Too late for a Trainer Class Tuesday this week, I’m lagging with updates again. To compensate for that, let’s have a Trainer Class Tuesday that is a special feature.
Core-game Trainer Classes in side series games... You all probably remember the Gym Leader Castle and various Cups in Pokemon Stadium series, where you battled all core game Trainer Classes in the way to the top. Also, several generic Trainers (among them a Gentleman, Swimmer or Beauty) appeared on your way in the much-beloved Pokemon Puzzle Challenge. Later came the GameCube games Pokemon Colosseum and XD, which featured a fair number of Orre-exclusive Trainer Classes, with only a few of them being the same as the core game classes (e.g. Cool Trainers, Sailor, Beauty). That’s known to all avid Pokemon gamers.
However, what Pokemon fans in the west are missing is the Japanese-only arcade game Pokemon Battrio, which relies on special pucks that allow you to challenge virtual opponents in unique cel-shaded graphics. Just like in Pokemon Stadium, you’ll also meet various Trainer Classes, much like these from core series. Their designs are strongly based on their Diamond/Pearl depictions (as the game comes from the Gen IV era), yet very unique.
The scan below includes a (probably) complete list of generic Trainer designs from Pokemon Battrio.
They are (from right to left, as this is the order they’re supposed to be read):
1st row: Youngster, Lass, Camper, Picnicker, Hiker, Aroma Lady, SwimmerM
2nd row: SwimmerF, TuberM, TuberF, Fisherman, Beauty, Rich Boy, Lady
3rd row: Gentleman, Socialite, CyclistM, CyclistF, BreederM, BreederF, Collector
4th row: Pâtissier (original class), Veteran, Snow Kid (original class), Ace TrainerM, Ace TrainerF, Scientist, Softballer (original class)
The characters in subsequent rows are Battrio-exclusive characters (mostly Boss Trainers), with the two first ones from the right in the 5th row being Riders (the masked one is male, the blonde female), a Trainer Class known from Pokemon Colosseum and XD.
The material about these Trainers is scarce and it’s practically impossible to find good versions of their artworks. Fortunately, Animesque sent me some more scans from Battrio-related materials (of varying quality). Here they are:
The character on the top is a Battrio-exclusive Boss, named Battrio Leader Dai.
However, I am still looking for more material with these classes, as full-body and as high-quality as only possible. There are a number of Japanese-only guidebooks for Battrio but I’ve no idea what’s inside of them, so I can’t really tell whether they’re a good buy or not (and which ones). They were also sometimes featured in press such as CoroCoro and Famitsu back when the thing was new.
Also, the situation is further complicated by the fact that there were several versions of Battrio (Battrio Super, Zero, V etc.) which feature slightly different artwork, so there are multiple versions of these arts.
It’s obscure and poorly documented material but if we aim to create a Pokemon character archive spanning all core and spin-off games (or ideally, all officially-licensed material), then characters from Battrio (as well as its successors, Tretta and Ga-Ole, which don’t have core series characters but I’m still interested in them, like all Pokemon obscurities) are inevitable for it to be complete.
Thanks Animesque for the scans (except for the first one, which comes from my collection - I believe the source was Filb.de, as it used to have a CoroCoro scans gallery [removed awhile ago for reasons unknown]). And if anyone has more of (and bigger/better quality) Battrio character artworks, I encourage to send them to me, I’ll certainly make a good use of it.
But there is one more reason why I’m posting this now. As everyone probably knows, we’ll soon see core series Trainer Classes in a spin-off game once again. This time it’s a mobile app named Pokemon Masters, which allows the players to battle various famous Pokemon Trainers from the past in the whole new format. While I'm still not convinced about that “gacha” format, I’m certainly looking forward to seeing all those iconic characters in full 3D. The first trailer indicates that we’ll see a mixed bag of Trainer classes from various generations, which sure got me curious about this new side title and I can’t wait to see more of it, as we wait for Sword and Shield.
