Pokémon in Canada: Difference between revisions

[[File:HG CA boxart.jpg|thumb|left|French edition of Pokémon HeartGold released in Canada; the actual product features a {{wp|PEGI}} "3+" rating rather than the {{wp|ESRB}} rating seen here.]]

While federal laws require bilingual packaging and instruction manuals to be included with the sale of all video games in Canada, Pokémon games were available in English only until the release of {{game|HeartGold and SoulSilver|s}}, which received a French release for the province of {{wp|Québec}} in addition to the regular English release. This was due to an agreement between Québec's government and major video game publishers requiring any video games in Québec to be offered in French if available in French elsewhere in the world. French-language games contain exactly the same content as those from {{pmin|France}}, with the packaging slightly modified to include elements such as a "Play in French" logo (upper-left corner), although they retain their {{wp|PEGI}} ratings rather than changing them to those of the {{wp|ESRB}}. As they are from France, the games are incompatible with some North American event distributions and features. For example, the manuals for the French-language HeartGold and SoulSilver warn that [[Pal Park]] is incompatible with North American [[Generation III]] games, and due to the French versions of [[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Versions|Diamond, Pearl]] and [[Pokémon Platinum Version|Platinum]] being unavailable in Canada), Pokémon from said games cannot be transferred to French Generation V games, and the [[creation trio]] is unobtainable in the French [[Pokémon Dream Radar]] (unless European French copies of the Sinnoh games are used). However, recent event distributions have been compatible with both English and French games, in addition to other European languages if imported. Despite the content of the games being almost identical to that of the releases from France, the Canadian French versions of the games for Nintendo DS have their own country code in the serial numbers, CDF (instead of USA for English North America, or EUR for Europe, etc).