For those of us old enough to remember it, the nostalgia surrounding Pokémon Snap on the Nintendo 64 will be one of the most compelling factors for buying the upcoming sequel, New Pokémon Snap. It's been more than 20 years since the first game was released, so players who grew up playing the N64 classic have been waiting for a very, very long time.
As Nintendo consoles have come and gone, we've often felt that a sequel would be a great idea. Take the 3DS and its combination of AR tech and an actual camera, or the Wii U and its camera-like GamePad that could be used in conjunction with the TV; both would surely have made for fantastic Pokémon photography experiences, yet no games ever hit the market.
As it turns out, though, it's been revealed that there have been attempts at a series reboot in the past. In conversation with The Metro, game director Haruki Suzaki has explained that he's heard about previous experiments with the franchise, noting that Switch is "the perfect time" to make a new game.
"When I started on this project, I had heard there had been a couple of attempts at making a new Pokémon Snap before.
"The idea of photography has changed so much in the last 20 years, combined with the new Nintendo Switch hardware, that we thought it was the perfect time to create a new version of Pokémon Snap, and that’s why we started the project."
We might never know which consoles these "attempts" were being created for, or how far into development they actually got, but at least this proves that The Pokémon Company hasn't been quite as against making a sequel as some fans may have feared.
New Pokémon Snap launches on Switch this Friday, 30th April. You can get your pre-order in here if you haven't already.
[source metro.co.uk]
Comments 38
The idea of photography nowadays is taking selfies to post on Facebook, I hope they have not been inspired by that.
And yet STILL no mention on if it supports the Labo VR camera set-up.
Imagine Pokemon Snap in 2015, putting dog filters on Pikachu or googly eyes on Jigglypuff
Pokémon Snap was one of my favorite games on the Nintendo 64. I'm blessed to still be alive to witness another one after all this time.
@jump more like quality photography, editing and sharing has become way more easy and accessible. so yes, posting your photos to social media is a major factor here.
Wouldn't be a couple of attempts to continue other franchises like F-Zero or Wario Land would there?
No?
On a more related note, will Prof Oak or whoever the equivalent is in this game still judge photos poorly?
@Crockin So that's selfies explained, can you explain why people take pictures of their food now too?
If Wii U actually sold well it would have been a perfect fit. I love my Switch but Fatal Frame shows how perfect the gamepad worked as a camera.
The Wii U would have been perfect, look at Fatal Frame and those first person sections in Captain Toad. If only the Wii U didn't fail so hard that Pokemon didn't even consider bringing it to the system
@jump because everyone likes food and it's always relevant? not really a big mystery or anything
@Crockin So food is always relvevant, here's a picture of it lol
@jump yes, you are starting to get it.
3DS with it esterocopic 3D or Wii U with the HD visuals and Gamepad, would have been perfect fit for a new Pokémon Snap, before Pokémon Company decided to bring back Pokémon Snap in the form of New Pokémon Snap on the Switch.
Never played the original Pokémon Snap, even though I was a massive Pokémon fan back in those days, so I would like to play this one. From what I've seen in the trailers looks quite a calming game to play.
@jump the way I understand it, pretty good pictures are so common among younger generations because it is so much more difficult to accumulate wealth and afford actual and tangible nice things. So to go out to eat or to try a new or beautiful food is to have achieved some sort of treat or luxury.
I would say most of the people posting food pictures are not on the market for a house
@MS7000 The new one is Professor Mirror and yes, we've seen screens of the evaluation process already. It's basically the same but you can collect four tiers of Pokémon photos based on your points, from one to four stars, so I guess in theory you could keep a worse photo you liked more Than the high score one (I was a stubborn kid and would often keep the one I liked more, points be damned)
I remember playing the 64 version at a friend´s house back in the day. As much as I love pokemon mainline games (not the last entries) I don´t get the Pokemon Snap hype. You could just go and watch a video of the the whole ride and is almost the same experience. It was too short to be full priced too, maybe just taking photos is not my thing
@jump for the average adult in my generation, most of us can’t afford to travel and so our most affordable way to experience something new is good. Not to mention food is universal - not all of your peers will relate to your hobbies but everyone eats food. Photographs have always been more efficient at communication than writing (a picture worth a thousand words is a saying for a reason), and with the accessibility of photography nowadays we can easily communicate with a quick picture. Rather than describe to our friends the new experience we recently had (which, once again, is often food), we can just share a picture and that’s enough. It’s faster, easier, and more accurate than describing the food. We can, to some degree, share our experiences with all of our peers instantly.
Additionally, it’s not like pictures of food are anything new, it’s just that everyone has a camera now and so there’s more of it. Wedding photographers always have taken pictures of the food at the wedding, especially the cake, for example. Even go back before photographs and you’ll see a lot of artists painted and drew food (have you never seen the cliche artist painting a bowl of fruit?) Food is a big part of the human experience and lots of our life centers on it, including art.
Apart from the original announcement and that mind rotting Kit and Krista video a few days back, this is the only real mention of Pokemon Snap I can remember being promoted.
@dux in the original, you could save an album of favorite photos and that was separate to the ones you submitted for scoring.
@MrGawain weird, I’ve been getting various ads for the game all month.
@ShadJV Could you? I honestly cannot remember that. Maybe it was the language barrier (my English was far worse back then) or maybe I was just stubborn for artistic integrity's sake. Yes, I've always been that insufferable.
@dux you definitely could, I replay it every few years so I’m fairly familiar with it. You’re the second person I’ve seen who didn’t realize that though, so it might just be people don’t remember the feature?
Either way, that’s how I got a lot of the stickers I printed out at Blockbuster from my N64 memory card. Because my coolest pictures often weren’t the highest scoring ones.
@dux apologies for replying twice, but additionally I believe they’ve shown that feature returns in this too, allowing you to save pictures you like personally so you can edit and upload them to social media.
i saw that the original is about 6 hours of game. can you tell me if after ending the game you can still playing or not?
3DS version would have been awesome, especially with gyroscopic aiming making it feel like you're holding a camera.
@dux Good to know. Thanks!
@BananaMetallurgica you can!!! You go back for higher scores and new secrets! It's an incredibly replayabke game!
@Donutsavant well, thank you. if you tell me that, i'll buy pokemon snap for switch tomorrow
@BananaMetallurgica oh well, let's also wait for some reviews! Lol I am excited for this new one, but I also don't want to lead you astray on a game I've not played yet
This is a part of game design I wish we talked about more, so that gamers better understood.
Not everything you try works, and assuming your not an indie that NEEDS your one idea to sell or you are out of business, you generally give up on ideas that don't pan out pretty quickly. It's unlikely no one has "bothered" trying to release (your fav game here), it's that they tried and it sucked.
Look at Nintendo and the privilege of money and fan loyalty. Made Animal Crossing New Horizons and it sucked, so they reworked it with a new development team, it outsold all previous games in the series combined in like a week.
Made a new Metroid, it sucked, casually informs us "hey, it sucked so we're just going to write off the last 4 years and spend another 4 remaking this thing from the ground up".
Miyamoto always has his teams make 3 copies of Mario and Zelda games. After two or three years, he plays all three of the half complete games and decides which one is worth making the final product, flat out trashing two projects that at that point in time have burned though the same budget a game like "Hades" was made using.
I don't know how common that is at Nintendo, the only other project I've heard was done for was Splatoon.
Still, what's on the cutting room floor would just amaze most people.
@Donutsavant but I want it 😁
If there were, than I wonder why those previous attempts failed and if there had been similar failed attempts with other properties as well. Maybe they tried to bring one of them back but the tech wasn't there for them or Snap depending on the timing.
@Controller-Drift
It is fun to figure out how to change the Behaviour of the Creatures with the limited tools they give you, there is much hidden Stuff in the Levels.
Honestly, playing the first Pokemon Snap as a kid, I didn't expect to be a self-taught photographer...or artist, or writer (I'm all of these). But I have way more appreciation for Snap now than I did back then, as much as I liked it then.
Looks like there's a troll here in the comments, too. Mildly tempted to counter with photos of culinary art I've done, but...nah.
P.S. Hi, I just joined lol
@ShadJV It definitely returns then, and it's also expanded to work like other games photo mode, allowing for a lot more customization, like depth of field, crop, reframe, move in time, etc. Looks awesome, really.
Makes me wonder if there are any other dormant spin-offs like Pokémon Conquest that get brought up for consideration to bring back. Would love to see an HD remake of that that fixes some of the problems I've heard it has.
Not clicking through to the Metro thanks. ***** that Brexit rag.
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