My Pokemon Ranch is better than your Pokemon Ranch.

So, I love Pokemon. I have badges I won in the card league, I have Pikachu slippers...occasionally I respond to things with cute poke-sounds. It is sad that I will be 20 in less than 6 months. The past will never leave you, and with Diamond and Pearl I went absolutely insane. Of course I am not hardcore, but I do not have a party of six pikachus either. Hell, I am desperately in search of A pikachu.

But yes, I will gobble up any and all Pokemon propaganda and harmless crap if I think it is affordable, and the latest Wii Ware game My Pokemon Ranch was totally up my alley. Though I like it, I feel the game may be too...Japanese for many people's tastes.

On first impression, My Pokemon Ranch is a Mii-ed up Pokemon Snap, but now you don't even control an annoying character. This is probably going to make many players shy away from their latest 10 dollar purchase. There is very little that you actually do, and it is designed for people who want to see their lovingly trained pokemon in 3d. Like Pokemon Channel, this is watching pokemon, and like Snap, you are taking pictures of them.

That is really over-simplifying things. The game is really a game in a very Animal Crossing sense, mixed with Harvest Moon. Animal Crossing forces the player to be very patient and diligent in playing the game, and Ranch is all about taking it one day at a time. Every day your benefactor Hailey will generously bring you a new pokemon, and you are supposed to care for them. The pokemon she provides are very basic, but not entirely the original 150. But, the game launches with a Pikachu. That my friends is awesome. Though at first the all-time favorites look weird and boxy, definitely making the whole thing more Animal Crossing than Snap in presentation.

Harvest Moon creeps in with the leveling of the farms, but this could also relate back to Animal Crossing with the gradual construction of your house. Levels are reached when you gather enough Pokemon, and I am hoping this will soon allow me to add the games and toys the opening trailer hints at. Directly upon download I could not see anything to place, and in fact the controls were a bit swoopy to me. It definitely could do with a bit more control instruction, but i think the best instruction would be 'this is like the Mii channel with a ranch and Pokemon skin.' So you start out with 6 pokemon and watch them wander around. That's what you do in this game, watch. Of course I can watch Jesus, Gabe and Tycho interact with Pokemon. Bless you Check Mii Out.

My favorite element, and the one that will keep this game afloat for many younger gamers, is the the ability to import my Pokemon into my ranch. The Wii is beautiful for the wireless connection stability with the DS, and the ease at which I could load up my little Poke darlings and watch them romp was delightful. There is a downside. This functionality is not like that presented in Battle Revolution, where the game makes copies of your Pokemon. My Pokemon Ranch completely removes the Pokemon from your DS card and stores them in the Wii's hampered memory. Unlike previous hand held-to-console Pokemon exchange flops, Ranch saves itself by allowing the stored pokemon to be returned to the card as long as you aren't stupid and restart your game before you do it. Thank you Nintendo for making sure we were well-informed about this, as you get approximately 6 warning screens on both the television and the top DS screen telling you that you can retrieve your pokemon as long as you are not a dumb-ass. And you cannot take Pokemon other people give you, but they can take their own back. Cool to me, probably going to make little kids cry. But I make little kids cry by looking at them.

The coolest element to me is that Hailey will give you Pokemon Wanted posts on the in-game BBS. She examines your imported Pokes and your Pokedex to decide what Pokemon you should hunt down and provide for the Ranch. This is the playable element I think, being able to quest in your DS game for Pokemon required by your Wii game. I am not big on online gaming, but give me more communications gaming like this Nintendo and I'll be eating out of your hand.

Now this game is going to sell. It will sell like crazy because there are kids, kids like Pokemon, and parents like cheap Pokiman things to shut their kids up. What will be a downside is that this game is a game of watching and enjoying the relaxing movements of frolicing critters. From my time spent as a hawker of soft-wares, the average Pokemon kid of this latest craze is not going to get it. For every late teen to Mid-twenty-year-old who sneaks their DS to work to catch a Murkrow this game will be the shit. Unless they want action. Then I don't know what to tell you. Animal Crossing Pikachu is precious! That is what I tell you!