What were the seasons in Pokémon Black and White?

Pokémon had tracked day and night since 1999, but Black and White added the year. Unova runs on a seasonal cycle tied to the real calendar: the season turns over on the first of each month, spring, summer, autumn and winter in rotation, so the region passes through three full years of weather in every real one. The season you play in is simply the season the calendar says it is.

The changes are more than decoration. Snow settles on Icirrus City in winter and melts away from paths it had blocked, while summer rain fills puddles that freeze into crossings in the cold. The wild population rotates with the weather, species appearing and vanishing by season, and the days themselves stretch and shrink, long in summer and short in winter, as the clock underneath the game breathes.

One family lives the cycle on its own body. Deerling and its evolution Sawsbuck wear four different coats, pink-blossomed in spring, green in summer, russet in autumn and bare-branched in winter, changing form automatically with the season. In 2010, before they were collected and catalogued, a Sawsbuck was a small proof of the date on your DS clock.

The seasons also bind the games to their machine. Roll the calendar forward and Unova dresses for a different month, which made these cartridges feel less like a fixed world and more like a place keeping its own time beside yours.