By Matt
To keep players’ interests in the new games, the developers of Pokemon games decided to create a way to bring back Pokemon from the older games. The Nintendo DS games of Generation IV (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver) have a Pal Park feature. The Pal Park allows you to migrate Pokemon from all the games of the GameBoy Advance age. This includes Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, and LeafGreen. This process only works on the Nintendo DS or DS Lite, though: you need a DS that can support DS and GameBoy Advance games on the same console.
To start the process, gather six Pokemon you want to migrate in a PC Box in your old game. In the main menu of your DS game, select the “Migrate From” option. This will lead you to your PC boxes from your GameBoy Advance game. Select the six Pokemon, and you will be warned that you can’t transfer them back. Once selecting yes for the warnings, you are now free to go to Pal Park and participate in a Catching Show.
Since I only have SoulSilver, I can tell that the Pal Park is located in Fuschia City. Once in there, talk to the guy at the booth. He will let you in once you have the six Pokemon you want to catch. You will be given six Park Balls to catch the migrated Pokemon. Once you’ve been given the cue, go search in the grass and the water for your Pokemon. Since they have the potential to be hiding anywhere, I suggest going through every row searching. It’s useful to have Pokemon with the HM Surf so you can go in the water. Once you’ve found one, you can catch it without using any Pokemon. This is because the Park Balls have a 100% catch rate for the migrated Pokemon.
Once you’re finished, you can go back to the entrance, where the Pal Park owner will score you. He uses a Time Bonus, a Capture Bonus, and a Type Bonus. After he tells you your final score, he will award you with a Berry, based on how well you did. The rare Berries are for extremely high scores, but can be planted and multiplied with ease through either Berry Pots or by planting them.
In my opinion, I like Pal Park, since it is an ingenious way to bring back the memories of the past. Plus, there’s nothing much to do: you don’t even have to battle your old Pokemon. Plus, remembering your old ID number is great and reminds you of the times when you were younger and couldn’t wait to play the game.
Pal Park should used to its fullest extent: bring all your Pokemon back, but make sure you put their names in lowercase form, since Pokemon will retain their capital letters when imported.
Tags: Nintendo DS, Pokemon Black & White