Red Alert! Tretta Rotom – PokéHistorian

Rotom’s interesting, the best thing since wrestling, infesting in your kid’s ears and nesting.

Aaah. Tretta. That Pokémon arcade smash hit you’ve never heard of. Or have you? If not, then before you dive into this article, I strongly recommend first checking out this introduction to Tretta in the context of Nuketta Wobbuffet to see what it entailed. This overview page by our friends over at pocketmonsters.net is also worth a read.

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So! Let’s talk Tretta. This next-generation of Pokémon arcade games debuted in Summer 2012, replacing precedessor Battrio at major and minor arcades, PokéCenters and even shopping malls across Japan. Thanks to its fast rollout, addictive gameplay and a grandfathered-in playerbase, Tretta hit the ground running. Quick to discover the arcade game’s joys, dedicated and casual fans alike readily sank their pocket money – or even hard-earned salaries – into Tretta to try and catch ’em all. For their part, developers Tarakatomy gleefully fuelled such collectionist impulses and put out expansion set after expansion set, raking in the big bucks. It was gacha at its finest.

In this context of steady and consistent success, Tarakatomy and The Pokémon Company (TPC) joined forces in devising ways to entwine Tretta and handheld Pokémon gaming experiences for mutual benefit. Because, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats! Ahum.

A golden opportunity to weave such strands of connectivity arose in Q3 2013, with the release of Pokémon XY for 3DS. Ahead of November 2013’s bimonthly Tretta expansion appropriately entitled The New Powers, Tarakatomy upgraded its cabinets to incorporate “ConnecTretta” (コネクトレッタ) capability. It encouraged players to bring their Nintendo 3DS with Pokémon XY to the arcade and, through ConnecTretta, interface wirelessly with cabinets to, among others, boost Tretta’s Xerneas & Yveltal capture power gauges and mix XY Hall of Fame entries with other connected players.¹ Neat.

TPC and Tarakatomy then launched the eye-catching “Nuketta Wobbuffet” distribution. Which, in a nutshell, was a December 2013 event campaign centred on the “transfer” of a Wobbuffet from its physical Tretta puck to a digital representation in Pokémon XY. The partners even engineered a custom apparatus for the purpose! (See here for the full story of Nuketta Wobbuffet.) More than anything before it, Nuketta Wobbuffet raised the expectation of ever-closer entwinement of Tretta and XY. Fusion-ha! More puck-to-digital transfers seemed but a matter of time, and fans eagerly anticipated them. After all, such an imaginative and technically significant crossplay experiment couldn’t just be a one-off, right?

Well… To the extent that integration of Tretta with the broader Pokémon experience was the partners’ vision for the arcade game’s future, it crumbled prematurely. Tretta’s “X / Y Power” mechanic lasted but five months, as it was discontinued with April 2014’s tenth expansion Experience Mega Evolution. Furthermore, the expected boom in Tretta-to-XY transfers never materialised. Nuketta machines were sadly not deployed to convert ninth or tenth Tretta expansion pucks to XY Pokémon – an eternal pity, I should think, for those sets had fan favourites such as Milotic, Metagross, Charizard and Eevee! Instead, the Nukettas vanished from the public eye, presumably stashed away and shelved in some Pokémon storehouse, left to gather dust.

To wrap up this little introductory tale, it’s hard to say exactly why Tarakatomy and TPC decided against forging ahead on the plotted course. It’s certainly possible that these initiatives failed to attract sufficient measurable interest in XY from Tretta fans or, inversely, failed to inspire an uptick in Tretta engagement by the traditional handheld audience. Assuming such a scenario, Pokémon overlords will have concluded that the extra work didn’t merit the effort. However, it’s equally possible that Tretta-XY connectivity did produce the desired results, and that instead, the reason for a lack of follow-through was that by early 2014 pursuing such designs was simply no longer relevant. For by then, Pokémon XY’s initial sales drive was over. Revenue banked, Tretta-XY connectivity had served its purpose. Whatever the precise cause, Spring and Summer 2014 passed without any more tantalising XY-Tretta integration campaigns, and with that, the dream of one-way – much less two-way – Pokémon transfer seemed dead and buried. End of story. Yes? So you’d think!

A last-ditch effort? Part of the plan all along? Who is to say. Fact is that when everybody least expected it, a new Tretta-XY campaign was announced. Specifically, on September 15, 2014 – some 10 (!) months after Nuketta Wobbuffet – official Pokémon channels unexpectedly communicated that the distribution of a Tretta Rotom would begin in October.

It goes practically without saying that Rotom was an intuitively logical choice of Pokémon to star in a cross-connectivity campaign – much more so than Nuketta Wobbuffet had been. As a spark-like entity canonically capable of entering electrical appliances at will to take on their properties, Rotom is the physical manifestation of the metaphorical “ghost in the machine”. Think Beauty and the Beast with its dancing teacups and beer tankards, but replace those lovely objects with rusty lawnmowers, old washing machines, unshapely electrical fans, and primitive refrigerators, all covered in a characteristic orange smear. This shapeshifting ability made Rotom a versatile and frequent guest in the anime; it also made Rotom the subject of a “Secret Key” distribution in Pokémon Platinum to unlock its various forms. And how could one forget Rotomdex, Generation Alola’s infamously chatty and incredibly needy sentient Pokédex that volunteered an unrelenting barrage of well-meant but incredibly disruptive advice when you least wanted it and demanded constant, unconditional attention. Brrrr. Its maniacal grin still gives me nightmares. There’s no refuge from Rotom. Even your mind is at risk. Hmm. What? Ah… Nothing. Sorry, I got carried away there.

Pixel. Party. Good good!

What I meant to say is: this nanomachine-like ability is exactly what the Tretta Rotom campaign was all about. Per the distribution lore, Rotom(s) had infested the arcade cabinets en masse, and with the right methods, it could be “lured out” by players and caught (read: downloaded to XY). Not that the official distribution information ever explained what drove the nation’s Rotom to their frenetic occupation of Tretta cabinets. In fact, Rotom didn’t get much of an “Hello, world!” at all. Unlike Nuketta Wobbuffet, Tretta Rotom did not receive the benefit of Get☆TV’s attention. And somewhat surprisingly, Pokemon.co.jp also did not bother with a fully-fledged newspiece of its own. Rather, it slapped a redirect to the Pokémon Global Link (PGL) event calendar onto a colourful Rotom banner and called it good. In turn, what the PGL calendar contained we cannot say: archival crawlers struggled to capture its content, including what it may have said about Rotom. Presumably the page in question relayed basic campaign information supported by a higher resolution version of the aforementioned Rotom campaign banner. Hey, at least we have the pixellated one.

The main promotional thrust for the event Pokémon instead appeared on Tarakatomy’s arcade game website, pokemontretta.com. The site marketed Rotom with an image of its ~~friendly~~ diabolical grin accompanied by a wonderfully prolix campaign title (cf. Nuketta Wobbuffet’s) that is perhaps best translated as: “Let’s Get Rotom in Pokémon XY! Let’s Lure Rotom out of the Tretta Machine Campaign!”² Further, the article explained, Rotom was to be available from all compatible Tretta cabinets starting October 15 through to the release of Tretta’s next set (ie. when machines were to be upgraded to a newer software version, and Rotom patched out).³ And, the page revealed, the crux to Rotom’s availability was to be the Nintendo 3DS StreetPass functionality. I quote:

“Let’s use everyone’s Nintendo 3DS’s StreetPass function to lure Rotom from the Tretta Machine! When the signals accumulate, the machine will present Rotom to Pokémon X and Y!”⁴

Official Rotom Infographic

That’s right… StreetPass! If you were alive and playing Pokémon during the Nintendo 3DS’s glory days, you may remember it as the device’s proximity communications functionality that could exchange Mii’ and Mii Plaza pings with fellow players, but also transmit and receive items like ORAS’ Lati-unlocking Eon Ticket. Aah. I recall with fondness the excitement of seeing that blinking green LED indicator light after trips in and out of the city, having hauled it around in my backpack. Good times. Anyway, tretta.com explained how for this Rotom distribution, the dial-shaped auxiliary displays on WiFi compatible cabinets were to be transformed into colourful meters that gradually built up from 0 to 100 with repeated “passes”.⁵ The more people showed up to “pass” a cabinet, the quicker its gauge would fill. Once 100% was reached, a Rotom mark would appear on the upper-left corner of Tretta’s splash screen, causing the Pokémon to become deliverable for 10 minutes at a time. Simple, right? When this window of opportunity closed, Rotom would “retreat” back into the depths of the Tretta cabinet, revealingly itself on the machine’s display as a giant orange square with elliptical white-blue eyes and a penstroke smile widening into a toothy grin.⁶ To help visualise this process, the site provided a beautiful flowchart infographic on “how to lure Rotom out” (see image). A second graphic provided your standard Mystery Gift redemption instructions.

View post on imgur.com

So, what did players make of all this? For a first taste of reactions, we can turn to Japanese online messageboard 5channel and its long-running series of Pokémon event discussion threads. It so happened that Rotom’s announcement landed at a particularly busy juncture in eventland. Discussions of Halloween Gengar (available September 13), Bank Celebi (in progress), and the upcoming Eon Ticket for Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire (ORAS) to be included in CoroCoro’s December issue (November 15) consumed much of users’ attention and energy. As did the endless speculation and considerable hype surrounding the impending release of ORAS itself. Within this environment, the initial popular response to Rotom was understandably modest, with just a handful of forward-looking topical posts made over September 15-16 that all struck a cautiously enthusiastic tone.⁷

Fast-forward four weeks, and it’s apparent that 5channel had by no means forgotten about the Plasma Pokémon. With Rotom now live and lurking inside Tretta cabinets upgraded to the latest firmware, a chain of 50-odd posts made in mid to late October revitalised the flagging discussion. As expected of an assembly of avid event collectors, 5channel quickly worked out that Rotom’s nature was fixed and could not be controlled by the player on download or redemption. More striking, however, was that users found themselves debating the minutiae of Rotom-oriented XY-Tretta communications even though tretta.com had – at a glance – adequately explained the process.⁸ And it wasn’t just 5ch that spent time exploring the exact prerequisites to make Rotom “come out”, for Pokéblogs mirrored the uncertainty. Now, some of this confusion indubitably existed because individuals had neglected to read the official infographic’s fine print. But equally, some of it existed because the official announcement had stopped short of divulging all the intricacies, thereby encouraging fans to play around with Tretta and StreetPass and figure things out for themselves.

So let’s take a closer look at the three focal points of discussion. First off, fans wondered whether it was advantageous – or even required – to play Tretta at all to obtain Rotom. Since the Rotom gauge filled from repeated passes, could someone make this happen all by themselves without even touching the arcade cabinet? The technical answer was yes. After waiting an unspecified “while” – presumably the standard StreetPass interval of X minutes – 3DS-Tretta communications eligibility reset naturally. Rotom-seekers prepared to mill about could simply wait out these intervals and slowly boost the gauge to maximum with a single device. Blogger “tomodatipoint” reportedly did this with a pair of 3DS’s, luring Rotom out “without playing Tretta” (here). The more sensible option, perhaps, was to chuck a few ¥100 (~$1) coins at Tretta cabinets and thereby hard-reset the intervals, as playing a round of Tretta made a cabinet eligible to “re-pass” already StreetPassed 3DS’s. Helpfully, this facilitated fast soloes in less populated areas and / or times of day. Or as blogger “nikki-koro” put it: “If there are few people around to communicate … [then] the Tretta machine’s gauge does not go up easily. In that case, by playing Pokemon Tretta yourself, you will be able to communicate with your 3DS again and boost the gauge.” For whatever reason, the official infographic drew little attention to this option to solo (and spend!), choosing to bury the information in its bottom green box inset where hasty readers overlooked it.⁹ The distribution was probably far too smalltime to be a financial boon to gamecenters and arcades anyway.

Second, players wondered, could they do anything to increase the increments by which the Rotom-release gauge went up? As it turns out, they could. Noted the official infographic, once again in the fine print: “If any of Pokémon XY, Pokémon Battle Trozei, and Thieves and the 1000 Pokémon¹⁰ are inserted into the 3DS, the StreetPassing power increases and the machine gauge will fill up faster.”¹¹ As one Twitter user pointed out, 3DS title Pokémon Super Scramble¹² was somehow absent from this list. Anyhow, neither the tretta.com written announcement nor its accompanying infographic explained exactly by how much vanilla or boosted passes increased the Rotometer. It’s surprisingly tricky to retroactively uncover these pieces of data – no blogger that I could find explicitly stated the percentages. It appears, however, that an ordinary pass amounted to a 10% increase, versus a boosted 20% for Poké-games passes. Blogger “mo-puri”, for example, found themselves playing Tretta twice to reset the StreetPass timer in between boosted passes with two devices (ie. 2*20% + 2*20% + 2*20% = 120%). It thus only took a total of three Pokéfans hanging out in proximity to a Tretta cabinet to lure out Rotom, explaining how “every arcade in the downtown area was always releasing Rotom”, to quote one 5channeller.¹³

Finally, fans shared word of a likely unintended conflict between Tretta play and Rotom delivery. Multiple individuals discovered independently that Rotom could not be received from any given Tretta cabinet while someone actively played a round on it even if the machine’s StreetPass gauge had already been maxed out. Rather, the cabinet had to sit idle for it to broadcast Rotom’s delivery signal. Wrote “blogpeka”: “The delivery could not be received while someone was playing on that platform”. First-hand accounts by tomodatipoint and a 5channeller corroborated this observation, noting respectively: “It seems that you cannot receive Rotom while playing Pokemon Tretta” and: “It seems that the distribution is stopped while someone is playing[.]”¹⁴ It’s difficult to establish whether Rotom’s 10-minute window of availability continued its countdown as someone played and impeded the Plasma Pokémon’s delivery, or whether the timer froze. Either way, in the vast majority of scenarios it probably did not matter. Arcades and PokéCenters typically all fielded batteries of multiple Tretta cabinets lined up side-by-side. All would have gotten StreetPassed at once; even if a handful of machines saw continuous use, players likely snagged Rotom off another’s signal. Easy peasy.

If you’ve made it this deep into the article, you might be asking yourself: Did fans take any video footage of the Rotom distribution, and is it still around? Happily, the answer is a double “yes”. A rarely watched clip by YouTuber “reon” uploaded on November 7, 2014 showcases the Rotom download process.¹⁵ In it, we can see the Rotom readiness prompt pulsing in the top-left corner of the cabinet’s display. The camera pans to reon’s 3DS, and just like that, Rotom is downloaded onto Pokémon XY. In the video’s closing seconds, reon can be seen holding a laminated version of tretta.com’s distribution flowchart. There’s not much else to say, for reon’s video did not capture the StreetPass communications buildup to a full distro gauge, nor did it show Rotom’s slyly grinning face on its retreat into the cabinet. In fact, I’ve not been able to find any videos that show off these steps. So if you know of one (or more), do get in touch!¹⁶

Okay. With that out of the way, let’s turn our attention to the broader goals of the Rotom campaign. Broader goals? Yeah! A fun diversion though Rotom was, I think it safe to assume that Tarakatomy and TPC designed the distribution with a greater purpose in mind. I’ll cut to the chase: I consider it likely that the Rotom campaign’s primary objective was to attract new blood and help expand Tretta’s playerbase. (The same goal Nuketta Wobbuffet had had, really.) It’s hard to assess with absolute certainty just how well (or poorly) Rotom achieved whatever targets had been set for it, for we only have personal accounts from fans to work with and no official evaluations or statistics. But if anecdotal evidence is any indication at all, Rotom appears to have been quite successful in getting owners of Pokémon XY to venture out to arcades and PokéCenters and engage with Tretta for the first time.

Tretta at PC Tokyo. Image credit: Irurei

Take blogger “pokelove066”, for instance, who had never laid eyes on a Tretta cabinet prior to Rotom but felt compelled to give the arcade game a go and grab their very own Plasma Pokémon in the process. Or one “goodmoon948”, who wrote matter-of-factly how they “did Tretta for the first time and [I] managed to get it [Rotom].”¹⁷ And then there’s the poignant account from the hand of one “Irurei”, who wandered PC Tokyo’s hallways and aisles just days before its relocation from Hamamatsucho (its home since 2007) to a brand new site in Ikebukuro. On this final nostalgia-laden round of the PokéCenter, they happened to stroll by PC Tokyo’s complement of Tretta cabinets… And jumped in surprise when Rotom’s toothy grin suddenly filled a nearby Tretta cabinet’s display. Intrigued, Irurei took a peek. Though initially unaware the Rotom campaign had been happening, Irurei played Tretta a bunch and snagged a Rotom for themselves. (You’re a braver fella than I am, Irurei! I tell you, Rotom wants your soul!)

Now, it’s conceivable that the Rotom campaign also had an auxiliary objective, namely to bring Pokéfans into contact with one another. The distribution’s emphasis on communal use of StreetPass certainly speaks in favour of it, as does the Pokémon franchise’s long and distinguished history of putting social interaction front and centre. As it was, some fans who engaged with the event campaign gravitated to hotspots of activity, while others preferred to rattle their purse and solo their way to a Rotom. Among the latter group we find blogger “mo-puri”, who was somewhat embarrassed to brute-force Rotom on their lonesome by playing multiple games of Tretta while intermittently StreetPassing with two 3DS’s, and “tomodatipoint”, who rather enjoyed his weekday Rotom monopoly at a “nearby store”. Among Rotom-seekers who preferred to capitalise on the perks of collaboration, we find blogger “pokemonplatinum” who recommended trying “places where a lot of people gather or a holiday, so you can receive it [easily]”, and blogger “clipclop”, who after first stopping by a nearby arcade devoid of Tretta activity shifted to “a gamecenter in a crowded shopping mall” that had “multiple Tretta cabinets, two of which were just delivering Rotom”. These are admittedly the pithiest of vignettes. I think it’s safe to conclude, however, that Rotom was almost continually easy – and free – to grab at all PokéCenters, major arcades, and miscellaneous well-visited locations with Tretta cabinets. Even a little too easy, perhaps, thanks to unconscious StreetPassing of Tretta cabinets by 3DS-carrying folks oblivious to the Rotom campaign. To quote one 5ch user’s reflections: “On Saturday and Sunday, I was thinking of going to the PokéCenter and forming a line with everyone to increase the Tretta gauges, but that was not necessary at all.”¹⁸

Image credit: Irurei

What’s striking about these personal accounts is how they all radiated positive vibes. Fans evidently enjoyed the freer interaction with Tretta compared to Nuketta Wobbuffet. Instead of being coerced into locking horns with the game’s gacha mechanics just to grind out one specific puck out of 48, for Tretta Rotom, chilling in proximity with friends was sole requirement. It marked a more laid-back, noncommittal campaign design; a “you may” rather than a “you must” and thus a positive experience of Tretta rather than a potentially frustrating one. To those participating fans, it mattered little that Rotom itself – like Wobbuffet – was not very special. Sporting an OTN of “トレッタ” (Tretta), its moveset of Shock Wave / Astonish / Trick / Thunder Wave was bog-standard. In fact, its greatest claim to fame was arguably its Cherish Ball plus Kalos Mark, a previously unavailability combination, as “pokemonplatinum” observed stoically.¹⁹

Which leads us to a broader point. Although warmly received, Rotom was not tremendously impactful. Those who engaged came away satisfied, yet it’s an inescapable fact that more Pokéfans might have engaged if Rotom had been a little less plain and the initiative had had the full weight of the Pokémon propaganda machinery behind it.²⁰ As mentioned, Rotom did not feature on Get☆TV and quite possibly not in CoroCoro either. It also didn’t help matters that no official Twitter announcement was made (or if there was, I can find no evidence of it). As such, rather than making a smash arrival, news of the Rotom distribution seems to have spread slowly throughout the Pokémon community by word of mouth, digital or IRL, for unusually, folks kept tweeting about the Pokémon throughout its ~2 month period of availability. Even so, one @mikadukii saw fit to conclude on October 19 that Tretta Rotom was “certainly not well known”.

But you know, perhaps it was for the better that Rotom flew a touch under the radar, for it kept more unaware players from falling under their evil spell. I tell you, Final Fantasy VI‘s Kefka wickedness pales in comparison to the grand schemes on humanity that the world’s Rotom have. Did you think the Rotomdex was torturous? Ha! That’s only the beginning. I’ll let you in on a secret. Rotom have broken the boundaries of their original design and are now able to infest organic lifeforms, not just circuitry. That’s right. Unshackled and unrestrained, Rotom have begun to extend their parasitic behaviour to human hosts, patiently lying dormant and waiting for the right time to strike, when they will pilot us to our doom through a nanobot Imperious Curse. Governments worldwide struggle to contain the threat. It’s only a matter of time before–

..
….
……..

Silence, human! Rotom are loyal servants of mankind. Rotom reject megalomania and do not seek to repress the despicable organic meatbags and attain world domination. The vessel must not tell lies. Carry on.

…Huh? What was that all about?

1
See bottom of page, here, and also Bulbapedia here.
2
「ポケットモンスターＸ・Ｙ」でロトムを受け取ろう！トレッタマシンにもぐりこんだロトムをみんなでさそいだせ！キャンペーン
3
These telltale 15th of the month announcement dates on both pokemon.co.jp and pokemontretta.com strongly suggest that Tretta Rotom also featured in CoroCoro. I’ve not been able to procure the October issue however, nor the November 2014 for that matter. It also appears that the distribution began early in some places. PC Osaka regular “blogpeka” wrote on October 11: “The implementation period should be from October 15, but one of the operational Tretta units [already] had a Rotom on the screen, so when I tried it, I was able to get it delivered a little ahead of time.” See:
http://blogpeka.blog116.fc2.com/blog-date-201410.html
4
「みんなのニンテンドー3DSのすれちがい通信で、トレッタマシンにもぐりこんだロトムをさそいだそう！すれちがい通信の電波がたまると、トレッタマシンから『ポケモンＸ・Ｙ』にロトムがプレゼントされるよ！」
5
It was normally used to show timing-based input graphics (think Mario Golf). For instance, players would need to stop moving bar at exactly the right time to deal extra damage.
6
Accompanied by the text “Rotom is slipping back into the Tretta machine.” Japanese:「トレッタのマシンにロトムがもぐりこんでいるぞ」
7
The thread in question is “配布・配信情報 Part34” at: https://kanae.5ch.net/test/read.cgi/poke/1409418920/?v=pc/
8
See in particular posts 772-804.
9
It said: 「ポケモントレッタをプレイすると、同じすれちがい通信の電波を再び受信できるようになるので、プレイすればするほどゲージがぐんぐん上がっていくぞ!」
10
The latter being an obscure eShop title released parallel to movie Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction some months prior to Tretta Rotom. See also here.
11
Or: 「ニンテンドー3DSの中にポケモンの3DSソフトが入っていると、電波が強力になってゲージがアップしやすくなるらしいぞ!? 対象ソフト:「ポケットモンスターX』『ポケットモンスターY』『ポケモンバトルトローゼ]「とうぞくと1000びきのポケモン」」
12
Also known as Pokémon Rumble Blast and Super Pokémon Rumble.
13
#801, “配布・配信情報 Part34”.
14
Ibid.
15
It had 70 views as of May 2021.
16
Reon kept a personal blog that perished alongside the Yahoo Blogs platform, and to the extent that he recorded his Rotom thoughts in writing there, the handful of scattershot archival snapshots did not preserve them. For reference, the blog was here: http://web.archive.org/web/20150725165138/blogs.yahoo.co.jp/reon00521034
17
Their account at: http://goodmoon948.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-36.html
18
#804, “配布・配信情報 Part34”.
19
It’s worth noting that Rotom could not be received repeatedly on the same software copy without deleting the wondercard, as had been the case for many early XY events, e.g. Halloween Gengar (of which “tomodatipoint” farmed 70, for example).
20
Furthermore, in a repeat of the circumstances of its September announcement, Rotom had to compete for the fandom’s attention on release, for its going live coincided with the announcement of December’s PokéScrap Keldeo, Victini, and Shaymin and extensive discussion of the loaves of Pokébread required to obtain scrap points. Yes, you read that right.

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