Pokémon Video Game Showdown 2008

This morning, Nintendo made a surprise announcement...

The Pokémon Video Game Showdown 2008, a tournament for the Pokémon games for the DS!

Click here for the official site!

Don't be surprised if it doesn't load right away. Traffic is heavy, it just launched! Give it some time.

To register to compete you have to create a MyPokémon account, if you don't already have one, and then take a quiz that will test your Pokémon knowledge. It's short, but can be a little tough. You get a fair amount of time to take it, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. If you get at least 75% right, you'll be put into a random drawing from which the actual tournament competitors will be selected... That part is a little frustrating, but not much can be done about it. 128 people will be selected from two age groups.

You can take the quiz from today until June 17th. After that, the winners will be decided randomly and contacted via e-mail. The qualifying tournament will be held nearly a month later, on July 12th in LA or the 19th in NY. Winners from that tournament will go onto the finals in Orlando.

The rest of that jargon can be found here.

Full rules for battle can be found here.

Double battles with 4 Pokémon. Species and Item clauses. Some other Nintendo nonsense. Simple enough. All Pokémon normally banned in the Battle Tower are also banned here. Pokémon Battle Revolution will only be used in the final battle so DS signals don't get all goofed up, so this presents an interesting problem...

All battles will be held via the DS's local wireless, so Nintendo is requiring that all Pokémon you intend to use are level 50 and below. This means anyone evolving past level 50 is not eligible, so that means Dragonite and Tyranitar are out.

Remember that you can breed for level up moves learned past 50 if both parents are the same species and also know the move, and the baby is able to learn it by level up, as well. You can get Water Spout on Wailord at level 50 because Wailmer can learn it by level up and can have it bred in, but it is impossible to get a level 50 Swampert with Hammer Arm, because Mudkip doesn't learn it by leveling up ever.

You may have to breed all new Pokémon for this tournament because of this limit. I know I have to, but at least there is a reasonable amount of time between then and now, so I'll be getting to it right away.

This is a rare occassion, Nintendo has only held a handful of these tournaments over the years. The last one they held was on their 10th Anniversary two years ago. I've registered already, and will cross my fingers while waiting to be selected to actually battle. You do the same!

The grand prize is a trip to your choice of several locations, as well as a Nintendo prize package, the whole mess being worth about 10,000 bucks!