Followup: Saturday surprise in Snowpoint: Diamond Dust effect appears after Masuda's

[BulbaBot]

Followup: Saturday surprise in Snowpoint: Diamond Dust effect appears after Masuda's warning

Game Freak Director Junichi Masuda's blog post from Thursday promised a surprise for players of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl today, his birthday. After searching through the games, fans have found the only difference to be the presence of the rare Diamond Dust weather effect in Snowpoint City. Snowpoint's usual effect is Hail.

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[System Error]

Funny, because this effect looks more like hail than the supposed "hail", which is closer to snow than anything else. But even this isn't very hail-like.

I'll repost a couple questions here.

1) Does setting the clock to January 12th, 2008 have this effect? If not, does setting it to January 11th and letting the date roll over to the 12th give the effect?
2) Does setting the clock to January 12th of any other year give the same effect, or is it exclusive to 2008 only?
3) How often, percentage wise, does this effect happen normally?

 

[Zenoah]

Anti-climactic, but pretty none the less.
I did'nt expect anything big like a Pokemon event or something. Im pretty sure the game is programed for every 12th of January to have Diamond Dust.

 

[Pokeyug]

Anti-climactic, but pretty none the less.
I did'nt expect anything big like a Pokemon event or something. Im pretty sure the game is programed for every 12th of January to have Diamond Dust.

If that's true than how come no one with the Japanese game noticed this last year?

 

[System Error]

If that's true than how come no one with the Japanese game noticed this last year?

Maybe it only does trigger on January 12th, 2008? Or maybe it triggers on January 12th of any year, but nobody made any note of it last year? There are many possible explanations.