Don’t tell me you were looking forward to using Pikachu, Squirtle and Bulbasaur in Pokemon Black and White! That crew is old school in the worst way!

What you need to do is play Pokemon Black and Pokemon White and catch all of the new Pokemon that are going to be included in the game. Don’t rely on those old standbys!

What’s that? You still want to use classic Pokemon in the next game? Well, I guess you can if you really want to… but you’ll need to finish the adventure before you get the chance.

According to a blog post by Junichi Masuda at developer GameFreak, you’ll need to finish Pokemon Black and White before you start to encounter older, classic Pokemon from previous entries to the series. Until you accomplish that task, you’re only going to find new critters.

This decision was made in order to keep this latest Pokemon game fresh for fans of the franchise, so players will regain the feeling of “What is this Pokemon?”, perhaps recapturing some of the magic they experienced when they played their first Pokemon title.

Masuda and the development team has asked people in the studio and outside of development to play the game to test their reactions to the title. The comments coming back to the developers are positive so far, with examples being:

• “It’s like playing something completely new, similar to when I played Red & Green”
• “You don’t even know the type of the Pokemon, so you’re surprised at the skills”
• “There are only Pokemon that you’ve never seen, so it’s fresh and new”

Sounds like the risky decision is paying off!

Pokemon Black and Pokemon White are expected to release on the DS later this year in Japan, and next year around the rest of the world.

Browse through El33tonline’s previous coverage of Pokemon Black and White for all kinds of screenshots, videos and extra information.

Source: Junichi Masuda’s Blog, translated by Andriasang