Nintendo's new website reveals the global Pokemon trade
More information than you can shake a Snorlax at
The financial markets might be experiencing a liquidity crunch, but when it comes to Pokémon, the trading floors are awash with options as the millions of gamers who have bought the latest Diamond and Pearl titles have been swapping the creatures via the in-game trading option that uses the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
And in order to further help you work out which are the best Pokémon to trade, Nintendo has just opened a web interface for the in-game Pokémon Global Trading Station (something you can find at pokemon-gts.net).
This highly original website provides information such as which are the top 50 most traded Pokémon (currently Palkia, one of the legendary dragons only available in Pearl, is leading the pack), the top 50 most wanted (also Palkia) and the top 50 most deposited Pokémon in the Global Trading Station (currently the other legendary dragon, Dialga).
It's all broken down into individual country segments, as well. The top five countries when it comes to trading are, respectively: Japan (524,000 users), US (300,000 users), UK (29,000 users), Canada (25,000 users) and France (17,000 users). There were only 104 users in the Czech Republic, though. You can also see the national differences when it comes to Pokémon fancy as each country has a top five chart.
Or, alternatively, you can view the data through the lens of the different Pokémon species. For example, choosing Palkia, we could then see the top ten species that had been traded for it. In this case (perhaps unsurprisingly) Dialga was the most popular swap.
You can also save different Pokémon and different countries options into a neat bookmark section at the bottom of your web browser, so you can quickly select the information you're after.
The best thing, though, is just to watch the Google Earth-style interface, which shows you in real-time which Pokémon are being swapped, and animates the movement of the two Poké Balls between the different locations around the world. You can even replay the day's activity using a slider bar. It's really quite lovely.
In fact, the only bad thing about the Pokémon Global Trading Station website is the music, which is really, really dreadful. But apart from that (and the fact you might have to download the latest Flash 9 player to gain access), it provides a wealth of information that any self respecting Pokémon player will spend hours investigating.
