Oh hey, did ya know?  Pokemon Bank is officially available to download in North America!  After over a month of delays, no official release date and lots of impatient speculation, we finally have the holy grail for Pokemon fans!  With Pokemon Bank, we can now backup and store up to 3,000 Pokemon on Nintendo’s newly offered cloud-based banking software.  All those Pokemon that you’ve been transferring up through the generations can now be safely saved for years to come!  Most likely using Bank will make transferring to future generation games much easier as well.  Rejoice in the free 30 day trial!  After that you will have to pay an annual fee.

Now, when I say you can transfer Pokemon that you’ve been using from past generations, I don’t mean all of them.  Hacked Pokemon and many of the special event Pokemon from past gen’s cannot be transferred so they will forever remain in the past.  HeartGold and SoulSilver fans suffer greatly from this limitation.  HG was definitely my absolute favorite Pokemon in the franchise, I loved walking around with my Pokemon and I especially loved all of the special event Pokemon and cut-scenes that you would unlock through different WIFI and in-store DLC offerings in that game.  My personal favorite was the Spiky-Eared Pichu, and like many other past-gen event Pokemon, he can’t be transferred.

For Spiky-Eared Pichu to be available in HG/SS, you had to download a special “Pikachu-colored Pichu” DLC (which was also cute!) and take it to the mysterious shrine in Ilex Forest.  I think you might have also needed Celebi or something but I don’t remember the details.  Anyway, in Ilex Forest if you have the right event Pokemon, it unlocked a cut-scene where Spiky-Eared Pichu pops out and does a little chase/dance thing with the Pikachu-colored Pichu.  Sorry if the facts here are fuzzy, but it was several years ago and I apparently didn’t take any screenshots lol!  Needless to say, neither the Pikachu-colored Pichu nor the Spiky-Eared Pichu can be transferred outside of HG/SS.  Don’t even get me started on the Surfing Pikachu in HG/SS, which you had to get over 7,500 steps per day on your Pokewalker on a special DLC walking course and THEN you still had to hunt and successfully capture the rare Pikachu using the Pokewalker mini game.  Yep, non-transferrable, because it had an “illegal HM” so the Black and White in-game Transfer Machine wouldn’t accept it.  Really unfair.

I just don’t like all of that hard work wasted.  You get emotionally attached to a Pokemon that you have to work to get, so the fact that Pokemon like Spiky-Eared Pichu can’t be transferred to Pokemon Bank almost makes the entire feature pointless.  It’s these super special RARE Pokemon (and their rare sprites too) that make these Pokemon the ones that I’d actually WANT and NEED to have saved through the years.  But no, they are doomed to sit alone in the Box never to be seen again, unless I dust off the cartridge for old times sake.

All I really want at this point is for The Pokemon Company to re-release some of these special event Pokemon as DLC for Gen VI so that we can at least enjoy them again.  (And not only release them in JAPAN!!  I know that Japanese players were given a Flying Pikachu DLC in Gen V if they went to a local train station and downloaded the DLC, and those are very hard to come by legally if you live outside of Japan.)  Older gamers such as myself especially wanted Pokemon Bank for nostalgic reasons, so if we could have some of our extra-special Pokemon back, it would really make the experience more enjoyable.

Please, someone hear my plea!!  Bring back Spiky-Eared Pichu!!  😦