What is the Pokémon World Tournament?

South of Driftveil City, on the ground where Black and White kept their Cold Storage, Gym Leader Clay has built the Pokémon World Tournament by the time of the sequels. It is a battle facility in the shape of a fantasy: a permanent eight-person, single-elimination tournament whose entrants are the prominent trainers of the entire series, flown in to Unova to test themselves against you.

You meet it first in the story, in the Driftveil Tournament against your rival Hugh, Cheren and the scientist Colress. Beyond the story gates, the building opens into a ladder. Rental and Mix tournaments bend the rules, drafting you borrowed Pokémon or letting you steal a swap with your opponent. Then come the Leaders tournaments, one per region, Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh and Unova, and above them the World Leaders, where all five regions' Gym Leaders mix.

Win the World Leaders tournament ten times and the building's top floor opens: the Champions Tournament, Alder, Lance, Blue, Steven, Wallace, Cynthia, and Red himself, silent as ever, waiting in a bracket. Special tournaments were also dealt out over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, including fields modelled on the real-world World Championships, a doorway that closed with the servers in 2014.

No facility before or since has treated the series' own history as its content so directly. The World Tournament is a museum you fight your way through, and for many players it, not the sequel's story, is the reason Black 2 and White 2 sit at the top of the DS shelf.