Well, it seems Due to International controversy over the slot machine in all the Pokémon games, the international release of Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver will have ‘Voltorb Flip’- which is a mix between Minesweeper and Picross – instead of the slot machines. But let’s not let that get us down for now.

Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver is an enhanced remake of the 1999, Pokémon Gold & Silver. But by no means should you pass up this game just because it’s a ‘remake’. In fact for me, it’s because it’s a remake that I wanted to play Pokémon HeartGold & Soul Silver. The story line is the same as the original Gold and Silver but with added features, such as the 3-D Engine from Diamond, Platinum and Pearl, which mimics the art style from the Gameboy and helps to show depth when around buildings and mountains, as well as the implementation of Pokémon tag-along from Pokémon Yellow.

In Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver the story line and aim of the game is no different from what you’ve seen in previous Pokémon games. You explore the wild, Discover Pokémon, Battle Pokémon, and Catch Pokémon. You repeat this a few times and then battle the gym leaders and other high and mighty trainers.

Now for most people that may sound like a waste of time since you’ve done it for every other Pokémon game ever released, but I noticed small features and changes in the game that made it just that much better for me. Firstly, our little man (or girl depending on who you picked) has finally become old enough in his digital life to get a cell phone! With this new found power of technology you will be able to receive phone calls from the professor and your mother updating you in a round-about way of what you should be doing or where you should go to progress in the story. I did find one small issue with the receiving of calls. When you receive a call you have to pick it up by pressing the icon on the touch screen,  but if you receive a call as you enter or exit an area or house, the phone call gets cancelled and there is no way to see who was calling you. This happened to me a few times and took me a while to figure out what I was meant to do at that point in the game, because that call was going to tell me what to do. Put sometimes you get lucky and it was just a trainer calling for a rematch.

One of the most notable additions in this game is the ability to have the first Pokémon in your party follow you, which has been updated from Pokémon yellow. I found this to be a nice change from previous Pokémon games, since you can talk to the Pokémon, even if it is a one sided conversation.

When you enter certain areas you get an in-depth 3-d image of the location as seen in FireRed and LeafGreen. The images change depending on the time of the day while others change the image of the Pokémon obtainable at the location on the image randomly.

The Pokémon in-game time is synced with the time of your DS, because of this certain Pokémon will only be available at certain times of the day, which gives you more of a reason to pick your DS at night and go on the hunt, since you wouldn’t be able to catch those Pokémon during the day.

Small features also grab my attention such as consequences for running. If you run past trainers and though the grass, you have a higher chance of being seen by a trainer or stopped by a Pokémon. Which for me lead to an interesting mix of walking and running to avoid trainers.

But the all might of additions to this game for me was the ability to speed up the text and to enable a feature called ‘battle scene’. Well more like turn it off. By putting the speed of text to fastest you don’t have to hold down that ‘A’ key to get through loads of useless talking; instead you just tap it once. And instead of having to go through all the animation of battles that takes up allot of time, you can turn off battle scene which eliminates all the animation, letting you get though battle faster, especially when you have to fight a bunch of team rocket goons or wild Pokémon.

But the first thing I noticed when I started playing HeartGold was the soundtrack. Oh My, they finally gave us different music, no more are the days of those irritating 8-bit sounds repeating in your head all day, now we have calming environmental ambient sounds, water flowing, rustling of the wind and cave-dwelling echoes, as well as exciting pumped up gym leader tunes. No more will you mute your game; they even went so far as to dedicate the left speaker to your Pokémon (when in battles) and the right to the opponents. Which is nice subtle touch, helping to amerce yourself in the game. In total, there is 3-discs worth of sound track build into the game. However the Pokémon still have their old, scratchy calls. So hopefully we will see a revamp of those in the coming Pokémon DS Series.

There has only been one new addition to the Mini-games in Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver called ‘Pokéathlon’ which uses the touch screen to control the Pokémon in games such as hurdling. Even though this isn’t much, it’s a good sign that the Pokémon developers are trying to integrate the touch screen of the DS more solidly.

But let’s not forget the New Addition to the Pokémon franchise. The PokeWalker.

The PokeWalker is like a tamagotchi, except it’s a bit more simplified. The PokeWalker holds 1 Pokémon at a time and the basic aim is for you to walk it to gain friendliness and ‘watts’ – which is the game currency. You use the watts to find items and battle/catch Pokémon on the PokeWalker. You also use watts to unlock other routes to take your Pokémon on a walk with. Of course the more expensive the route the better items and better Pokémon you can catch. The PokeWalker is a nice addition to the Pokémon game; it allows you to play the game outside of the DS and is a fun toy to have around especially when you are lounging around. However I did discover that a Pokémon doesn’t need to be in the PokeWalker to earn watts, so if you don’t feel like depositing your Pokémon into the pc box (in game) and doing the transfer ever time, you can just earn watts with no Pokémon on the PokeWalker and when you have enough watts you can simply transfer the watts over, using a Pokémon. In a way this does take away to whole point of a “PokeWalker”.

Over all Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver are games that you won’t find yourself rushing to get the first copy, but rather a game where you know what to do, and what will happen. With the games graphics and features getting better with every release, I can’t wait to see what’s next in the Pokémon series, so for now I continue to play Pokémon, to keep a part of the ever growing franchise with the PokeWalker in hand.