YouTuber Reveals Pokemon Cartridges Never Intended for the Public to See
Official Pokemon cartridges for the Nintendo DS have been shown to the public by YouTube channel The Retro Future. As Nintendo never intended for these cartridges to be made publicly available, they provide an interesting behind-the-scenes look at a key aspect of completing the Pokedex.
Ever since the beginning of the Pokemon series, Pokedex completionists have needed to interact with other players in order to catch every Pokemon. By trading with fellow players, fans could come close to completion; however, each game also includes one or more secret Pokemon, such as Mew, that could never normally appear. In order to obtain these Pokemon, players need to travel to special in-store distribution events held by retailers. While now mostly done via Internet, distributions continue to this day, and include both exclusive Pokemon and unique variants of common Pokemon like Pikachu.
The cartridges shown by The Retro Future are special distribution cartridges designed for the sole purpose of wirelessly distributing Pokemon to anyone in the vicinity. The only form of interactivity available is the ability to press a button to begin the distribution. While the bottom screen is devoid of color, the top screen features an original image: a simple signpost set against a cloud-filled sky. While not especially striking or useful now, cartridges like this were the way for fans to get their hands on some of the best so-called Mythical Pokemon during the era of games like Pokemon Platinum.
It's not hard to see why the distribution process would be so simple. Store owners may not have been familiar with the Pokemon games, so the process needed to be as straightforward as possible. Nintendo went even further to simplify the process of hosting in-store events by giving stores a bizarre one-screen variant of the Nintendo DS that stripped away almost all of the console's features. That way, the in-store consoles were cheaper to produce, and easier for stores to use.
While Nintendo clearly intended for retailers to eventually return the distribution cartridges, it appears a fair number of them have found their way to the public. The Retro Future notes that they are typically rather expensive, making them a niche collector's item. While they are not as valuable as the most expensive Pokemon trading cards, they are a rare piece of Nintendo history, making price hikes inevitable.
The last few months have seen some major discoveries about the way the Pokemon franchise operates behind-the-scenes. For example, the massive "Nintendo Gigaleak" revealed the existence of a never-announced but fully-complete Game Boy Color game known as Pokemon Picross. More recently, fans were surprised to discover that Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee looked very different before launch, with a higher difficulty, additional story events, and a planned Safari Zone.
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January 02, 2021
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