Skeetendo

Yeah, those are leftover maps from the Mobile Battle and Mobile Trade rooms. Japan got a Global Trade Station in Gen II, but the rest of world had to wait for silly things like "Wi-Fi" and Gen IV. (Because cellphones weren't nearly as ubiquitous elsewhere as they were in Japan at the time, so the system wasn't practical yet anywhere else). Several of the maps are left in, and some of the events to go with them are translated though.

That doesn't mean that it wasn't practical. Mobile phones in Japan were already popular back then and Nintendo only shut down the "gameboy.datacenter.ne.jp" server on December 14, 2002, while Crystal was released in Japan on December 14, 2000. So it was usable for 2 years in the case of Japanese Crystal. The reason for why it flopped was likely its launch high price along with the additional costs (the service required a fee in order to be used, if I'm not mistaken) and the general unwillingness of players to connect their mobile phones to a handheld console in order to play games.

Last edited by SatoMew (2012-12-24 08:26:15)

I understand what you're saying. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it is impractical from a technical point of view.