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Pokemon News Roundup for April 6

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Welcome back to the Pokemon News Roundup for the two weeks ending on April 3.  Here are some of the things that we spotted on various news sites and some closer to home Pokemon news.  In this edition, we’ll look at a community trying to send a 10 year old TCG champ to Worlds, a coordinated Misty cosplay for April Fools Day, Pokemon Rumble’s announcement, ORAS & X/Y mandatory patch, an in depth look at Pokemon: Symphonic Evolutions, and Hillary Duff’s obsession with Pokemon.  We’re still playing with the format of this roundup, so please bear with us.

10 Year Old Spokane TCG Champ looking for help to get to Worlds

KREM Spokane reports that a 10 year old 4th grader from Spokane has qualified for the 2015 Pokemon TCG World Championship in Boston.  Norvin Bisson has repeatedly won many of his local TCG tournaments and local league competitions, even besting opponents with many more years of experience,

However, Bisson’s family does not have the means to send him to Boston and is looking for community support to allow him to compete.  The family has set up a Gofundme campaign to help him get to Boston, and they’re already 10% of the way to the $5,000 goal that they are looking for. You can help Norvin get to Boston too with a bit of help and allow him to compete with the best of the best!  (and tell them PXR sent you!)

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Attack of the Misty Cosplay

Kotaku reported that Michelle D’Antonio, or Missyeru, coordinated a 116 person cosplay attack on April Fools Day.  All the cosplay photos precisely at 11:11 Pacific time, all with the classic Misty peace sign.  These cosplayers were all seemingly attending the “Cerulean City Comic-Con.”  The creativity and coordination of this cosplay event makes this really interesting.

Pokemon Rumble World Announced

We reported on the announcement of Pokemon Rumble World.  Given the success of Pokemon Shuffle, it’s no wonder that Nintendo has announced the free to play Pokemon Rumble World on 3DS.  In the never ending world of free to play, Pokemon Rumble World will include DLC content that users can pay for, though it is unclear if this payment is necessary to play through all the stages.  Rumble World will be released on April 8.

ORAS and X/Y Mandatory Patches

NintendoNews, GamingBolt, and Marriland all reported on a small update to both ORAS and X/Y.  No release notes were given on these patches, but many users report the vulnerabilities which allowed hacks in the game were patched.  The game will force you to patch if you take ORAS or X/Y on the internet.  For the ethical gamer, no changes have been reported.

In depth reporting on Pokemon Symphonic Evolutions

On the excitement and the success of the Legend of  Zelda Symphony, Pokemon: Symphonic Evolution tries to follow in it’s sister’s success, reports CraveOnline. The announcement of the 30 city North American Tour tries to bring Pokemon back to the now older ‘Millennial.’ These concerts start May 1, combine video game visuals and live orchestra.  The music is a mix of electronic elements and orchestral pieces.

These concerts employ local orchestras instead of a travelling orchestra, similar to the Zelda Symphony.  The orchestra have a single rehearsal before the main event to prepare.  The audience is extremely diverse: With Pokemon starting in the mid 1990’s, many of the original gamers are now in their late 20’s and early 30’s.  In addition, grandparents, parents, and their kids come to the events.

The audience is encouraged to bring their own video games, where Street Passes are a plenty as well as all of the other Pokemon activities.  But the audience isn’t playing ORAS while the orchestra is in the background – the stunning visual have the audience captivated throughout the show.

With the resounding success of Zelda, the organizers expect that Pokemon: Symphonic Evolutions will also be a hit.  Pokemon has a much larger and wider audience than the Zelda fans.  For the older crowd, it is a bit of nostalgia.  For the younger crowd, it helps introduce them to this unique game.  And hopefully they’ll be back in 2016 – the organizers hope to integrate a bit of the movies as the concert evolves.

Hillary Duff collected Pokemon Cards

Shh… Hillary Duff doesn’t want you to know (but MTV told us anyways), but she collected Pokemon TCG Cards. She’s embarrassed.  Please send her your Base Set Machops for her enjoyment.  Wait, you neither know who Hillary Duff (aka Lizzie McGuire) is nor have any Base Set cards?  Get off my lawn kids and just ignore this one.

Image Credits (Center, then clockwise from top left): MTV, KREM, Crave Online, Pokemon Company International, Chelle Bisson


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