Diamond Dust, Fire Energy

Masuda’s Surprise – The surprise Junichi Masuda mentioned in his blog yesterday turned out to be nothing more than a simple weather effect, diamond dust, which occurs in Diamond and Pearl once in a while anyways (I even had diamond dust appear in my own game once – the televisions in the game will tell you where it occurs, though it is extremely rare). If a player goes to Snowpoint City in either the English or Japanese games on January 12th, there should be diamond dust within the city (indicated by sparkling), although some players we contacted did not see the effect occurring. We found out about the diamond dust this morning, but since it was such a minor change in the game, we held off posting about it in case something larger was revealed. Turns out nothing was. It’s a neat Easter egg (I suppose Mr. Masuda will make an excellent weather forecaster if he ever retires from Pokemon), but it certainly wasn’t anything that special. :p

To see diamond dust in action, you can check out this video on YouTube. A Pokemon trainer is standing right in the middle of it in Snowpoint City.

League Fire Energy – Thanks to Martin van der Vis, we have a scan of the holographic Fire Energy card players can earn at Pokemon League after earning their Cobble Badge and completing 10 battles with the Gym Leader’s challenge. Click the thumbnail below for a larger scan.