Pokédex for iOS is dead. Long live Pokédex for iOS.

What was it exactly?

Pokédex for iOS was a Universal iOS app designed to serve as a comprehensive companion guide to gamers playing the main Pokémon series on Nintendo handheld devices. It provided all of the major stats of each Pokémon ingame (moves, evolutions, abilities, etc), but its major selling point was that every single Pokémon had a highly detailed, real-time rendered 3D model that would play little emote animations on cue.

It was developed by Creatures Inc, presumably out of Tokyo, and had a base price of $2USD to buy. By default, only the Pokémon species from the latest game series, Black/White were included, and getting the Pokémon from each previous generation was a separate in-app purchase of $6USD, making the fully unlocked app, $26.

Back in 2012, after meeting 2 of the producers from the Pokémon Company at GDC, I had been emailing them every few weeks about the prospects of officially licensing iPokédex. Each time, they would reply saying they were a bit too busy at the moment to discuss it, but to try again in a few weeks. A week before Pokédex for iOS was revealed, they said to me ‘We should be free in a week. Try again then. ;)’, which in retrospective should have been my first tip-off that this thing was coming. XD

I could write a whole blog post on what I thought of the design or the amount of information in it, but suffice it to say, it was very visually confusing to look at, and eschewed nearly every single iOS UI control in favour of a completely ‘custom’ experience resulting in the interactions, feeling quite weird as a result. Also, it was REALLY obvious that it was originally built in Japanese, and then switched over to English at the end (Words being resized to fit into small boxes etc).

The app was last updated at the start of 2013, before Pokémon X and Y, and before iOS 7. As a result, it got progressively more broken as more versions of iOS and more iOS devices came out and progressively more out-of-date when X and Y, and later ORAS came out. Given how much effort it would require to bring the app up-to-date, it’s not surprising that they decided to kill it instead.

What happens now?

The app itself has been pulled from the App Store, but if you delete it off your device, you can still re-download it from your ‘Purchases’ list in the App Store app.

What’s more troubling is the In-App Purchase content. If you had purchased any of the $6 content packs, they are now officially gone for good. If you re-download the app, and try and access their download page, this is all you get now:

If you re-install the app, there is literally no way to restore any of the in-app content that you may have paid for. If you paid for all 4 packs, then you’re now officially $24USD out of pocket.

This is an incredibly disappointing move by Pokémon and it displays incredibly bad faith towards paying customers who invested in the app.

Can I back it up if it’s already on my device?

Officially, Apple’s developer policy is that in-app purchase content must explicitly be set to not be backed up. This makes sense in the fact that iCloud backup space is limited (so it should be limited to user-created content only), and in-app purchase content can (normally) be easily re-downloaded when the user taps the ‘Restore’ button.

If the app was implemented in the officially required way, then no. If you reset your device, or upgrade to a new device, the Pokédex in-app content WILL NOT carry over as well.

What should they have done instead?

When iOS 6 hit, Apple made it possible that in-app purchasable content of this nature could be hosted on their own servers next to the app. This saves developers and companies a lot of time and resources since they don’t need to worry about setting up their own content distribution hardware.

For some reason (Possibly because it was already built before iOS 6 was announced), the Pokédex app doesn’t do this and instead relied on their own server and software.

Ideally, they should have simply removed the app from purchase, but still left the in-app purchase system running. And if they had originally gone with hosting their content on Apple’s servers, they could have simply left it running alone indefinitely, at no cost to themselves.

In any case, in this day and age, simply pulling content that users have already paid for without providing any alternatives, or compensation is incredibly poor form.

Can I get a refund?

If you bought the in-app purchase content within 90 days, you can get Apple to automatically refund you for that content. iMore has put up a brilliant blog post on how to do that.

If not, you’re probably out of luck. Sorry.

Conclusion

All in all, this entire app experience was a pretty disappointing display by The Pokémon Company. So much so that they’ve now decided to quietly sweep it under the rug, and simply wear any bad faith they created between themselves and any users who may have bought it.

I’m personally quite upset about it since these are the sorts of actions that make consumers’ faith in paying for digital goods waver, which can have an impact on a lot of other developers. This sadly, is the cold hard reality of buying digital goods, and it’s why I’m so opposed to DRM-protected content.

In any case, the Pokédex app space on iOS is once again clear and I’m sure TPCI isn’t going to try and do another one on their own any time soon again. I wonder what opportunities this may have opened…

Naturally, I was there in a heartbeat to give it a try.

As was probably to be expected, a HUGE chunk of the game show floor was dedicated to the placement of Nintendo 3DS stations with copies of Pokémon X and Y running. To get in, you had to present your guide map from your Pokémon show bag, which would then be stamped (Assuming so people couldn’t keep going back for more. XD). A guide would then take you to one of the 3DS stations and give you instructions on how to play.

I probably don’t have to explain what the demo featured, as many people way more versed in Pokémon lore than me at this point have already posted about it, so I’ll just give my general impression about it.

Back in 2000, when Pokémon Red and Blue were being superseded by Pokémon Yellow, Pokémon Stadium came out. When I first saw a demo of Pokémon Stadium, I had a grandiose vision of it that it was just like the (at the time 8-bit) Game Boy Pokémon series, with the full world-traveling storyline and everything, in full 3D. Sadly, that wasn’t actually the case…

… until now.

Basically, from what I saw in that demo, Pokémon X and Y fulfilled the vision that my 14 year old self had more than a decade ago. It. Is. Amazing.

And the weird thing is, it felt perfectly natural going from the pseudo-isomorphic 2D/3D feeling we had in Pokémon generations IV and V to complete 3D in generation VI. They absolutely nailed it.

Seriously. If Nintendo is having trouble pushing 3DS hardware at the moment, they won’t once this game hits the stores.

My only problem is that thanks to Nintendo’s policy on region locking the 3DS (Incidentally, go sign this petition!), I have no idea whether I should buy an Aussie 3DS or a Japanese 3DS. ಠ_ಠ

Anyway. Yes, Pokémon X and Y is amazing. Yes, it appears to cost more than previous generations, but yes it’s going to be worth it.

For the majority of my blog posts in the previous couple of days, my good pal Dean keeps point out to me that the SteamerCard entry (on the right of the page) is currently down.

While I’m actively fixing it now, since I don’t think I’ve actually done this before, I thought I’d explain what SteamerCard is.

Back in the summer of 2008, before I succumbed to buying an Xbox, I was really jealous of all of my friends who had Xbox Live! GamerCards. The whole concept of being able to embed your current gamer status as a discrete, interactive card really appealed to me for some real reason, and I was feeling sad there wasn’t much of an equivalent on the PC. That being said, considering how much I loved Steam, I thought that would be an excellent platform to have one on.

So I decided to build SteamerCard as another service under the UberGames banner. Unlike most other third party GamerCard services though, I wanted it to be a fully interactive HTML <iframe> element, and given the design considerations, completely ad-free.

The SteamerCard webapp is written entirely in a PHP/MySQL solution and works on a system of parsing the information from the Steam website with regular expressions. In the interests of reducing the number of requests made to the Steam site, the system caches the user’s information in its own local store, and updates itself on an hourly basis.

Unfortunately as of last month when the UberGames system was updated to PHP 5.3, the combination of deprecated code in its base classes caused the entire system to die. Given how heavily the base classes were integrated with the upper-level code, unfortunately it turned out that I couldn’t really resurrect the code without doing a near-complete rewrite.

So at the moment, I’ve pretty much decided to rewrite the majority of SteamerCard from scratch, whilst revamping as much of the old code in the process.

Looking back on the old design above, I’ve also decided to redo the visual look of SteamerCard while I’m at it:

This time around, I’m building the whole thing in as much of an OOP fashion as possible, and I’m hoping to set up a system where other themes can be added as well.

Also, in a follow up to the blog I wrote last night, once it’s done, I’m considering open-sourcing SteamerCard when it’s finished.

Even still, up to this point, this is blowing my freaking mind. iPokédex managed to get app of the day on Kotaku!!!! ^_^

I’ve been an avid reader of Kotaku for 5 years now and their Twitter account holds a special section in my list of feeds. Never did I imagine that some of my work would actually get so much as a whisper.

In hindsight though, it makes it a bit sader that I eventually had to remove iPokédex. ^_^;

Either way, like before, mad props to Luke Plunkett for reviewing my app. Hopefully there will be more to come in future.

To that end, this time around, I decided to petition the other admins to let me host a Super Meat Boy competition with a few prizes up for grabs. I’ve been having so much fun with Super Meat Boy lately on both my PC and 360 that I easily figured there’d be a few other gamers out there who are doing the same. ^_^

The other admins were initially a little apprehensive. After all, SMB is still extremely new compared to the other games we run with, so it was a bit of a gamble that we weren’t just giving prizes away to one or two guys. So we opened up the competition and hoped for the best….

… and we were pleasantly surprised. About 15 people signed up.  A perfect number for a competition. ^_^

After a bit of quick thinking, I decided to set up the competition in this format: We play the last level of each chapter (The Forest through to The Rapture), and we judge people on whether they can actually get through it or not in 10 tries or less. And in the event that more than 1 person successfully makes it through, then it becomes a time trial on who can make it through the quickest.

Suffice it to say, the first condition of the competition was unnecessary; everyone was easily able to make it through all the levels alive. XD So it then came down to a pretty damn brutal time trial, with each entrant usually being able to shave a few seconds off the last. XD The comp lasted for about 2 hours, but we finally managed to whittle down the numbers to 2 winners. The people who missed out vowed revenge, and told me they want another Super Meat Boy competition next time.

Needless to say, I think the competition was a great success. It’s obvious that Super Meat Boy is here to stay. A lot of people who had never seen the game before were walking away totally sold on it and I hope they do end up picking up their own copy of it.

As for me, I plan to spend my holiday trying to finally beat it. XD

To Edward McMillen and Tommy Refenes, I say: Thanks for making such an awesome game!!

In case you haven’t heard yet, as of today, the next generation of Pokémon games, generation 5, Pokémon White and Black were released today!

It’s a pretty interesting turn of events here. There are now 156 new Pokémon (more than the original game!), as well as a pretty radical new 3D camera perspective compared to the last games. Interestingly, it’s still out on the DS, which is a first for the Pokémon generations. Maybe this is an indication of the refresh of game consoles slowing down… O_o

While I was over in Japan, I got the chance to go to a Pokémon Center (basically an epic Pokémon merch shop) and see several demo units of the game, and several promo videos on display. Right then and there I decided I definitely had to get it. XD

Sadly, since I’ve already come home from Japan, I wasn’t really sure how I could actually buy this thing. I was thinking of asking one of my Japanese mates to buy it and mail it to me, but that’s an epic inconvenience that I’d rather not do. After checking out eBay and PlayAsia, I found out that with the relative yen rates (Assuming the game is 5000 yen… give or take), it’s only about 6 bucks more from PlayAsia than if I bought it off the shelf in Japan. eBay was about the same… but given I’ve ordered stuff off PlayAsia before, I know those guys have very high quality of service and delivery. (eBay probably should only be used as a last resort for these things. XD )

So with that being said, I placed an order for Pokémon Black on PlayAsia and straight away got confirmation of it being sent. XD
I definitely can’t wait to play this game… although I might have to brush up on my Japanese in the meantime. My Japanese copy of HeartGold was somewhat easier to understand since I’d already played Silver classic and knew the story, but this one’s going to be somewhat different… XD

Interestingly, I also read this game might be region-locked on DSi’s. Thankfully I have a DS lite that I bought from Japan, so that’s alright, but I want to find an Aussie DSi so I can test that theory.

In any case, if you’re thinking of getting an import copy of Pokémon Black or White, I’d definitely recommend PlayAsia. ^_^
If you do, please feel free to contact me so we can trade! ^_^

If you’re wondering how to do the special e symbol ( é ) in Pokémon, on Windows, you hold down Alt and press 130 on the numpad, and on Mac you press Alt-E, release Alt and hit E again. Yes I am a crazy perfectionist nerd. XD

Steam now has a Mac client, all Source engine games (and some third party ones) are being ported to it, and it’s free for PC users who already own the games. (And just to be super-awesome, they made Portal free for a limited time to celebrate. XD)

Just to put it out there, I don’t think mere words can cover how truly epic this is. This is a pretty epic thing. XD

When it comes to PC gaming, Macs usually aren’t the first things that come to mind. ^_^;
I was raised exclusively on Macs all throughout my childhood and school years, and I can really attest that the gaming experience on Macs compared to PCs is really horrible.

Normally, if you own a PC, there’s really never been any point at all to buy the same game on Mac. Before I bought my PC, I had a modest collection of Mac games (LucasArts Adventures, Total Annihilation, Elite Force), and since I bought my PC, I had to pretty much re-buy all of those games. Some games have hybrid capacity (Blizzard are an extremely awesome example of this), but it’s something I learnt not to count on, since only a very limited number of titles actually had it.
And now that I own a PC, the cost of buying a Mac with the same gaming performance would be so high, I’d never warrant buying a Mac as a dedicated gaming machine and then buying the specific game versions for it.

But with Steam on the Mac as well now, that might actually change.

This new concept of instantly buying both Mac and PC versions of games on Steam is insanely cool. I have a lot of games in my account that don’t require epic hardware to run, and now suddenly being able to load those ones onto my Mac without having to switch to Boot Camp is reeeally convenient. Steam was basically the reason why I installed Windows/Boot Camp on my Mac, so this may be the tipping point for me to uninstall it.

I’m also wondering what this could potentially mean for game developers out there. Suddenly a way easier system has been set up to allow distribution of both Mac and PC versions of games that gamers would be interested in. It may even show a shift in game development technologies being employed to allow easier portability (ie, more people might start going for OpenGL over Direct3D)

Either way, I’ve only had a quick play with it so far. I downloaded Torchlight and gave it a spin, and while it looked just as good as my PC, sadly my Steam Cloud save-game didn’t load up. I’m wondering if this was a one off event, or if it actually means that Mac and PC games can’t share save-game files. I guess we’ll see.

I’m hoping more third part companies jump on board with this too. There are a lot of games on Steam with Mac versions that haven’t actually put their Mac version up there yet. Hopefully this is just a matter of time.

Either way, I just have to say. Valve is definitely my most favourite game company of all time. They’ve done great services for the gaming industry as a whole, and just keep going out of their way to do even more. Thanks a lot Valve!

The newest addition to the Pokémon  line of games is finally upon us, HeartGold and SoulSilver. It was released in America a few days ago and will be released here in Australia in a few days time. When it came out in Japan last year, one of my Japanese teachers was able to pick me up a copy and bring it back over, of which I’ve been playing ever since. ^_^
At the time, my blog was offline, so I figured I’d hold onto this lovely post until the time of the English version release, where people might find some of this information useful (As opposed to posting it during Japan’s release, where it would be all but forgotten by now).

When my Japanese teacher was on exchange with some students in Japan, I emailed her and asked if she could pick up a copy of the new HeartGold over there. I chose Gold over Silver since Silver is what I got for the GBC originally, and wanted it to be different than before. She said she checked out a Sofmap on her last day there, and found this copy of HeartGold, which was the last one they had. Suffice it to say when HeartGold/SoulSilver came out, they were selling like hotcakes!

So Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver are DS remakes of the Game Boy Color originals that had been released 10 years earlier (Man I feel old!) using the same engine as Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. While pretty much everything is basically the same as Gold and Silver, the graphics are completely state-of-the-art, and a lot of the designs of ingame objects have been totally revamped as well.

When I first started playing it, I felt a wave of nostalgia. All the memories of playing Silver on my Pokémon edition GBC came flooding back. Starting off at Professor Elm’s lab, I thought it was sooo cool to see the starter Pokémon rendered with the DS graphics for the first time. Although back in my Silver days, I started with Chikorita, this time I started with Cyndaquil (Or Hinoarashi as it’s called in the JP version XD). A cool feature of HeartGold over Gold is that whichever Pokémon is at the top of your party will stay outside of it’s Pokéball and follow you around. This is the logical progression to when Pikachu followed you in Yellow, but it’s quite amazing that they took the time to make it so EVERY Pokémon can do it now.

There is a section for minigames now called the Pokéthlon where you can train your Pokémon to compete in a series of cute, touch based activities, which is pretty cool. Aside from that, the game plays through pretty much the same as the previous version.

Now, one of the main reasons I wanted this game so badly was for the Pokéwalker. XD

Tycho of Penny-Arcade said it best. As a separate peripheral, it’s probably not that crash hot, but as a bundled experience, the Pokéwalker is freakin sweet.

The actual HeartGold cartridge is made of transparent plastic, and there is an infrared diode inside of it. To actually send Pokémon to the Pokéwalker, you control the whole thing from the menu screen where you choose your savegame normally (It appears at the bottom of the list, near Mystery Gift.)
Only 1 Pokémon can be sent to the Pokéwalker at a time, and while they’re in there, you can see it animating about on the main screen.

There’s a bit of a misconception on how you actually level Pokémon in this thing. Sadly, even if you spend the whole day walking with it, the Pokémon will only advance 1 level, and that’s when you transfer it back to the DS.

As you walk along, you accumulate something called ‘watts’, which is the number in the bottom right corner. Once you get a certain number of watts, you can do several things. You can either set up a potential wild Pokémon encounter, or ‘dowse’ for items. The Pokémon and items that appear depend on whichever ‘zone’ you’ve set the Pokéwalker to when you transferred the Pokémon, and more zones are unlocked the more watts you do.

The Pokéwalker seems to have a pretty smart sensor in it. If you shake it to try and up the number of points, it won’t actually acknowledge that, so cheating is somewhat trickier than you think (Although not that much lol)

Either way, my general consensus on this game is that if you like Pokémon, you should definitely buy it.
Although I might call the Pokéwalker a tad gimmicky, I’m having a great time with mine, and I’m definitely enjoying playing Gold again after these years. XD

In any case, let me know what you think of HeartGold so far! Are you thinking of buying it?

Also, in case you’re interested, I’ve been collecting some pretty good Pokémon here. If you’d like to trade, send me a message!

(P.S If you’re wondering how I’m writing the é symbols, you hold down the alt key, and then press 130 on the num pad. Or on a Mac, press alt-e, then let go of alt, and press e again. )

So I’m a little behind the 8-ball here, but the Tokyo Game Show for 2010 was announced recently, and will be held from the 16th of September. Of all of the game shows out there, TGS is probably the best of the high profiling ones that I can actually afford to go to, and so this year, if all checks out, I’m seriously considering going.

After a little bit of Googling the topic though, I’m a little wary of one interesting tidbit that Kotaku raised… it seems that being held in September, TGS is less than a month behind the Gamescom event in Germany, which will most undoubtedly force the majority of games companies to choose between presenting at either one or the other. Since Gamescom is much higher profile, it is quite likely that TGS may get shafted by a lot of companies as a result of this.

That being said, I’m still happy to give it the benefit of the doubt. Since I’ve been hearing that Japanese games companies do prefer to announce new projects in their own motherland events more often, I would bet that a lot of those companies will still be presenting at their main content at TGS. And even if many companies decided to pick Gamescon over TGS, I would still assume the event will be huge, and definitely worth the trip… especially since I can’t really afford a ticket to Germany haha. XD

And, there’s always the off-chance that all of this discussion about Gamescom might convince the TGS organizers to push the date back as well. To that end, I’ve decided to hold back and wait before doing any bookings.

Either way, I’ve already spent my life up until now not going to any huge game development events. This is something I definitely want to change. XD

Is anyone else considering doing TGS or Gamescom or both?