What was the Liberty Pass in Pokémon Black and White?

The Liberty Pass was the first event of Generation V, and it set the pattern the generation preferred: rather than handing over a Pokémon, Nintendo handed over a journey. Players who connected Black or White to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection during the launch window, September 18 to October 18, 2010 in Japan and March 6 to April 27, 2011 in North America, received the pass as a Mystery Gift, and with it a ship in Castelia City would carry them to Liberty Garden.

Liberty Garden is a small island in Castelia's harbour with a lighthouse tower, openly modelled on its New York counterpart's famous island, and in 2011 it was overrun: Team Plasma had come to seize the Pokémon sheltering there. Fight through them to the tower's base and you meet Victini, the Victory Pokémon, a level 15 encounter you catch yourself, in your own ball, with your own name as its trainer.

Victini was a statement of intent for the new generation. It is numbered 000 in the Unova Pokédex, before even the starters, and it was the first Psychic and Fire type the series had ever made. In Japan it headlined that summer's film; everywhere, it existed to teach players on day one that the new games' rarest things would arrive over the internet, on a schedule.

The pass was never distributed again for Black and White, so the garden's battle belongs to the players who were there in the window. Victini itself has returned in later events and later games, but an original Liberty Garden Victini, caught in the tower in the spring of 2011, carries its island in its data forever.