Christmas Issue 07 !
A warm welcome to the readers of our Christmas issue for this year. In it, we will have much more than usual, more pictures (woo-hoo), more writing more news, more links, more everything !
News
While we are slowly catching up on Japan when it comes to pokemon movies, we still don't have Dialga VS. Palkia VS. Darkrai and we don't have the newest movie either, Giratina & the Bouquet of the Sky. It will feature Regigigas. Dialga & Palkia from the last movie and might feature Shaymin as well. You can see a video here :
Giratina & the Bouquet of the Sky Video
This little fellow could be appearing, but he might not. If he did, the title might be changed, but we won't go on about it in case it doesn't.
Smash Bros. Brawl
There have been some recent developments on this, such as the fact that Bonsly appears as an assist trophy in Smash Bros. Brawl, but more on that later. What's really interesting is that Waluigi from Super Mario is appearing. The fact that he is appearing is actually not that interesting, but he is appearing as an assist trophy instead of an actual character, which is a bit unfair as the poor lad hardly ever gets any attention !
All the pokemon which have appeared in the previous Smash Bros. will be here too, and Mew and Celebi bring, or drop, rather an added bonus. If you are lucky enough to see one, it will drop a CD, so be sure to catch it. Finally, Bonsly makes his debut as an assist trophy which doesn't really do very much if left to it's own devices, but if you throw it at another charachter, it really hurts, but it is quite heavy, so don't expect Peach or Zelda to be able to to as much damage with it. Also it can be reflected, but it will eat up your shield, so you should try and dodge it.
Screenshots
Bonsly
Waluigi
Returning Pokemon
Pokemon Snap looks set to come to the UK very soon, and with it's new feature, the ability to add pictures taken in-game to the wii message board, it will be great. It will cost 1,000 wii points, but it will be worth it !
Pokemon Ranch is also shaping up well, but it is now called Pokemon Farm, and people with impressive pokemon collections will have another way to show off their expertise and skill, because you can copy your collection of pocket monsters to the wii from Pokemon Diamond and take pictures of them, then upload the pictures to the wii message board. It was mentioned at the Nntendo Fall (or Autumn, as we Brits like to call it) conference. However, the team here hope that the chibi-style 2D pokemon graphics are improved, because it is not looking too nice on the visual side of things and that just might let it down. It looks like it will be released alongside Dr. Mario on wiiware.
POTW
This week... Articuno 
Articuno is a very useful pokemon and it can be devastaing in the right hands. Although it is a legendary, it isn't that great, and a lot of non-legendary pokemon outclass it, so you are unlikely to see many in competitive battling, because it belongs really in borderline, which means that the pokemon is clearly too strong to belong in UU, but not good enough to qualifiy major use in OU.
Pokemon Diamond & Pearl
Moveset
Item : Leftovers
Roost
Toxic
Reflect
Ice Beam
EVs: 252 HP
180 Special Defence
76 Defence
(this is actually a fairly even split because you double your defence with reflect)
To be honest this moveset hasn't changed much, and I doubt it ever will. The stratergy is to use Toxic first to intoxicate your opponent, then reflect to raise your defence, which, although good is worse than it's sp.defence. Finally use Ice Beam until you are low on health, at that point, use Roost to recover. The vunerability to ground during the next go doesn't really matter, as Ground Pokemon won't want to switch into Articuno. A devious and slightly cheap way to win would be the Mind Reader + Sheer Cold, as it is an almost certain instant-KO. Finally you could also use Chesto-Resting, but there's something about Chesto-Rest that I don't like and that is the fact that the Chesto berry will only work once, and that means you only really have one chance to recover.
MOTW
This week... Ice Beam
Ice Beam
Ice type move
95 base damage-100% accuracy
PP 10
TM 13
Beauty contest type-two hearts
10% chance of freezing
Special-not physical
Ice Beam is usually paired up with Thunder or Thunderbolt to create a set of moves which can hit for normal-effective damage against almost any pokemon. While it is good, it cannot hit pokemon such as Lanturn for normal effective hits. Ice beam has great accuracy, good base damage, and the added chance of a freeze makes it virtually the best Ice move around (apart from avalanche on very slow pokemon). Blizzard is OK, but I really hate moves that don't have great accuracy.
That's just about it for this issue, so enjoy Christmas, and watch out for the new year episode.