What is Join Avenue in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2?

Join Avenue is a covered shopping street that Black 2 and White 2 build across the old gate between Route 4 and Nimbasa City. Early in the game its owner hands you the manager's job and an empty parade of eight shopfronts. The avenue's slogan, printed in the game, is its whole design: an avenue that grows as you deepen exchanges with other people.

The people are the content. Whenever your game connects with another player's, over local wireless, infrared, the GTS, the Dream World or Wi-Fi, that player's avatar can wash up in your avenue looking to open a shop: a raffle stand, a dojo that trains Pokémon for a fee, a beauty salon, a florist, an antique shop, a café, a market, later a nursery for eggs. Between those arrivals, your own fans, non-player characters who have decided you are famous, stroll in daily, up to a dozen at a time, and after the Hall of Fame even Gym Leaders drop by.

Your work is matchmaking. Invite a visitor to open a shop, or recommend an existing shop that fits what they are craving, and a good recommendation pays popularity points to the shop and the avenue alike. Shops climb to rank 10, deepening their stock and services, while the avenue's own rank shaves a percent off prices per step, up to 40 percent, with a further week's promotion if all eight shops max out.

When Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection closed in 2014, the river of real visitors slowed to the game's own fans, and avenues today grow at the pace the cartridge alone can feed them. At its height, though, Join Avenue was the DS era's warmest online idea: your friends did not visit your game to fight you. They moved in, and opened a shop.