It’s the expectations. Some fans are yearning for a massive open world, but it’s not what GameFreak is making. You could still be excited, but know what to expect.

          • Literally an entire studio sucks because they haven’t released info ever month on US/UM… lol. It’s kinda funny how everyone here turned on GameFreak suddenly.

      • Yeah it’s pretty good. From the Game Informer Podcast it sounds like he’s musically inclined, but it’s much more of a tech style than instrumental. He prolly has a very good grasp of music as far as notes and sounds go, but he just can’t play keyboard lol

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    • I was shocked until I looked up his actual work. He pretty much exclusively does the battle themes. The actual themes requiring piano are not his work (like the amazing shit from Sinnoh)

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  17. “Now imagine this with Pokemon. Imagine finding a huge tree you climb and find a nest of Pidgey. Imagine going to a beach and seeing Pallosand rise like Leevers. Krabby wash up on the shore. Zebstrika, Mudsdale, Bouffalant and Ponyta run through plains. At night time aggressive ghost pokemon appear. Murkrow swoop down from trees. Maybe you are exploring a place with rock terrain and suddenly a massive Onix appears that towers over you. Maybe you are sailing in the ocean and your boat is attacked by a massive Wailmer. These “boss” pokemon could be like Totems. Powered up pokemon that call upon other pokemon to help. Maybe they can only be caught after lowering it down to red health and it loses its power up and becomes a regular pokemon.”

    I just got really excited about this idea

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  19. Also, the trailers showed aftergame poni island areas with level 40 mons
    If this is actually in the game… wouldn’t that mean more areas were added?

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  20. Tbh I’m not expecting a lot from Gen 8 post game wise. The games with the most post game are Gen 2 and Gen 5. The Game Boy colour is very similar to the regular game boy, and tbh Gen 2 is very very similar to Gen 1. Gen 5 was the second Gen of games on the DS.

    Everytime we’ve had a large transition in presentation and/or hardware, we’ve had little post game, probably due to GameFreak having to do so much stuff with their relatively small team.

    Yes, Gen 7 is on the 3DS too and has a rather small post-game (still not the worst in Pokemon tho imo), but at least in terms of out of battle that was a huuuuuge leap. We got rid of the chibi overworld characters and the grid, which would’ve been ageeeees to do because that’s way more complex

    On the plus side, now that GameFreak has more experience with accurate sized models and off the grid movement, hopefully the transition to a console game won’t be as bad.

    Reply

    • While I don’t expect much post game from Gen 8, I do expect it from USUM, I mean, the post game size may be the same as PLatinum and Emerald, but let’s be real, it’s better than what we got in SM

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    • I just wish the storyline with the ultra beasts had been more exciting. I hated the repetitive nature of it. Didn’t feel like much of an adventure, nor did they feel like bosses. It was just -meet at hotel-
      -catch ub-
      -back to hotel for boring exposition-

      Reply

      • It wasn’t meant to be an adventure or them being bosses tho, it’s meant to feel like a clean up mission. That’s what you’re doing. Someone has to clean up the villain’s mess and tbh I enjoyed actually seeing something out of the interpol beyond Looker tbh

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          • I think that’d be more boring tbh, because then you’d either have to just walk up to them and press B rather than just go into the tall grass and have them attack you like other Pokémon (because besides being from another dimension, they’re just regular Pokemon, or legendary or anything) or you would’ve had a bunch of cutscenes that would make it even longer. Especially since all but Nihilego and Guzzlord had you catch multiple.

            The only one i feel should’ve appeared in the overworld was Guzzlord to mirror Zygarde in XY, especially because only one is found in one room

  23. Does having each gym leader in my new fan region reflecting a colour of the rainbow sound super dumb and cheesy? The whole concept is based upon creativity and stuff and is mean for call back to RBY too

    Reply

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