Pokémon Black and White were announced recently and they have been promised to refresh the franchise with a new viewpoint, new moves and of course more pokémon. N-Europe staff members Iun and Derek have compiled a list of what they would like to see from the new titles in the Pokémon series.

Yeah, this one is going to seem really bizarre, but to anyone who has played and played the series can attest, there’s a lot of writing in the games that just plain doesn’t mean anything. Take for example, the save option: Would you like to save your game? Yes. There is already a save file, would you like to overwrite it? No. Well, you can’t save your game then. If there’s no option there, why even bother to ask? It takes up about 5 seconds of time pointlessly. Just get rid of it.

Going to the Pokemon Centre is just as bad: to heal you pokémon you need to go through the same pointless text every time. You make a conscious decision to walk up to the desk and talk to Nurse Joy, the lady with the bizarre pink hair and she goes through exactly the same spiel every time: “Welcome to the Pokémon Centre! We restore your pokémon to full health! Would you like us to heal your pokémon?”

No, Nurse Joy, we just walked up to the desk in order to hear the same lines again for the fun of it! Alright, so we admit that at first newcomers will want to read the text to be sure of what is going on, but veterans of the series and perhaps anyone who has healed their pokemon more than twice don’t need to hear it, a simple: Would you like to heal your pokemon? Yes/No. Bang. Easy. Oak’s words echoing? How about a simple “Can’t use that now!” every time you accidentally press the B button? This might seem like a petty grievance on paper, but in reality all this wasted dialogue takes up time, there should be an option to turn off or limit it for the more experienced players.

Did anyone actually want a Purrugly? Were you ever really itching to level Sentret all the way up to 100? I doubt it. In every race there must be also-rans, so for every Legendary there must be a slew of weaker pokemon to counter balance their awesomeness, so naturally the lower ranks must be filled with Normal and Bug-type to help you to level up early on. But the truth is that throughout the series these little annoyances have become more and more bland with Bidoof and Zigzagoon highlighting the bankruptcy of ideas in the new games.

Also it wouldn’t really hurt so much to have the Generation 1 starters at some point –Charizard was the ultimate Fire pokémon, and the starters that have come after have only proven that Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle were gold from the very beginning. Alright, every generation needs to inject new creatues to be different, however there’s a line that has been crossed too many times in the games where the starters are easily less interesting than pokemon available at a later stage.

This isn’t the 8-bit era anymore, and the individual cries of the pokémon are long overdue for an update. Word is that the designers don’t want to use the cries from the anime, but it's not really about what the developers want, is it? Those funny little bleeps were acceptable when the world was black and white and pixelly, in the DS age they simply don’t cut the mustard.

While some people may like cries taken from the animé we know this will probably never happen due to Pokémon being translated into many different countries and (almost) each Pokémon getting a title different to what we in the English speaking world are used to. This would result in the need for over a thousand cries, which sadly will never make its way to a Pokémon game anytime soon. Plus in some cases it may demolish what a name could mean to a trainer due to canonising the pronunciation. I'll be damned if I'm going to pronounce Suicune as Swee-koon.

It really is time for the Hidden Moves to be re-moved from the game altogether. At least in the original Red and Blue these moves were a means to keep certain areas of the game locked from low-level players. They functioned well as they were limited in their number and obviously functional in the world. And yet now we are faced with the likes of Whirlpool, Water Fall and Rock Climb, meaning that if you want to progress to many of the hidden areas you need to create at least two HM “slaves” to help you access them. Either that or spread out the HMs amongst your party pokémon –not an appealing prospect when more than half of the HMs are completely underpowered in battle.

Perhaps a better alternative would be to have the HMs now built into your Pokégear or Pokétch? That would solve the problem of having them assigned to pokémon and also keep them as a limiting influence on the exploration abilities of your character. These could still only be dished out at certain points in the adventure, and used in conjunction with the badges attached to your trainer card.

HM's are things many gamers aren't a fan of as you are unable to remove them from a pokémon's move set, and yet they are critical to traversing the world of each game. Some of them have other uses which are decent, such as fly and surf, and worthy of having but others such as flash had pitiful alternative use.

I would like to see some bigger and better puzzles/trials/whatever you would call them. The majority of these obstacles rested in the Pokémon Gyms, the aim of which was to create a path to the main attraction that was the Gym Leader for the decisive battle for that all-important badge. I would like to see more of these on a larger scale, possibly in less or non-Pokémon infested areas. There are some lovely areas to negotiate in the lands of Kanto/Johto/Sinnoh/Hoenn, using moves of the squad you've been training since they were little tykes or abusing the Pokémon you've loaded with HMs because some of them aren't worth your prize Pokémon having. But the downside with some of these dungeons is that every second step you're pulled into a wild Pokémon battle, and in some cases forget what you were doing. In the gyms the puzzle is the main attraction that should build up to the even greater attraction that is the gym leader, with some trainer battles along the way. That is something I'd like to see, but on a larger scale and elsewhere.

I would like to see a more sinister plot. Something with a few twists to keep the standard gym challenge fresh. One of the main big twists I can remember was that Giovanni, leader of Team Rocket who's purpose was to create chaos, was the Viridian City gym leader and your final step to obtaining the permission to approach the Indigo Plateau. Possibly something with a Darth Vader vibe, not having the next evil organisations' leader being your father, but perhaps the new professor on the block who gives you your starting pokémon being the mastermind behind whatever evil scheme there is and using you to obtain items [under the guise of getting them "for research"] to complete the master plan.

Less happiness evolutions. Unless they're a part of your squad it's an annoying waste of time which could be better spent walking around in circles in a cave.

Less stupid items. I've rarely ever bothered with berries and most certainly never messed around with Poffin, I understood what they were meant to do (I let my girlfriend use the Poffin to make Feebas evolve) but on the whole saw it as a massive waste of time. Might be just me though. I've always thought the time/data spent on this could be better utilised on making some bigger and better worlds.

There has been much dispute over the additions to the "legendary" pokémon catalogue. I agree in part with this, legendaries are meant to be rare not commonplace, yet there almost seems to be as many as there are normal Pokémon. But there needs to be something more to work towards as well as obtaining 8 badges and the optional bit to "catch 'em all". A nice big pokémon fits the bill, and hopefully utilising the big puzzles mentioned earlier.

Now that two of our staff writers have had their say what differences would you like to see included in Pokémon Black and White?