Because buying new video games each week is expensive, I’m back to talk about a game that won’t be released until 24 weeks after this school year ends!
Pokémon was first introduced to the world in 1996 with the video games Pokémon Red & Green (released everywhere but Japan as Red & Blue) and since then has spawned six sequels (not counting special editions of the same games and counting each pair of games as one), three remakes of said games, several spin-off games, a trading card game, an anime spanning 19 seasons and counting, 20 theatrical movies, like nine different manga series, a live musical, an orchestra, whatever the heck you would call this, and so many other things that I don’t even know about! Presidential candidates have quoted the movies in their campaigns, there was a scene in Paper Towns where they just randomly started singing the theme song, everyone knows about Pokémon! Go up to anyone and ask them if they know what Pokémon is, and they will most likely at least know who Pikachu is. Do you know who Pikachu is? Of course you do! And now to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this multi-billion dollar franchise, Nintendo is making yet another Pokémon game, because twenty-six isn’t enough. And since they’ve apparently run out of colors, the new games will be called Pokémon Sun & Moon!
We don’t know a whole lot about the game, but there are some things we do know. Some of these things can be found in the official Japanese trailer… that doesn’t really show the game until one minute in and the rest of the trailer is about some kid moving to a new school in Hawaii or something, I’m not sure. There’s also the the 20th anniversary video from the Nintendo Direct that happened earlier this year that gives a bit of information.
Pokémon was first introduced to the world in 1996 with the video games Pokémon Red & Green (released everywhere but Japan as Red & Blue) and since then has spawned six sequels (not counting special editions of the same games and counting each pair of games as one), three remakes of said games, several spin-off games, a trading card game, an anime spanning 19 seasons and counting, 20 theatrical movies, like nine different manga series, a live musical, an orchestra, whatever the heck you would call this, and so many other things that I don’t even know about! Presidential candidates have quoted the movies in their campaigns, there was a scene in Paper Towns where they just randomly started singing the theme song, everyone knows about Pokémon! Go up to anyone and ask them if they know what Pokémon is, and they will most likely at least know who Pikachu is. Do you know who Pikachu is? Of course you do! And now to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this multi-billion dollar franchise, Nintendo is making yet another Pokémon game, because twenty-six isn’t enough. And since they’ve apparently run out of colors, the new games will be called Pokémon Sun & Moon!
We don’t know a whole lot about the game, but there are some things we do know. Some of these things can be found in the official Japanese trailer… that doesn’t really show the game until one minute in and the rest of the trailer is about some kid moving to a new school in Hawaii or something, I’m not sure. There’s also the the 20th anniversary video from the Nintendo Direct that happened earlier this year that gives a bit of information.
This new adventure takes place in the Alola region, which seems to be a tropical location based on Hawaii, and it looks amazing. We also see our basic avatar selection, which has four male choices and four female choices, which is a whopping two more choices than the last games! In the last game, character customization happened more after the starting screen because you could buy more clothes for your avatar, so I assume it’s no different here. In the 20th anniversary video everything goes by really fast, but by slowing down to 0.25x normal speed (thank you, Google, for making that an option) you will see some concept art of vehicles like trucks and cars that appear to have both humans and pokémon riding in them, leading people to think maybe vehicle riding will be a thing in the game.
Although, if concept art was definite proof then we would have Mario dressed like a chicken in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Also for the first time ever these games will be available in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, which is definitely cool for Chinese Pokémon fans. And this game will be compatible with the Pokémon Bank application to deposit your pokémon into storage, and also retrieve your pokémon when you need them.With this feature you’ll also be able to transfer pokémon from X & Y, Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, and the virtual console release of Red, Green, Blue, & Yellow, which is especially exciting to me since those are the first games in the entire series! It’d be like a video game time capsule! |
Of course with a newPokémon generation comes more pokémon species that will make it even harder to catch ’em all! For now there’s only a mere 722 unique pokémon species (and after 20 years, the anime’s main protagonist has only caught about fifty of those), but I’m sure there’s going to be even more in this new game! |
First up, the starter pokémon! Since the very first game every new trainer has had to make a choice that will change their lives forever: fire, water, or grass? At the beginning of every game, trainers must choose between a fire-type, water-type, or fire-type starter pokémon (of course aforementioned anime protagonist slept in too late and got an electric-type, but still.) Each generation it’s been three different pokémon, and we know what this generation will have. First we have the grass/flying-type Rowlet, the owl pokémon the sight of which makes me feel like I’m about to die of cuteness poisoning (on a side-note, I really hope that isn’t an actual thing.) We also have the fire-type Litten, who is a cat who looks like it would punch me if I called it cute, which is the only reason I’m not saying it here{Litten used Emoji Punch!}…What was tha OW!{It’s super effective!} …Note to self: The fourth wall here is flimsy. Finally there’s the water-type Poppilo, the weird clown seal thing that everybody already hates because reasons. As far as my choice goes…This time, Litten, I choose you! Please don’t hurt me again!
Every new game in this series has its own legendary pokémon (basically gods of the pokémon universe that look incredibly awesome) that are usually the mascots of the game. This time they’ve got two Pokémon based on the sun and moon (surprise, surprise) who don’t actually have confirmed names yet. For the time being I’m calling the sun one Celestia and the moon one Luna, just for convenience sake. Celestia just seems like a really bright lion, while Luna is… I don’t even know what Luna looks like, but it looks awesome! It’s kinda like… if Batman had a crescent moon for a head, that’s it. Totally want Moon Version now! |
Well, we don’t know a whole lot about Sun & Moon so far, but from the little we do know it looks like this is shaping up to be an amazing game! I haven’t been able to really get into the Pokémon games themselves before, but maybe this will be the one to finally capture my interest. It’s coming in November, and I can’t wait for that time to come around.