PC boxes

The BOXES tab shows what's in your PC without walking to a Pokémon Center. Every box is there, laid out like your game's own PC: the box's name between two arrows, your Pokémon in their slots over the box's wallpaper, and the PKMN DATA window beside them. The screen is drawn by the companion in the game's own colours: each wallpaper has its frame and header sky, so a FOREST box is green with a leafy strip and a SNOW box is white.

The boxes follow your game: deposit, withdraw or move a Pokémon at a PC and the tab shows it the next moment.

#Looking through your boxes

The tab opens on the box your PC opens on. To see another one:

• Tap the arrows on either side of the box's name, or swipe across the box: left for the next box, right for the one before.

• Tap the box's name for a list of all your boxes, each with how many Pokémon it holds (12/30). Tap one to go there.

The tab remembers which box you were looking at while you switch to other tabs.

#PKMN DATA

The window beside the box shows one Pokémon's picture, its name, its kind, its gender and level, and the item it holds, like the game's own panel. It starts on the box's first Pokémon and then shows the last one you tapped, which the box marks with a white square. With a controller, it follows the cursor as you move it over the box.

#A Pokémon's summary

Tap a Pokémon to open its summary, the same one the PARTY tab shows: its level, types, moves, matchups, and STATS with its IVs, EVs and nature. The column down the right side holds the Pokémon in the same box, six at a time, so you can step through the whole box. BACK returns to the box.

A Pokémon in a box keeps no stats of its own, so the companion works them out the way the game does when you take it out. A Pokémon in a box is always at full HP.

#Taking a Pokémon out

The summary of a Pokémon in a box has a green WITHDRAW button, like the game's own PC. Tap it and the Pokémon joins your party, right there in your game, at full health.

When your party already has six, WITHDRAW asks which of them to swap it with instead. Tap one of your party's Pokémon: the two trade places, just as if you had dropped one on the other in a PC. The one going into the box keeps everything but its HP and status.

You can also put a party Pokémon into a box from its own summary on the PARTY tab, with DEPOSIT.

Back on the box, you see the move: each Pokémon flashes white, shrinks to a spark, and flies over to the other side before it appears in its new place. Then a message under the two pictures says what happened. Tap OK, or anywhere, to close it; a tap before the end skips straight to the message. With LIGHT COMPANION on, the message shows straight away.

A few things the game itself wouldn't allow are refused:

• Mail: a Pokémon holding Mail can't go into a box. Take the Mail off first.

• Your last fighter: an Egg can't take the place of the last Pokémon in your party that can battle.

• Not now: you have to be walking around, with no battle, menu or text box open. Close the game's own PC first too.

The move happens in your game right away. Save in the game to keep it, just as you would after using a PC.

#Opening the BOXES tab

BOXES isn't in the tab bar by default. You can open it two ways:

• From MORE: tap MORE, left of the gear, then BOXES.

• Put it in the tab bar: open SETTINGS > TAB BAR and set BOXES to SHOWN. The bar holds up to five tabs next to the gear, so you may need to hide another one first.

#Games with BOXES

The tab shows your boxes in:

• FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire in every language, every version of each cartridge.

• Hacks built on those games: Unbound, Radical Red, Amethyst, Sword and Shield Ultimate Plus, GS Chronicles, Odyssey, Gaia, Orange Islands, Ultra Violet, Rocket Edition, Ash Gray, Ghost Grey, Emerald Kaizo and Glazed.

• SoulGold.

Unbound, Radical Red, Amethyst, Sword and Shield Ultimate Plus and GS Chronicles have 25 boxes and SoulGold 15, and the tab shows them all.

WITHDRAW, the swap and DEPOSIT work on FireRed, LeafGreen and Emerald in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish (both FireRed cartridges, both LeafGreens), and on Ultra Violet, Rocket Edition, Ash Gray and Ghost Grey. The other games show their boxes but can't move Pokémon yet. More games will follow.