Well, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver have officially been out for a few days now. Hope you've been playing through them and having a great time with the two awesome new remakes of the old classics!

To complement your gaming experience with helpful advice, or perhaps just to provide the entertainment you've come to find funny on YouTube, I have uploaded Marriland's SoulSilver 02 - 08 on the HeartGold / SoulSilver Gameplay Videos page. They are exactly the same video content you would find as if you were watching them on YouTube, except now hosted a more gaming-friendly site, Gamevideos.1up.com.

I will still be uploading the videos to YouTube, but I need to wait two weeks before I am able to, as they are going to be exclusive to Gamevideos (and embedded here) for the initial rush. Hopefully they do a good job so I will continue using them in the future!

One huge addition I nearly forgot about should be a significant help to any of you super competitive battlers out there! Pokemon.Marriland.com now has a powerful new IV Calculator available to help you easily calculate your Pokemon's IVs! That old "Stat Calculator" thing is a piece of junk compared to this new one. This one is specifically for calculating IVs (and not general stats; no "dumbing it down" or explaining things), has multiple-level checking, quick and easy input, Hidden Power and Characteristic support, and it even has the option to quickly copy whatever you input to a string of text called a Copycode that you can save for later or share with friends! Go ahead and check it out, but please, if you don't know what IVs are, do not ask me to explain it to you right now. I'll work on explanations later, but this is a gift to the really competitive battlers. I hope it is useful to you!

Anyway, other than that, things have been very busy over here. One thing kind of cool is that you can watch me playing SoulSilver live whenever I'm doing recordings. I obviously am not playing all day long, so that page will usually say that I'm offline, but for those times that I am streaming the video live, you'll be able to find it there! I usually stream weekdays from 4:00pm - 6:00pm Central Time and 8:00pm - 11:00pm Central Time, but it may change depending on what work I have to do. Still, though, you might be able to see me play without having to wait for me to make videos! Awesome!

I've also fixed the poll so it shouldn't be lagging things down so much. It now requires cookies, so you may need to submit the poll again before you will see the results, but it is much better than not having a poll at all! Additionally I've moved all of the images over to a separate server to help speed things up significantly. It will make no impact on your viewing other than hopefully cutting back some of the lag! Not all of the images are linking to the new server, but at least enough are to help balance things out a bit.

Last but not least, and this is really important for you, from April 2nd to April 30th, you can download the Yellow Forest course for your Pokewalker on Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver! Full details are available on the official HeartGold and SoulSilver website. If you put in enough steps, you may be able to find cool Pikachus, like ones with Volt Tackle, Surf, and even Fly! Yeah!

I'll work on updating other HGSS sections of the site, adding new things to it, updating things to their English names, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It takes time, but it's getting there! Stay tuned, folks!

It's official. Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver are now officially out in the United States of America! Let us all rejoice, celebrate, be merry, and most importantly, get playing those new games!

I'm going to keep this as brief as possible so I can get back to updates, but just so you know what's going on...

Check out the HeartGold and SoulSilver Walkthrough to help you get through the game! This walkthrough covers pretty much everything there is in the game, at least everything you're likely to run into during the first day or so. It will be updated gradually and names that were in Japanese (like Kotone for Lyra) will be updated to reflect their English names probably tomorrow or so. But it's there, and it's there to help you!

The HeartGold and SoulSilver Pokedex has been updated quite a bit so it now shows the locations of where to find all of the HeartGold and SoulSilver Pokemon in the game, as well as a few other changes. I do not yet have the English Pokedex text, but I will be acquiring it within the next few days. But you've got a nice, shiny Pokedex there to help you know what HGSS brings to the table.

That's mostly it. I will have videos up tomorrow morning with any luck. They are going to be hosted through a new video embedding system that I am anxious to try, but I will still be uploading the first installment to YouTube to let everyone know where to find the videos. And, as always, I will have my videos available to watch right here on the site as well! (Don't worry, I'll be keeping the listings current this time!)

Time for an all-night Pokemon festival! Yeah!

Quite a big update here today, after several unfortunate busy months of absence. My apologies for that. Let's get things rolling, though!

First and foremost, the HeartGold and SoulSilver Walkthrough is finally complete! At least mostly complete. It takes you through all of Kanto and even gives you some strategies on how to take on Red at the very end.

There's still a little bit I can add to it, but it should hopefully at least help get you through some of the more confusing parts in Kanto. That's a good thing! It's really been a very huge project to write, any way you look at it, so I'm sorry if it's taken awhile to complete. I'm just glad that it's out before the English release. That's a plus! Next I'll work on getting the Pokedex set...

Anyway, that's for another update. One more update in site-related news here... I've added card spoilers and scans for three recent sets, including the soon-to-be-released HeartGold / SoulSilver set. There are cool new Pokemon Prime and two-part Pokemon LEGEND cards in the set. Additionally, the other sets I have added spoilers for are Platinum: Arceus and I also added scans for Platinum: Supreme Victors.

There are also several new scans up all over the site that I've processed and added, bringing the total to about 3500 / 4900, give or take. Not too shabby! At least that's my guess. It may be just a little bit more, even.

Well, enough for site-related updates: there's some important news to announce!

Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver are going to be released in the USA on March 14th, 2010! They will also be released in Europe on March 26th and Australia on March 25th. That's coming up pretty darn quick!

I'll be sure to cover the English versions as they come out and I hope to have the site's resources totally ready to answer all of your HeartGold and SoulSilver questions by then. It's really getting close to time, that's for sure!

Lastly, one more bit of news. From now (well, it started Saturday) until February 14th, you can stop by your local Gamestop and pick up a special Shiny Pichu on your American Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum game via Mystery Gift! It's not just any Shiny Pichu, though, but one referred to as "Pikachu-colored Pichu" which, when traded to HeartGold or SoulSilver, unlocks a special event in the Ilex Forest where you can get another special Pichu, Spiky-eared Pichu.

Full details are available on this page on Pokemon.com. Be sure to get your Pikachu-colored Pichu!

That's all for now, folks! Next up comes some much needed work on the site's Pokedex before the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver.

If any of you have been checking PokemonPlatinum.com or have been following several various Pokemon news sites, you'll know that the Arceus distribution is going on and is lasting until November 15th.

You'll need to go to your local Toys R' Us store with your copy of Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum (any of the games work) and then select Mystery Gift at the title screen, then Receive from Wireless and wait until you get your Arceus.

Pretty sweet!

You can find out how to enable Mystery Gift and more specific details on obtaining the Alpha Pokemon, Arceus, on the official announcement page.

You still have some time to get it this weekend, so go ahead and get your very own uber awesome Arceus!

Hey everyone, been busy working on the HeartGold / SoulSilver Walkthrough some more over the past week. It now covers all the way up to the Elite Four. Pretty sweet!

In addition to that, exact Pokemon rarities have been added to the Walkthrough, showing you the percentage to find Pokemon in the route rather than just vague guidelines like I previously had.

I'll work more on getting some videos up in the coming week, as they've slowed down a bit while I was working on this. My apologies.

Oh, and another reminder! From now (well actually starting Sept. 21st) until November 8th, if you have Mystery Gift enabled on your Pokemon Platinum version, you can connect to Nintendo WFC and receive Oak's Letter, an item that lets you get your very own Shaymin once you've gotten the National Dex!

You can find everything you need to know about getting it by clicking this link and going to the official site.

Have a nice weekend, everyone!