As cute as pikachu is, I'd much rather play as my Steelix XD, or something a little different to the same old pikachu. Or does the game have any interaction with the Ds like Pokémon Ranch. I think that when they create any sort of Pokémon games, the chance to be different to other players is key and because of 493 choices, it seems a little silly to base it on pikachu, what ever the genre of game and how lazy the developers are. ¬_¬