Although Australia is not included in the international Pokémon Video Game Championships, Nintendo Australia is currently hosting its own series of state battle championships. New South Wales was the first state to hold the tournament, taking place on Sunday 17 April 2011 in The Nintendo Connection on the top floor of Sydney’s Myer department store.
The store didn’t open till 10.00am, but by 9.30 there was already a large crowd of gamers gathering outside the doors. Players spent the time discussing strategies and doing some last-minute training and trading while waiting for the doors to be opened. At 10.00 the host of the competition, Jamie from Nintendo Australia, arrived and asked the eager participants to follow him calmly in single file up the escalators to the sixth floor.
Even after arriving at The Nintendo Connection, competitors had to wait an hour for the queue to finish the registration process. The competition was only open to 128 participants, so unfortunately not everyone was able to compete. Nonetheless, there remained a large crowd gathered in the area throughout the day, watching the official battles and also participating in their own friendly battles, trades and Entralink missions.
The tournament was played in double battle format using the infra red feature of the C-Gear. Players were allowed up to four pokémon in their party, but only those with Unova Pokédex numbers 001-148, and 151. Despite these restrictions, there was a wide variety of pokémon seen throughout the day. In the earlier rounds, many players used what appeared to be their in-game teams, with many appearances from the evolved forms of pokémon found early in the games such as the starters, Unfezant, Stoutland and Zebstrika. In the later rounds, however, the battles were filled with pokémon trained specifically for competitive battles, with the likes of Hydreigon, Terrakion and Whimsicott.
Many trainers were obviously skilled in the art of double battles – Protect was a very common move, and a lot of people knew how to strategically use moves on their own teammates, and moves that hit multiple pokémon. A powerful strategy (used by the winner of the competition) was to have Whimsicott use Beat Up on its partner Terrakion. The move would hit four times without doing much damage, and would activate Terrakion’s Justified ability four times, causing its attack stat to increase dramatically.
A lot of the battles were very close, including the grand final in which the winner had only one pokémon remaining on 3HP. Of note was that although the Wonder Launcher was available, it seemed that most people weren’t used to using items in competitive battles so often forgot about the feature – when people did remember about it, the unexpected item use could often turn the battle around.
There were a few rare instances in which wireless interference caused communication errors and battles had to be restarted. Overall, however, the competition went quite smoothly and the participants all showed good sportsmanship.
Unfortunately the prizes on offer were minimal compared to previous Nintendo Australia tournaments. The winner received a Nintendo 3DS, a copy of Pokémon Black and an exclusive T-shirt. Second and third places both received only a case for their Nintendo DS. There were no other prizes awarded throughout the day. This was disappointing compared to previous years when the finalists received much larger prize packs and other items were given away in side competitions such as trivia. Nonetheless, it was good to see that Nintendo Australia is still willing to hold these events for its fans and provide an opportunity for players to battle competitively and meet other pokémon trainers.
Photos from the event can be seen on this Imageboard thread. A video of the grand final battle is also available to watch in two parts below:
The competition will next be moving to the state of Victoria at EB Games in Swanston St, Melbourne, on Saturday 30 April 2011.
