A Traveler's Guide to the World of Pokémon/Pokémon Center

Within the fictional Pokémon World, Pokémon Centers (or Centres) are special buildings where Pokémon Trainers take their Pokémon to be healed, similar to a real world veterinary clinic. They also have connection areas and P.C.s. All these services are completely free of charge. In the Pokémon animé the Centers also serve as an inn for Trainers, who often spend the night there before continuing their journey the next day. Pokémon Centers in the real world are stores dedicated to exclusively selling Pokémon merchandise. In the video games In the video games, Pokémon centers serve a vital function: the player uses them to restore their Pokémon to full health (HP, status conditions, and PP, the latter of which does not recover otherwise without using rare items or berries). The nurse at a Pokémon Center will also automatically tell the player if one of their Pokémon has Pokérus. Pokémon Centers are also used to trade or battle with friends via link cable (or Wireless connection as in Diamond and Pearl), as well as access the Pokémon and item storage network via PC. Pokémon Centers always have a sign by the door marked "Poké" or "P.C." They can usually only be found in towns and cities and generally in the area before facing the Elite Four. Exceptions to this are the Pokémon centers near Mt. Moon and Rock Tunnel in Red, Blue, Yellow, FireRed, and LeafGreen. Certain locations in other games will also restore Pokémon to full health, although they are not Pokémon Centers. These include a house on the way to the Elite Four in Gold, Silver, and Crystal, and one old lady's home in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. If all of a trainer's Pokémon fall unconscious ("Faint" or FNT) and are unable to continue the battle, they are taken urgently to the last Pokémon Center they visited. The trainer also loses half of his or her money, regardless of who he or she was battling at the time, even if it was a wild Pokémon. The only exception to this rule is in FireRed and LeafGreen, in which the amount of money lost for losing a fight increases according to the overall strength of the player's Pokémon team. Starting from the third generation games, the game-to-game connection utilities (trading, battling, and collecting Mystery Gifts) have been relocated to the second floor. These games represent Pokémon Centers as red-roofed buildings with a Poké Ball design. In the fourth generation of Pokémon video games, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, a new level is introduced to the Pokémon Center. The protagonist may now venture into the basement to interact with friends online via the Nintendo Wi-Fi feature. The roof color, historically red, is orange (similar to the Net Center). The trademark blue roof of the Pokémart remains however. They are also merely referred to as Pokémon Centers. In the animé In the animé, Pokémon Centers serve the same function of recovering the health of Pokémon. However, they also treat illnesses not present in the Pokémon video games, and are places where Trainers can eat free meals and stay overnight. They have varying architectural designs, but always have a red P on or near them. Every Pokémon Center is operated by a family of identical nurses, all named Joy (hence, the term Nurse Joy refers to one or all of these such nurses), as well as the Pokémon Chansey or Blissey. A significant difference from the games is the time it takes to treat Pokémon. In the games, the Pokémon Center's nurse (who resembles Nurse Joy, but is not named as such) puts the Pokémon's Poké Balls into a machine, which restores them to full health almost instantly. In the anime, recovery takes much longer, depending on the Pokémon's illness or injury, and treatment ranges from simple bedrest to the use of devices similar to those in real-life hospitals. They are also used to treat humans, and most injured trainers are seen to be treated in a Pokémon Center instead of a hospital. The centers have also served as communication centers, Pokeberry testing facilities, temporary homes for lost Pokemon and meeting places for Trainers to gather and make plans to solve various problems, some Team Rocket related. The centers often work with the local police department. Real-world Pokémon Centers Outside of the Pokémon world, Pokémon Centers are stores that exclusively sell Pokémon merchandise. In Japan, there are currently five Pokémon Centers, found in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka. These stores are managed by The Pokémon Company (株式会社ポケモン), a subsidiary formed by Pokémon's copyright holders for the purpose of managing the franchise. There was only one Pokémon Center in the USA, located at Rockefeller Center in New York City. This store closed down in February 2005. The Nintendo World Store opened in the same location, and continues to sell Pokémon merchandise on the bottom floor of the store, under the Pokémon Center brand. An online version of the store ran until it closed on February 1, 2008 in the USA, which followed the closing of the Japanese online stores, which merged onto the Pokemon Japanese web site.