Pokémon fans are like no others. That's why it's no surprise that, 15 years after the games' release, some of them are still playing Diamond and Pearl. At the time of writing, four people are even streaming the game to an average of 6 viewers each. Admittedly that's not a huge following, but with fourteen main series games released between then and the present day, it's amazing that some people remain true to the fourth generation of Pokémon games.
Perhaps this is slightly buoyed by the fact that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are releasing next month - the highly anticipated remakes will undoubtedly go down well with the community. However, something even more amazing than the old-school community is that players are still finding out new things about the games after all this time.
Streamer Christian 'tcbronzong' noticed that, while playing Pokémon Pearl on four screens (it's not that rare for shiny hunters), their Staryu had different animation speeds on different games. You can see the effect for yourself in their tweet:
Twitter's detectives got to work, and soon figured out that the bottom-right Staryu has a Jolly nature, which increases its base Speed stat.
After some more testing for themself, tcbronzong found that Pokémon with Speed-affecting natures (whether positive or negative) have faster animations than any other Pokémon in the game. They show their working in a subsequent tweet:
The Pokémon Company has repeated the mantra that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will be faithful adaptations of the original games, so will this obscure mechanic rear its head again in November?
Did you know this about Diamond and Pearl? We certainly didn't. If anything, it makes us even more excited to jump into the remakes and see what secrets we can uncover. And - judging by the creepy-yet-cute reveal of Hisuian Zorua - Pokémon Legends: Arceus will have a host of secrets to unlock, too. It's a good time to be a Pokémon fan.
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