GBA ticket promotion announced
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After two years since the last promotion, Japan will see Saturday the return of the Mysticticket and Eon Ticket items. Distributed from Dec. 9 to Jan. 5 at Pokémon Center stores, Pokémon Town and the Pokémon Center Winter Festival event, the statistics of Japanese players with access to the two promotional items is bound to receive a boost in the upcoming month.
This comes as a surprise when factoring in the fact that the Game Boy Advance games have been acknowledged sporadically in the past year. Once the Old Sea Map was distributed at PokéPark in September 2005, the five RPG games gave way to what was called The Path to Diamond and Pearl, a project which eventually turned out to have little to do with Diamond and Pearl and all to do with three spin-off games for the Nintendo DS, Trozei!, Mystery Dungeon and Ranger. The rest of the year was spent advertising the two main games and finally, their release in Japan. Be the ends as they may, there was precisely a one-year period in which the traditional games were more or less put on hold.
It is now when Diamond and Pearl have been available for over two months, and the Mystery Gift system of downloads has been re-introduced, that the GBA games are once again recognized as yet-to-be-obsolete games. It deserves to be noted that nowhere in the campaign description are the DS titles mentioned, contrary to what some might think to be intermediary means of getting Lugia, Ho-Oh, Latias and Latios in those games. Instead, Diamond and Pearl's own promotion for the Electrobooster and Magmabooster items will continue elsewhere in Japan, though it will also play second fiddle to this promotion at the Winter Festival.
Of particular interest is the question how this will carry into 2007. Before that, Battle Revolution will be released next week, and though there has been no word on GBA compatibility, this campaign combined with the first video of the game ascertains that such a thing is entirely within the realm of possibility. Moreso, it is apparently in the interest of the Pokémon Company. Even without Battle Revolution support, Wii opens up a word of options with WiiConnect24, a Wi-Fi download service, which can host DS Download Play downloads triggering Mystery Gift in FireRed, LeafGreen and Emerald.
