Now in Black and White
This past September, Nintendo and GameFreak released the most recent volumes of the Pokemon saga in Japan. Called “Pokemon Black” and “Pokemon White”, the game has already been hugely successful in Japan. A full month before the games’ release in the Nation of the Rising Sun, pre-orders topped 1.08 million. This earns the games the honor of being the fastest game on the Nintendo DS to break the one-million mark. Within two days of it’s release, the games had been purchased more than 2.6 million times — making it the biggest Pokemon launch in Japan’s history. By November 3rd, the games had sold over 4.3 million copies. Famitsu Weekly, a very popular weekly magazine in Japan, gave the game a perfect score. For Famitsu, that 40-out-of-40 score has only been given 14 times previously, making Pokemon Black and White the 15th game to receive that honor.
Despite my tentative reservations about the game being set in another new region and introducing nearly 160 new Pokemon, I’m amazed at these numbers. I suppose this very well means I’ll be pre-ordering my copy.
And if you’re reading this in America, the breaking news of the day is that you can preorder. In a Press Release from Nintendo earlier today, the games were given an official launch date for the United States.
March 6th, 2011.
So get your styli ready, Pokefans. Another fix is on the way!
