The Nintendo World store in New York City's Rockefeller Center will host a special event this Friday, Oct. 11 to commemorate the launch of Pokemon X and Y, Nintendo announced.

The event will begin at 8 p.m. and run until 1 a.m. ET. At midnight, Nintendo World will begin selling copies of Pokemon X and Y and the recently announced Nintendo 2DS handheld. Pokemon X and Pokemon Y launch worldwide this Saturday, Oct. 12.

"We put a lot of effort into the global, simultaneous release to make sure that pays off," Game director Junichi Masuda said. "Why we wanted to do this - to have the games out the same time around the world - is so everyone would be discovering Pokemon for the first time, trading and interacting with each other.

Click through the gallery to see the leaked evolution photos

In addition to the release date news, photos (above) have leaked of Fennekin and Froakie's final Pokémon evolutions. The gamingcompany has yet to confirm that these pics are legit -- but they did release new info about Honedge, who will evolve into steel / ghost type Pokémon Doublade.

Like previous Pokemon games, the new area of Kalos is based on a real-world country. After the "cool" feel of the New York City-inspired Unova region seen in Black & White, Kalos is inspired by "beautiful" France.

"This time it's more of a soft, kind, beautiful look," game director Junichi Masuda told Digital Spy.

"In terms of the visuals, there's definitely that difference. With the Kalos region, we really focused on making this gorgeous region with a focus on aesthetics, give it more of a soft feel, a bit more colourful than previous regions," he said.

According to other online reports, there are also other new features to Pokemon and battles in X and Y -- a new Fairy type has been introduced to counter-act the overpowered Dragon type, flying Pokemon can take part in Sky Battles, and several wild Pokemon can be encountered at once.

Tags
Pokemon x, Pokemon y, Nintendo