Are These Pokémon Black & White Screens?

If Japanese message boards — yes, yes, we know…be wary — are to be believed, leaked scans from CoroCoro magazine containing Pokémon Black / White screens are now out in the wild. Last year, we found out that GameFreak was hiring 3D modelers, and the most general assumption was that this was for some sort of drastic graphical change to the next Pokémon game.

Well, it looks like everyone was right.

Pokémon Black / White appear to sport the best 3D art thus far in the core series. The perspective seems to be from a lower point of view, so all the buildings in town appear to be taller. Even the rocks in the caves are higher, and the now-combined Pokémon Center and Store appear bigger than before. One would imagine details like taller trees and structures, and higher ledges would give more of a personal feeling to the game, as though you were traversing the lands yourself.

On the other hand, the battles seem to be more of the same format, with two 2D sprites facing off against each other. However, there are shadows, and there doesn’t seem to be a box for battle text on the same screen as the Pokémon. Click on the source to check out more screens.

Now for the bigger question…if a Pokémon Center and Pokémon Store are in the same building, wouldn’t that be bad for the Pokémon Center’s business? They’d want people to come more often…so would that mean they wouldn’t sell potions any more, to encourage customers to return? Nooooo!!