You get to incorporate your Miis into the ranch; I enlisted myself, Rhonda and Clark. The Miis walk around the field alongside the pokemon, randomly triggering animations with each other. You also get strange onscreen text messages like "Does CLARK like MAGIKARP?" and "JOE is repairing a fence."

Yes, it looks like an N64 game. As if that matters. There's two reasons for the low-polys... first, Pokemon Ranch can theoretically handle hundreds of simultaneously gallivanting pokemon, so keeping the models simple becomes a necessity. Secondly, there's an attempt here to Mii-ify the entire cast of 460+ different pokemon. The streamlined Mii purview brings along a sort of art deco look to character design. Some pokemon come out rather plain, but others - like that ponyta - are a refreshing take on some very familiar monsters.

You can "play" Ranch even if you don't own Pokemon Pearl or Diamond. Hayley (the ranch owner; seen in the background above) kicks things off with six of her own pokemon, and promises to add in a new one every day you play. You even get some small role in deciding what the new arrival will be. Upon quitting the game, Hayley asked me if I would like to see a cold pokemon, and when I said yes, she indicated that she would bring a Sneasel to the ranch tomorrow.

Of course, if you do own Pearl or Diamond, you can transfer pokemon from the DS cart to the Wii. You can transfer them back at any time, but you can't transfer them to another cart, or back into the same cart if the game was restarted.

Once Hayley knows you have a DS game, she'll give you tips about where to find pokemon that you have not yet caught. She told me where to find a Weezing. If I show her a Weezing before 6/19 (she picked the deadline), I may win something... but I do not know what yet.

So what do you do in Pokemon Ranch? A lot of watching, initially. The ranch will grow in size and unlock new features as more monsters are brought into the game. There are toys you can drop into the field, which I guess are just more opportunities for cute animations and silly pictures.

Clark is feeding some pokemon in that picture, but that was a random animation.

There is a parade mode. A lot of this is Mii Channel for pokemon.

Every so often, the pokemon will perform some kind of stunt, like this totem pole stackup. What a photo op!

We just missed getting a photo of a pikachu electrocuting Clark, complete with a hydrocephalic Mii skeleton.

Another view. You do not get a Free Look camera mode until later on, so your camera shots are limited to the game's randomized angles and sweeps. I'm looking forward to the Free Look.

So I'm glad I bought it. This game has already been written off by the gaming press, so I've seen very few details about what it actually does. The general assumption is that it is nothing more than a WiiWare edition of the GameCube's Pokemon Box, which was just a way to transfer pokemon to the GameCube memory card so as to clear out save space on your GBA games. While Pokemon Ranch certainly does that, there's at least some other functions to help bolster the package. Clark was snapping pictures like crazy, and then telling me which photos he wanted to keep, which already justifies the purchase in my mind.