I took part in a four-player battle in one of my classes a week or so after the release that was just awesome. I brought in my Pidgeot, Snorlax, and Blaziken and my partner used his Chesnaught, Blastoise, and Lucario. Pretty quickly, the opposing Mega-Gardevior/Xerneas combination took out my partner's entire team, while my partner and I took out one of the other two teams. This left just me and one of the two opponents, each with full teams, although his Gardevior and my Pidgeot were both nearly out. I manage to take down his Gardevior on the next turn, but his Charizard quickly finished my Pidgeot. Out goes Snorlax, and his Thick Fat means that he takes almost no damage from Charizard's powerful fire attacks (his team was in the 80's already, while mine was barely over 50). Thanks to Rest, Yawn, and Snore, my Snorlax slowly eats away his Charizard's HP until both pokemon are nearly fainted. He moves first, and his attack misses, allowing me to Rest and take him out with Snore on the next hit. He sends out his last pokemon: Greninja. Snorlax is still asleep, so I get Snore in before Snorlax wakes up and hits with Body Slam. Greninja's health is slowly going down, but I'm running low on PP for yawn and Snore. I manage to land a critical hit with Body Slam after a few turns, bringing his Greninja down to 5 HP. I know Snorlax has enough health left to withstand any of Greninja's attacks, so I go with a final Body Slam to end the battle. Greninja is much faster, and lands a critical hit on Snorlax, taking out a massive chunk of his health (I overlooked Torrent, Greninja's ability that boosts water attacks when it has low HP). Body Slam misses. Greninja takes Snorlax down with Feint Attack on the next move. Greninja still only has 5 HP left, so I send out my final pokemon: Blaziken. It has a crazy type disadvantage, but I'm hoping that Mega-Blaziken can get just enough of a speed boost to get a stride over Greninja's crazy speed. Greninja hits first with Hydro Pump. Hyrdo Pump with a STAB and the power boost from Torrent takes out Blaziken in one hit. I lose. It was the most intense thing that I've ever done in Pokemon. I feel like battling like that is something that I completely missed out on with previous generations of the Pokemon games. Even when I was with friends that played the Pokemon games, we never really battled. I think the most we ever did was go to each other's secret bases in Diamond/Pearl. Last year I got the chance to go with my University up to the Smithsonian to see the Art of Video Games exhibit. I brought my DS along for the 5-hour Bus ride there. What I didn't really expect was for the rest of the bus to bring their DS's along as well. The entirety of the ride was Pokemon battling, and it was just amazing. We went through the exhibit, ate at an awesome restaurant, and then played for another 5 hours on the way back. Now, I'm going on a two-week Study Abroad to Tokyo after I graduate in May as part of a Japanese Culture class. 40 students are going, and that includes a lot of the people from that DC bus. One of the things that I'm looking forward to most for that trip is the 12 hour flight that will almost definitely be full of Pokemon. I'd never put a real team together before, like I am now. I've never worried about EV's or abilities or anything of that nature. It's almost like I'm getting into Pokemon for the first time again. I'm planning type advantages, strategizing ways to counter certain movesets that I know some of my classmates have, and it's really refreshing. Even then, I know that I probably won't win that much, I lost almost every game on the DC trip, but it really is like a whole new game when you look at it from this aspect. It's amazing that there are two different sides of Pokemon that are so polarized. One side is for the kids that are just finding the series. The other side is for those that grew up playing the games. Even still, I can still enjoy both sides to the game. When people laugh at Pokemon, or ask why I still play it, I wish I could have the time or energy to sit down and explain it all. tl;dr: Awesome stuff, buses and planes, yo.