[7] Pokémon Black and White are role-playing video games with adventure elements, presented in a third-person, overhead perspective.

[15] At the "Day Care" location, the player can breed two of their Pokémon—usually, a male and a female—to create Eggs that hatch into baby Pokémon at level 1.

Outside areas appear differently depending on the season, such as changing of leaves in autumn or snow on the ground in winter.

Also, dust clouds in caves and the shadows of flying Pokémon on certain bridges can be entered to either find a rare item or encounter Drilbur, Excadrill, Ducklett, or Swanna, none of which can be found in the wild otherwise.

Occasionally, when throwing a Poké Ball, the capture rate is highly increased, triggered by a random event.

In addition to allowing access to Pokémon acquired in the Dream World, the Entralink also enables players to interact with each other and play side games.

These side-games award points that can be traded for temporary powers such as increasing experience, improving capture rate, or lowering prices of items in Poké Marts.

[42] One particular example of this is Castelia City, which serves as the region's central metropolis and had such inspirations as its "Brooklyn Bridge-style suspension bridge" and its "huge skyscrapers".

[42] Unova is host to large urban areas, a harbor, an airport, an amusement park, several bridges, and several mountain ranges.

[41] Like previous Pokémon games, Black and White both follow a linear storyline; the main events occur in a fixed order.

At the beginning of the games, the player chooses either Snivy, Tepig, or Oshawott as their starter Pokémon as a gift from Professor Aurea Juniper.

In addition to the standard gameplay, the player will also have to defeat the games' main antagonist force, Team Plasma, a Knights Templar-esque group who claim that Pokémon are oppressed by humanity and seek to liberate them from their trainers.

[43] Team Plasma is led by N, a young man who was brought up alongside Pokémon and sees them as friends rather than tools for sport.

Soon after, he summons a large castle surrounding the Unova League, challenging the player to find him to participate in one final battle.

[49] On 9 April 2010, the Japanese website updated with the titles of the versions as Pokémon Black and White and announced a Q3 2010 release date.

[61][62] For pre-order ticket holders, an alternate-colored Raikou, Entei, or Suicune was available for transfer to their Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, or SoulSilver games.

[68] Other information revealed is that the game takes place in the Isshu Region which includes the Hiun City metropolis.

[74] The 27 June 2010, episode of Pokémon Sunday, made the announcement of the release date as 18 September 2010, and a yet-to-be named character.

[75] The 28 June episode of Oha Suta, showed a trailer, which included its release date, new gameplay footage, several new characters, more new Pokémon, and a three-on-three battle system.

[76] The August 2010 issue of CoroCoro Comic elaborated upon many new game mechanics: the three-on-three system, the online Global Link system, an online Dream World that can allow for access to other Pokémon, access to an area that uses the Wi-Fi called the Hilink (similar to the Underground), a special feature called the Live Caster for video chat on the Nintendo DSi and Nintendo 3DS, kanji support, aesthetic differences between the two versions of the game, areas exclusive to the game versions, new characters, new moves, new abilities, and new Pokémon.

[81] Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America's senior director of corporate communications, later stated that it was the choice of images that were of concern to the company.

In most cases there is no issue with the content that is posted, but on this occasion we had to contact a select few websites to ask them to take down confidential images".

[81] The foreign promotion for the games began on 22 November 2010, when the official website for the North American, European, and Australian markets was updated, which included the localized names of the starter Pokémon (Snivy, Tepig, and Oshawott) in English, Dutch, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish markets[85] and the games' setting in the Unova region.

[86] Floats of version mascots Reshiram and Zekrom accompanied the Pikachu balloon during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on 25 November 2010, the following Thursday.

[95] The event to distribute the item to allow players to capture Victini was also run following the games' release internationally.

[104] Game Informer's Annette Gonzalez remarked that "Pokémon Black and White do a great job building upon already solid features and taking them to the next level.

"[108] Edge acknowledged that "where next for Pokémon, Black and White don't suggest any answers, but they do remind us why we'd care in the first place.

[8] Jeremy Parish of Retronauts criticized Black and White, commenting that he grew tired of it shortly after starting and feeling like it was too similar to all previous Pokémon games.

He also compared it to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games and Final Fantasy XIII, arguing that they all share the common element of being bad before they get good.

[111] GamesRadar editor Carolyn Gudmundson stated "It may not break the Pokemon mold, but Black and White offers enough new content coupled with the series' classic, deep battle mechanics to make it endlessly playable.