For the past 20 years, it seemed that Pokémon Snap would be a one-hit-wonder, but that has changed with the release of New Pokémon Snap for Nintendo Switch. It’s out today.
This time the game is coming to us courtesy of Bandai Namco, although they are diligently pursuing the scheme conceived at HAL Laboratory two decades ago.
A brief history
In the late 1990s, at the height of Pokémania, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company searched for some way to benefit from their monsters. The Nintendo 64’s graphical power allowed it to play with vibrant, polygonal Pokémon that were much more colorful than the Game Boy’s monochrome graphics.
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Of the N64 games, Pokémon Stadium was the most similar to the handheld games. Still, there were other “pacifist” experiments, such as Hey You, Pikachu! (a computer pet) and Pokémon Snap, which debuted in Japan and the United States in 1999 and Europe a year later.
A new Snap
The Pokémon Company revealed the new game in January, which we later heard more about at the franchise’s 25th-anniversary show.
New Pokémon Snap is set in the Lental Region. It’s a new island where this game takes place. You will board the Neo-One and travel around this region where you will be able to observe the Pokémon in their natural environment and, as a result, catch movement, gestures, and actions never seen before in the saga. Since we will have all generations ready to capture through the lens, you will be able to see from a Rattata to a Sirfetch’d to a Dragapult.
The game has a day and night cycle, so we must be prepared to venture into the night hours and take advantage of the new Illumina Orbs. These Orbs grant the Pokémon a different yet very striking luminosity. Together with the latest tools for adjusting and editing photos, they give us lower or higher scores when our shots are evaluated by Professor Mirror – who is in charge of the new region.
Release date
New Pokémon Snap is available right now on the Nintendo Switch for $59.99. The size of the digital version on the Nintendo eShop is 6 GB.
