Seems like the Japanese pokemon black market has dried up. I've tried several weaksauce deposits with no finished trades. I guess it didn't take long for every kid in Japan to assemble an English language set. To make matters worse, nobody has realistic requests available to browse... they'll give you a Glameow or a Murkrow, but they expect a Deoxys or a Palkia in return. It's crazy.
The only reasonable trade is for the starters, so I'm getting into the Chimchar breeding business. Chimchar itself might pale in comparison to cutesy Piplup, but the monkey evolutions are far superior to those ugly uber-penguins. Have you seen Empoleon? Holy crap, it's worse-looking than any given ten Digimon.
Where's the nickname changer? I've finally got some reasons to name my guys, plus I traded for a Gible with a silly name and I want to change it back. To Gible. Which isn't silly at all.
Did some trading with my sister, mainly tradebacks to get the trade-evolutions. WHOO GENGAR! But we did exchange Magikarps so we could accelerate towards Gyarados.
Here's my attack on Hearthome Gym. I just threw whoever I had for the first half, but pulled it together by the end.
Part One
Part Two
And now I can use Surf. First thing I did was head to the south end of the map because the obvious deadend intrigued me. Turns out that's where the Pal Park sits, which is where you can eventually transfer pokemon from the GBA games. At this point, I can't enter, so I had to turn around and head back.
After beating Hearthome, Cynthia stops by with the big clue of Canaleve City. Who the hell is she again? I completely forget why she keeps showing up.
Hey, it just occurred to me that Nintendo doesn't seem to have a Pokemon mall tour planned this year. Betcha there's something in the works for next year. Given the huge sales of Diamond/Pearl, they really don't need any marketing events to sustain interest... but 2008 might be a good opportunity. What's this generation's equivalent of Mew, Celebi or Jirachi?