Detective Pikachu

You may know that Detective Pikachu was a surprisingly high-budget movie with Ryan Reynolds, a lot of CGI, and that uncomfortable scene with a Mr Mime, but you may not have known that it was a spin-off of a 3DS game, because it didn't sell massively well — at least, not in comparison to its bigger older sibling, the Pokémon series.

But there's a sequel in production, aiming for a Nintendo Switch release, that's been going since at least 2019. You might be wondering what happened to it — did it get shuffled quietly off into the shadows after the movie came out? — but it turns out that the game is still in development, it's just been quiet.

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In a Japanese interview on Creatures' website — the development studio behind the game — one of the programmers on the team, credited only as K.T., spoke about making Creatures a better company through his work.

Within this interview is a crucial quote (translation via Google Translate, original Japanese below):

"I am in charge of programming around drawing in the project related to the sequel to "Detective Pikachu", and at the Environment Development Office, I am creating a mechanism that will be the basis for future game production in general. If you liken a project to cooking, it's our job to create a pressure cooker to complete it in a short time and deliciously."

私は『名探偵ピカチュウ』の続編に関するプロジェクトで描画周りのプログラミングを担当しながら、環境開発室で今後のゲーム制作全般に関わる基盤となる仕組みを作っています。プロジェクトを料理に例えるなら、時短でおいしく完成させるための圧力なべを作ることが私たちの仕事です。

Hooray! Confirmation that Detective Pikachu 2 is still in development!

The Detective Pikachu games differ from the plot of the movie, and the first game ended in a cliffhanger that promised to segue into the plot of the second. In the movie, Ryan Reynolds plays Detective Pikachu, and is restored to human form at the end.

If you missed out on the first Detective Pikachu, you can download it from the 3DS eShop or pick up a physical copy from eBay, if you don't mind spending an extra 30 bucks.

[source recruit.creatures.co.jp, via reddit.com]