For decades, no, centuries, Japanese parents were happy giving their kids regular Japanese names. Sure, there have been trends, but the latest one is producing some kids with peculiar names—and even worries about bullying.
Japanese names are slightly different from English ones. Traditionally, first names were selected based on the number of brush strokes in the child's last name and based on the meaning of the kanji characters used in the first name. Some kanji are viewed as more favorable based on their meaning. Girls were often given simple names as their last names would change if they married, and the parents worried that a complex name with many brush strokes might not go with their new last name.
Now, many young parents are selecting "sparkly names" (kirakira neemu or キラキラネーム) for their children. These names are based only on how they sound, and the kanji characters don't have much, if any, meaning. Sometimes, people are naming their kids after manga or video game characters—something that would have been unheard of a generation ago in Japan. For example, last fall a magazine model named her son "Ace" after the One Piece character, shoehorning in kanji characters for the kid's name.
There have been newspaper columns in which bullying has been discussed, with kids bearing unusual names being teased. The appeal of these names, however, is to stand out. Parents don't want their kids to have the same first name as other kids. Many last names are fairly common in Japan, so the desire to be different is understandable.
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For the upcoming election in Japan, the country's Liberal Democratic Party is even taking this up as a political cause, talking about educating parents better. "Children are not pets," said LDP front runner Shinzo Abe. "Parents need the necessary guidance." One of the sparkly name examples cited was naming a kid "Pikachu", which would use the kanji 光宙, which literally means "light" and "space".
There have been naming trends over the years, and these "sparkly names" are just the most recent trend. During the decades following the war, more and more girls were given the kanji for "ko" (子), leading to many women with names like "Yoko", "Kyoko", or "Yuko". One of the reasons why "ko" spread so during these years was the Empress Michiko. She was the first commoner to marry into the Japanese Imperial Family, causing the number of girls with the then regal sounding "ko" skyrocketed. Now, "ko" sounds old fashioned to some younger Japanese. After the "ko" boom, more girls started getting names with "mi" (美), which means "beautiful", among other trends.
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The sparkly name trend is actually closer to how many Americans name their kids—they pick a name they think sounds good. Sure, some folks give family names or check the meaning of the name, but many don't. People should pick names they think are good names that the kids can be proud of. That being said, parents, Japanese or elsewhere, don't name your kid Pikachu. Just don't. Now, Light or Space on the other hand...
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Here's Your First Look At Overwatch 2's New Tank Hero, Hazard (And You Can Play Him Soon)
The character is from a faction that has existed in the background of Overwatch lore for years
The impending arrival of Overwatch 2’s next tank hero has been teased through graffiti in the game’s Oasis map since the beginning of its ongoing 13th season. Now, we finally have our first look at Hazard, the 42nd hero in the shooter’s roster, and he’ll be playable briefly this weekend for those looking to test him out before he joins the game properly next season.
Hazard is a member of the Phreaks, a revolutionary group with a punk aesthetic. References to the faction date back all the way to the original reveal trailer from 2014, with members of the Phreaks shown in combat in Paris. Now, after a decade, we’ll finally have a hero from the group. We don’t know much about Hazard’s kit, but in the animated hero trailer, he’s shown using a Gatling gun attachment on his hand (think Barret from Final Fantasy VII) and an injectable purple substance that allows him to create spikes that protrude from his back and seem to rain down on enemies. We’ll see how that all works in-game soon, as Blizzard is making him playable for a brief window this weekend from November 22 to 25, before he’s officially added to the roster in season 14 on December 10. Check out the reveal trailer for the Scottish hero below:
Blizzard Entertainment
Overwatch 2 is pretty busy at the moment, with a few overlapping events happening at once. The game is currently hosting an Overwatch Classicevent that reverts the original 21 heroes to their launch kits and brings back the original 6v6 format. I’m sure that’s nostalgic to some people but as someone who came into Overwatch three years later, I hate playing it without all the quality-of-life changes and reworks that have been implemented in the time since. Y’all have fun, though.
10 Pokémon Games That Defied The Classic Turn-Based RPG Formula
With Pokémon Legends: Arceus dropping this week, here are some other games that strayed from the series’ formula
By
Mike Fahey
Who’s ready for the latest game starring Pokémon that’s not quite a traditional turn-based RPG? Pokémon Legends: Arceus arrives this week, the latest in a long line of side-stories and spinoffs that let us play with our pocket monsters in new and different ways.Pokémon Legends: Arceus, for example, mixes elements of Capcom’s Monster Hunter series with action RPG elements never before seen in a Pokémon game.
So as we prepare to embark on this all-new adventure, let’s take a look back at 10 other Pokémon games that have mixed up the monster-collecting formula.
Pokémon Snap
I still use a “Mon Lens” on my camera to this dayImage: Nintendo
Let’s kick things off with one of the series’ earliest spin-offs, Hal Laboratory’s Let’s Watch Pocket Monsters Do Stuff While We Take Pictures. Pokémon Snap on-rails voyeurism game is a very far cry from wandering the pixelated pastures of Pokémon Red and Blue, but the basic idea—catching them all—remains the same.
Pokémon Snap made its debut on the Nintendo 64 back in 1999, only a year after the original Game Boy RPGs began taking North America by storm. It was early days, but Nintendo and Game Freak already had plans to take Pokémon far beyond the confines of players’ pockets. Snap was a taste of things to come, and it tasted pretty good.
Hey kids, do you want to play a full console version of your Game Boy Pokémon RPGs on your TV? Well, too effing bad. Released to Western audiences in 2000, Pokémon Stadium gave fans a tantalizing taste of what a 3D console Pokémon game could be without actually delivering anything close to the adventures of Red and Blue. Being able to trade your pocket monsters with your Game Boy games using the transfer pack was neat, but all battles with no plot made Stadium a dull boy.
Still, the game had promise. Perhaps those gorgeous 3D Pokémon would finally get a real RPG on Nintendo’s next home console.
Well hey, what do you know, a real Pokémon RPG on a Nintendo console, just not quite the one fans wanted. Instead of taking one of the Game Boy titles and updating it with 3D graphics, Nintendo tapped Genius Sonority, a Japanese studio consisting of former Dragon Quest devs, to craft an all-new adventure.
Pokémon Colosseum and its sequel, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, took the series in a darker direction. The Orre region, where the games are set, is a sparse land that generally lacks roaming pocket monsters. As the protagonist you are tasked with wandering from town to town, purifying pocket monsters corrupted by darkness. Instead of collecting wild Pokémon, you steal them from the trainers you battle against. Both games have this whole creepy/cool vibe going on that’s won them a place in fans’ hearts. They might not be the console RPGs we wanted, but they sure were something else.
Pokémon Ranger
Remember the early days of the Nintendo DS, when Nintendo was really into games that used the stylus and touchscreen in cool and inventive ways? It was in that heady era that Hal Labs brought us 2006’s Pokémon Ranger, a game in which you draw circles around pocket monsters to capture them. There’s really only so much you can do with a stylus.
Instead of healing your Pokémon at a Pokémon center, you recharge your stylus’ capture power. Teaming up with different monster types gives your stylus different powers, which makes rapidly drawing circles slightly more fun and dynamic than simply doing it on a piece of paper.
Not only is Pokémon Ranger much more fun than it sounds, it actually spawned a pair of sequels, Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs, making it one of the more prolific handheld Pokémon spinoffs.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue Team
Yes I named my Mudkip Carol, so what?Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
Speaking of prolific handheld Pokémon spinoffs, here’s the most prolific of them all. Japanese developer Chunsoft, developers of the first five Dragon Quest games (sensing a pattern here), have been importing pocket monsters into its roguelike series since 2005. Rather than showing off the pixel graphics of the original pair of Game Boy/DS games, here we present the charming hand-drawn visuals of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, the recent remake for the Switch.
Instead of catching Pokémon, the Mystery Dungeon series casts you as a human transformed into a pocket monster, teaming up with another Pokémon in a Pokémon-populated world to solve Pokémon crimes. It’s a fun twist on the formula, even if the roguelike grid-based battles aren’t for everybody.
Pokémon Masters EX
Gotta catch all of the trainers, I supposeIllustration: Nintendo
Pokémon Masters is Nintendo’s attempt to take advantage of the mobile gasha craze in the weirdest way possible. Instead of spending in-game currency on Pokémon, players use their hard-earned (or bought) gems to purchase trainers from throughout series history. Characters from the various handheld RPGs join players’ teams with their signature Pokémon, going on turn-based battles through a whole new region.
Look at this majestic monster fighter right hereScreenshot: Nintendo
Bandai Namco had us at “Pokémon fighting game.” Spawned in Japanese arcades before making the jump to Wii U and Switch, Pokkén Tournament transforms those charming turn-based battles into a full-on fighting game. It’s a little free-roaming 3D, a little side-stepping 2D, and all excellent.
The only downside is that the game does not include every single one of the hundreds of Pokémon. There are only 23 fighters in the Switch version, including two Pikachu and two Mewtwos. I’m still hoping the other hundreds will be added in future DLC.
Aha, forgot all about PokéPark, didn’t you? How could you forget Pikachu’s action-adventure game, in which the electric mouse wanders about a Pokémon theme park hunting for pieces of the Sky Prism? It’s the one where Mew sends you on a quest. It was for the Wii? Ringing any bells?
One of the coolest features of PokéPark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure was the ability to take screenshots of your adventures and share them to either an SD card or post them on the Wii Message Board. Developer Creatures Inc. was truly ahead of its time.
Pokémon Smile
If only brushing were always this funScreenshot: Nintendo
This is a game about brushing your teeth where you can collect hats and win prizes for prolonged and thorough brushing. According to our reviewer, Luke Plunkett, there is “at least one Pokémon in your mouth at all times.” I told myself I would try and stick to games that had some similarities to the standard RPGs for this list, but there are Pokémon in your mouth. That makes your mouth a pocket. Mind blown.
They say if you tune into the Pokémon Channel exactly at midnight you will see one of the creaturesr on the screen and that Pokémon is your soulmate. Or is that Persona 4? Why not both?
Pokémon Channel strays about as far from the original Pokémon RPG format as possible. It’s a game about watching television with your Pikachu while Professor Oak watches you in turn. It’s part digital pet sim, part adventure game, and mostly boring. It’s a GameCube game that exists mainly so people making lists of Pokémon spin-offs and side games can point and laugh. Consider my obligation fulfilled.
This 2004 Interview With The Creator Of Pokémon Is Full Of Details I Love
Game Freak cofounder Satoshi Tajiri on how trading Pokémon was born
By
Carolyn Petit
One of my favorite ways to relax in the evenings is to watch this Twitch channel that streams subtitled episodes of the Japanese TV series Game Center CX. If you’re not familiar with the show, most episodes focus on comedian Shinya Arino’s desperate struggles to beat old console games. (It was recently announced that now even the PlayStation 2 is old enough to fit the show’s retro format. Excuse me while I crumble into dust.) However, when I tuned in the other night, I caught part of a special episode from 2004 in which Arino spends a great deal of time interviewing Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokémon and one of the cofounders of Game Freak. It’s a wonderful conversation that made me appreciate Tajiri’s distinctive creative outlook, and I found a video on YouTube that distills it down to some of its best bits.
Of course, today Satoshi Tajiri is best known for creating Pokémon, a series I never got into. But his story of where a crucial part of the inspiration for the first Pokémon games came from is wonderful, and helps me appreciate the magic I missed out on in the Game Boy era. He talks about playing Dragon Quest II and wanting a very useful “magic hat” (the mad cap) which reduces the MP cost of spells. Unfortunately, it was a rare drop and his luck just wasn’t panning out. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues who was also playing the game had scored two! Oh, the injustice! If only there had been some way for that colleague to give him one.
“As soon as I saw the Game Boy’s link cable capabilities, “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s it!” Tajiri tells Arino. “With this cable, you can exchange hats!’” He wanted to design a game around something that players would naturally want to exchange, “something, like that hat, that could make you go, ‘Oh, I want that!’” So everyone at Game Freak designed their ideal Pokémon, something they would want themselves, in an effort to create things players would want to collect and trade as well. You could say this little idea of his paid off.
But the interview extends well beyond just the Pokémon phenomenon, beginning with Tajiri talking about how his love of games was born. Like millions of others, it was 1978’s Space Invaders that first got Tajiri excited about the fledgling medium. (We recently caught a glimpse of what a massive impact the game had in Japan.) A junior high school student at the time, games did more than just gobble up his coins. They sparked his imagination. “I had dreams of making a sequel to Invaders,” Tajiri says.
Space Invaders was such a huge moneymaker that many companies made blatant knockoffs of Taito’s smash, including Konami with Space King and Nintendo with Space Fever. Many viewed these imitators with derision, as obvious attempts to cash in on another game’s success without bringing anything original to the table. But Tajiri approached even these games with an open mind and saw something beautiful in them, appreciating the subtle differences in the movement of alien formations. I love this ability of his to find something of value in games most people would disregard.
Later, Tajiri talks about the inspiration he took from some of Namco’s early arcade games, which he noted were entirely designed around a single specific action. “For example, with Dig Dug,” he says, “the theme was to dig. I felt the same joy I had in junior high when I learned new English verbs. That inspired me to use verbs as themes.” Even as scrolling games like Super Mario Bros. became all the rage, Tajiri had a desire to create a fixed-screen game built around a single action. “I wanted to go against the grain.” He came up with the idea of a game based around flipping floor tiles, and the result was Game Freak’s 1989 game Mendel Palace. This offers insight into how great games can emerge from very simple core ideas, and speaks to the importance of creators pursuing their own instincts even in the face of market trends.
I’ve always respected the Pokémon games, but now I have a newfound appreciation for the creative mindset of the man who unleashed them upon the world. If you watch the video, you can also hear him talk about what he learned from working with the late Gunpei Yokoi on the game Yoshi, and how his childhood obsession with insects factored into the design of Pokémon. Or you can watch the full subtitled episode on the Internet Archive and hear him talk even more about his life, game design, and the early years of Game Freak.
The Pokémon Spin-off Games Ranked From Worst To Best
From Pokémon Go to Detective Pikachu, here’s our ranking of the games where you don’t catch ‘em all
By
Kenneth Shepard
If you’re a Pokémon fan, you have no doubt experienced the mainline games with all their catching, battling, and being the very best like no one ever was. But the series has a wide selection of spin-off games that span different genres and subject matter. Even if you’ve only ever played the RPGs, there’s probably something for you in the spin-offs simply because there’s such a wide range of experiences out there. So what better to do with this eclectic list of Pokémon games than to come up with a qualitative ranking to decide which is the best? We’ve rounded up 22 of the most notable Pokémon spin-off games to rank them, from some real stinkers to some of the most important games and sub-series in the franchise.
22. Pokémon Dash
Image: The Pokémon Company
You might not have heard about Pokémon Dash, the Nintendo DS Pokémon racing game that launched in 2004. That’s because it was pretty bad. Yes, there are other bad games you’ve probably heard of, but Dash isn’t bad in any way that’s interesting. It’s just bad. It feels like a DS tech demo that somehow ended up on store shelves. The entire premise involves swiping on the handheld’s touchscreen to direct Pikachu as he runs from one goal to another. That’s pretty much it. Dash sometimes shakes things up by tying Pikachu up with balloons that you, once again, swipe to move the electric rat in the air. But all it ever really asks of you is to draw straight lines with your stylus so Pikachu knows where to go. It’s entirely unimaginative, ugly, and was all Pokémon fans had on the DS for a hot minute, so some of us bought it. Not me, though. Definitely not me.
21. Pokémon Rumble
Image: The Pokémon Company
In making this list, I was surprised to see just how many Pokémon Rumble games The Pokémon Company put out and that the latest one was as recent as 2019. The beat-em-up subseries has an off-putting visual style that re-imagines all your favorite pocket monsters as these weird, polygonal shapes, sanding them down to what essentially looks like a board game pieces. Pokémon Rumble then takes these dull board game pieces and throws them into a ring for you to control as you button mash away waves of enemies. The sub-series’ biggest impact were NFC figures you could buy and collect of a handful of Pokémon, but they were in the Rumble style and very ugly. My apologies to anyone who bought them.
20. Hey You, Pikachu! / Pokémon Channel
Image: The Pokémon Company
To my eight-year-old brain, the prospect of having a virtual pet Pikachu I could talk to through a microphone sounded like a dream. Unfortunately, the Nintendo 64 game’s tech wasn’t quite capable enough to achieve its ambition. Hey You, Pikachu! was notorious when it launched at the turn of the millennium for Pikachu’s frustrating and unresponsive AI. The idea is that the player can communicate with Pikachu through a packaged-in microphone to give him commands and directions, but Pikachu would often misunderstand or outright ignore whatever you said. In the time since, it’s been revealed that it wasn’t just a problem with programming, but the microphone itself was actually pretty terrible as well. The entire thing actually works better if you can hook up a proper mic. Poor guy wasn’t trying to be difficult, he just couldn’t hear us. While there was no direct sequel to the game, Pokémon Channel is considered to be a spiritual successor, as it once again allows you to keep Pikachu as a virtual pet. There’s just no piss poor microphone to get in the way.
19. Pokémon Café ReMix
Image: The Pokémon Company
The Pokémon series has tried its hand at several puzzle games over the years, and while Pokémon Café ReMix has a lot of really great charm to it, the actual gameplay just doesn’t hold a candle to any of the other games on this list. The Switch/mobile game’s greatest strength is its art style and character design, which are evocative of a children’s storybook. In Café ReMix, you run a cafe alongside your Pokémon and are visited by Pokémon customers looking for some sweets. Visits might come from the usual suspects like Pikachu and Eevee, but even Legendary Pokémon like Palkia or Mewtwo can show up. It’s ridiculous, but I love the idea of the actual god of space stopping by to get his silly little drinks. Still, the actual puzzle gameplay, which consists of making an order and then linking icons of Pokémon’s faces in a similar fashion to a match three game as you stir. The ReMix relaunch in 2021 added several new elements to give the gameplay depth, but it’s still not quite up to par with Trozei or Puzzle Challenge. It has, however, given us some of the cutest Pokémon character designs as it dresses up fan favorites like Charizard and Lucario in some adorable fits.
18. Pokémon Battle Revolution
Image: The Pokémon Company
When Pokémon Battle Revolution launched on the Wii in 2006, it was understandably dragged through the coals for not really being a game as much as it was a platform for competitive play. You could link your DS and play Pokémon Diamond and Pearl battles on the big screen and in 3D, and while that might be neat to the average Pokémon fan, it was light on content of its own, which made it a hard sell for many of people. That being said, it did have some of the best 3D animation of thethe series, and the developers brought Rodger Parsons, who narratrf the anime, to do the in-game battle commentary. And if that’s not the coolest shit you’ve heard all day, then I don’t know what is.
17. PokéPark
Image: The Pokémon Company
The PokéPark series has been lost amid much of the Wii-era shovelware. But while it’s not the most robust action game, there’s a lot to like in these games as a neat exploration of the Pokémon world in a way that is demonstrably uninterested in human’s relationship to it. Both PokéPark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure and its sequel PokéPark 2: Wonders Beyond follow a Pikachu who sets out on a quest through the titular PokéPark to save the area from threats unknown, all within the framework of a mediocre to bad action game. But the premise—which feels evocative of something like a Super Mario game in the way you explore its worlds, fight enemies, and interact with other Pokémon—feels really fresh, even more than a decade after launch.
16. Pokémon Masters EX
Image: The Pokémon Company
While most of the Pokémon series is focused on the titular pocket monsters, Pokémon Masters EX put the spotlight on the trainers we met in the mainline games, and to great effect. The gacha game from developer DeNA had you collect trainers and teammates as you would normally collect Pokémon in most games, creating your dream team composed of heroes and villains alike. With voice acting and character stories to follow, many of these trainers feel the most alive they’ve felt in any game, and seeing them all together warms the heart. It also gave me Raihan in formal wear, so thanks for adding that, DeNA.
15. Pokémon Trozei
Japancommercials4U2
The Pokémon Trozei subseries is another set of games often lost in the conversation of great Pokémon spin-offs, but the original DS puzzler was a delight back in 2006. The first Trozei game’s framing is also a breath of fresh air as it focuses on Lucy Fleetfoot, a secret agent who saves kidnapped Pokémon by matching their icons on a 5 x 11 grid. Okay, it’s a little silly, but the vibes were immaculate, and the puzzle mechanics were a lot of fun. Pokémon Battle Trozei, the 3DS sequel, expanded upon the matching systems with new dangers and challenges, like wild Pokémon who could interfere with your combos, as well as opening its multiplayer modes up to more people. It’s really solid, but there is, ultimately, another Pokémon puzzle game that comes out on top.
14. Pokémon Stadium
SuperNerdOtaku
Pokémon Stadium and its sequel Pokémon Stadium 2 were probably what people were hoping for with Battle Revolution. The games were primarily battle simulators, but came with enough side content that it felt like a more fleshed out experience. From some silly Mario Party-style mini-games and chances to battle long-time favorites with new teams, the Stadium games felt like both a chance to play out Game Boy game battles on a Nintendo 64 screen, as well as their own things not entirely built on the systems of something else. With the mainline games now on console, a lot of the appeal of what these games did might be lost on younger players. But back then? It was incredible to see pixel art Pokémon on the big screen.
13. Pokémon Art Academy
Illustration: The Pokémon Company
Full disclosure: I can’t draw to save my life. So Pokémon Art Academy is not my cup of tea. But watching just how much better artists were able to get out of the game on a 3DS touch screen speaks to how effective a tool it is for teaching people to draw Pokémon or anything else. You hand me a 3DS with that game in it, and I’ll maybe get you a Pikachu whose eyes and ears are in the right place, but I’ve seen some people draw some pretty incredible pieces, all thanks to Art Academy’s suite of art and educational tools. I’d love to see it ported onto mobile devices with better touchscreens, though the lack of a pack-in stylus might undermine it. Based on the art I’ve seen people make with this game on a 3DS, I’d love to see what they could pull off on a tablet.
12. Pokkén Tournament
Image: The Pokémon Company
Pokkén Tournament isn’t the most hardcore fighting game, but it’s a really neat experiment I’d love to see expanded upon. Bandai Namco molded Pokémon’s competitive nature into a new genre, and while it would have been easy to just put a bunch of fighting-type Pokémon on the roster, its line-up is full of inventive picks like Chandelure and Suicune that kept the game fresh. The fighting game lover in me wants to nitpick its weird perspective mechanics, but I still love it for swinging for the fences.
11. Pokémon Ranger
Image: The Pokémon Company
Similar to Pokémon Art Academy, I would love to see the Pokémon Ranger series continue on tablets (or even Switch) because it’s so reliant on the DS touchscreen. The Ranger series still revolved around capturing and working with Pokémon, but not in Pokéballs for battling. Instead, the titular rangers used a device called a Capture Styler to befriend wild Pokémon and use their abilities to preserve the nature around them. The Capture Styler appears as a top that circles around a Pokémon to capture it, and the player controls the Capture Styler by using the DS’ stylus and touchscreen to draw circles around wild Pokémon. The challenge is in maintaining your circles while the Pokémon fights and thrashes about, intercepting your stream. It was simple in terms of how you interacted with it, but it introduced a new view on how humans and Pokémon co-exist, and it’s a shame we haven’t had a new entry in the Ranger series since Guardian Signs launched on the DS in 2010.
10. Pokémon Conquest
Image: The Pokémon Company
It’s a real shame 2012’s Pokémon Conquest ended up being a one and done spin-off as the prospect of a Pokémon tactics game still sounds appealing 11 years later. Developed by Koei Tecmo, Conquest is a crossover between Pokémon and the Nobunaga’s Ambition series and weaves characters and concepts together to create an original story grounded in both universes’ lore. That’s all fine and well, but it also paved the way for some deep tactical battles and gorgeous sprite work. Then Nintendo just never did it again. Such a shame.
9. Pokémon Unite
Image: The Pokémon Company
I likely never would have played a MOBA if Pokémon Unite hadn’t come along and sucked me in back in 2021. I’ve fallen off the game a bit, but before that, I put in over 200 hours as a Pikachu main exclusively because I’m relentlessly stubborn and like the little yellow guy a lot. While the game is very much a “baby’s first MOBA” and doesn’t have quite the same intricacies of something like League of Legends and Dota, it’s such a neat use of the Pokémon competitive sport culture to retool those ideas for something team-based and cooperative. With each new character added, Unite finds new mechanical intricacies that are honestly even daunting to go back to after a long time away. But every time I see that TiMi Studio Group has decided to add some weirdo like Comfey or Dodrio to the roster, I know it’s going to make the game more interesting to play and master.
Not that I’ll ever play them though. I’m a Pikachu one-trick until I die.
8. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon
Image: The Pokémon Company
Spike Chunsoft is responsible for one of the longest-running spin-off series in all of Pokémon, and given how good the Mystery Dungeon games are, it’s not surprising that the dungeon crawlers have had over 15 years of staying power. The series puts the player in the shoes of a Pokémon in a world completely separate from humanity and explores the most fantasy JRPG-inspired storytelling the series has ever had (short of Pokémon Legends: Arceus). Each game has you form teams to enter hazardous zones with to rescue other Pokémon, leading to leaps in status, growth, and clientele. The series’ remixes mainline Pokémon mechanics to fit a dungeon crawling format, and in doing so, are able to carve out an identity distinct from Game Freak’s entries, while maintaining the RPG spirit fans love.
7. Pokémon Pinball
Image: The Pokémon Company
While Mystery Dungeon is still getting new entries semi-regularly, Pokémon Pinball is a subseries Nintendo and friends should get back to because we haven’t had one of these delectable collections of Pokémon Pinball tables in over 20 years, and there’s a lot more Pokémon to pull from nowadays. While a real-life Pokémon pinball machine would have been a more straightforward experience, Pokémon Pinball and its sequel Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire riff on pinball with different modes, gimmicks, and mechanics to make it feel more in-line with the franchise as a whole. That ranges from catching Pokémon who appear on the table and fighting bosses like Mewtwo through bonus stages. For something that could have easily been a throwaway cash-in, the Pokémon Pinball games are a robust imagining of how these two disparate things can come together, and I can’t believe we’ve gone this long without a new one.
6. Pokémon Snap
Image: The Pokémon Company
Both Pokémon Snap and its sequel New Pokémon Snap (didn’t take long to think of that one, I imagine) are delightful ways to portray the Pokémon world without having to delve into the way humans just came in and started capturing these poor critters in balls and made them fight each other. These games are about being as non-invasive as possible by playing as a nature photographer who travels through various Pokémon habitats to get pictures of how these creatures act when humans aren’t around. It’s a serene and joyful ride through the Pokémon world as you take photos and throw food to wild monsters, and each track is full of fun discoveries to stumble upon. New Pokémon Snap took 20 years to come out, but hopefully we won’t have to wait quite as long for a Newer Pokémon Snap.
5. Pokémon Puzzle League
Image: The Pokémon Company
Here it is, the king of Pokémon puzzle games. Pokémon Puzzle League and Pokémon Puzzle Challenge were top tier puzzle games in their own right, but their added charm as Pokémon games gave me and every other kid in the early 2000s something competitive to get invested in, as every puzzle was framed as a battle. Looking at footage of Puzzle Challenge gets me pumped even 20 years later as I remember how cathartic it was to take out tough opponents. My cartridge for Puzzle Challenge may be gone, but Puzzle League was added to Nintendo Switch Online last year, and it’s starting to feel like I need to subscribe to play one of these games again.
4. Pokémon Trading Card Game
carmen1994able
While there are video game versions of the Pokémon Trading Card Game out right now, the Game Boy Color game included an entire RPG that elevated it to near the top of this list. In premise, it’s kind of silly to imagine someone being more invested in the trading card game when actual real-life Pokémon are in this world, but the framing of trying to be a TCG champion gave me and others back in the day a great tool to learn how to play the card game through our Game Boy, and no doubt catapulted plenty of kids’ obsession with collecting the cards to new heights.
3. Pokémon Colosseum / Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness
Image: The Pokémon Company
Pokémon Colosseum and its sequel Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness are the only games that could reasonably be considered traditional Pokémon RPGs on this list, but while they share much of the battle mechanics with the mainline games, they’re not quite the same “catch ‘em all” affair. Set in the Orre region, these two games reframe the usual Pokémon catching loop to let the player steal opposing trainers’ Pokémon who have been distorted by the antagonistic Team Snagem. You can then add them to your team and purify them. While the mechanical twists are notable, Colosseum and Gale of Darkness also leaned into a darker storytelling, which gave them a distinct tone separate from other Pokémon games. They’re not quite to the levels of Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet’s endgame, but they still stand out as some of the coolest explorations of the Pokémon universe. Oh, and antagonist Miror B. is forever an icon.
2. Detective Pikachu
Image: The Pokémon Company
Everything about Detective Pikachu shouldn’t work. It’s a mystery game all about a talking Pikachu who teams up with a sad teenager who’s trying to find his missing father, and does so through the format of an adventure game. It’s not as mechanically complex as something like an old LucasArts game or as narratively complex as a Danganronpa, but its mysteries, deductions, and mechanics are an entertaining spin on what you would expect from a Pokémon game. On top of this, it’s also one of the most fascinating takes on the Pokémon universe as its set in a city where Pokémon and humanity live together as equals. Pokémon, such as a Ludicolo who works as a barista, hold down jobs, and battling is outlawed. Detective Pikachu asks you plenty of questions as you solve its mysteries, but it also tacitly asks if life can be different for Pokémon in this world, and more importantly, can it be better?
1. Pokémon Go
Image: The Pokémon Company
I know it might be tough to hear for a lot of the hardcore Pokémon community, but there really isn’t a Pokémon game as important as Pokémon Go. Niantic’s mobile collect-a-thon game has fundamentally changed what Pokémon is to most people. When the game launched on mobile in 2016, that was the closest we ever got to world peace. It brought entire communities of people together, served as the basis of regular gatherings like Pokémon Go Fest, is somehow still coming up in reports about people doing crimes while playing it, and changed the way Game Freak thinks about post-game support for mainline entries like Scarlet and Violet with the introduction of raid battles. As a game, it has its issues, though Niantic has supported the game for nearly seven years now after multiple other projects have failed to take off. But as a moment? Pokémon Go is the most important game in the franchise since the original Game Boy games.
Pokémon And Mario Kart Fans Fight Nintendo Network Shutdown To Beat 14-Year-Old Halo 2 Record
A handful of players are still online a month after the Wii U and 3DS servers went offline
By
Ethan Gach
In 2010, a group of Halo 2 diehards called “Noble 14” stayed logged into the multiplayer shooter for weeks after Microsoft turned off the online servers for the original Xbox on April 14. The service’s last player was Apache N4SIR who finally got booted just after midnight on May 11. Fourteen years later, a group of Nintendo fans battling last month’s Wii U and 3DS online server shutdown in games like Pokémon X and Y and Xenoblade Chronicles X, just beat that record.
They’ve taken to calling themselves the “Crazy 8” and some of them are still playing online even though Nintendo officially turned off the servers for its last generation of consoles on April 8.
“We did it!” tweeted YouTuber GaffsNotLaffs, who’s been documenting their efforts. “Everyone on this list has stayed online on Nintendo Network for longer after its shutdown than Apache N4SIR did after the original Xbox Live shut down on Halo 2!”
The Crazy 8 included players Amanda in Pokémon X and Y, Fishguy 6564 and Gearworks in Mario Kart 7, SlitherySheep in Mario Maker, Lcd101 in Splatoon, and Omoroid, Eeveh-roo-deh, and Gorrah!! in Xenoblade Chronicles X. “The Crazy 8 of the Nintendo Network have officially beaten the Noble 14’s record. It’s been an amazing, amazing journey. I love all of you,” tweeted Lcd101, the lone surviving squid kid.
The circus began after Nintendo brought the networks for online play on Wii U and 3DS offline last month. Players who kept their games running stayed connected though, able to still view multiplayer lobbies and use internet features as long as they didn’t turn off their consoles. “Good morning, squid researchers!” wrote Lcd101 on April 10. “As you can see, I’m still in the lobby. I ran out of food, but I’ve discovered that drinking one’s own ink could be a suitable replacement…”
Being the only player left in the original Splatoon, they weren’t able to actually play a match, but they did report on each day’s map rotations and item updates in the shop. The Squid Sisters’ last broadcast was on April 30, at which point the game remained fixed on Blackbelly Skatepark and Port Mackerel for Turf War, and Bluefin Depot and Moray Towers for Rainmaker.
Nintendo superfans were so enthusiastic about the Crazy 8 that at least one lied to pretend to be a part of it, falsely claiming they were still online in Pokémon Ultra Sun. “April 11th was when I actually disconnected,” wrote user TKJTK in a confession in the group’s Discord after sending in an edited photo of their handheld to fake still appearing online. “I did this because I found it cool to be one of the last people online even if I wasn’t actually online today.” They said they had bailed earlier because their 3DS had been getting really hot, even when it wasn’t charging, and they didn’t want to risk the battery exploding.
The last days of the Wii U and 3DS network services were filled with other twists and turns. When stalwarts thought their numbers were dwindling, a secret group of additional Xenoblade Chronicles X players who were still online were discovered overseas. Meanwhile, Cyndaquil_x, the last Mario Kart 8 player, was kicked just days before the record was broken after suffering the most unlucky two minute internet outage imaginable.
The Crazy 8 is now the “Lucky 7” after Xenoblade Chronicles X player Gorrah!! disconnected on May 5, but it appears for now the rest are still going strong. It’s unclear when some of them will ever log off. “This is your captain speaking with your daily update, sponsored by Forge!” Lcd101 tweeted yesterday. “It’s day twenty-seven and Forge has these awesome Pilot Goggles in stock at Cooler Heads again! They still remind me of a squid I knew many- HEY!! Get that scrap of paper with the date off my screen!!”
Pokémon Company Removes Seven-Year-Old Call Of Duty Video Featuring Pikachu
Some creators are worried that the company behind the Pokémon franchise is going 'scorched Earth'
By
Zack Zwiezen
According to a YouTuber, The Pokémon Company requested that YouTube remove a seven-year-old video showcasing modded Pokémon monsters in aCall of Duty: Zombiesmatch.
On March 19, as first spotted by IGN, NoahJ456, a popular Call of Duty content creator who has over 5 million subscribers on YouTube, tweeted an image of a copyright removal strike email. The email appears to notify them that a video on their channel featuring modded Pokemon had been removed directly via a request from The Pokémon Company. NoahJ456 also tweeted a warning to other YouTubers with videos featuring any kind of Pokémon mods, telling them to “delete” or “unlist” that content “ASAP.”
“Just got a manual strike for a video I made seven years ago featuring Pokémon modded into COD Zombies,” posted NoahJ456. “Two more strikes and my channel gets deleted.”
In a follow-up tweet, responding to a user asking if the popular creator can appeal the strike, NoahJ456 acknowledged that The Pokémon Company was “technically within their rights” to strike the video from his channel. And it seems unlikely that an appeal would work. “Unless they have a change of heart (lol) the strike will stay,” added NoahJ456.
The situation has spooked some Pokémon content creators who fear that The Pokémon Company might be ramping up its fight against modded content and videos featuring the famous pocket monsters.
One creator, ToastedShoes, blamed himself and his Palworld x Pokemon mod video for causing the company to start cracking down. In January 2024, ToastedShoes uploaded a teaser of a mod that added Pokémon monsters to Palworld—a survival game commonly referred to as “Pokémon with guns.” That video was soon taken down via a DMCA claim from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. Now, some creators are worried that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are going “scorched Earth” and will begin nuking even decade-old videos from the internet and possibly cause some channels to be completely shut down.
We’ve seen this kind of behavior from Nintendo in the past, when it began cracking down on YouTube channels that uploaded music from Mario,Kirby, and other Nintendo games, letting folks listen to these tracks easily. Much of this music isn’t available on Spotify or other streaming platforms, so fans stepped in to provide an option and Nintendo slammed the hammer down on them.
It’s possible, but not certain, that Palworldhas Nintendo and The Pokémon Company jumpy and more on the offensive legally. On January 24, The Pokémon Company confirmed it was investigating and looking into what many assumed was Palworld over its use of Pokémon-like designs. So far, there’s been no public movement against Palworld and developer Pocketpair made by The Pokémon Company, but we’ll wait and see.
Pokémon Scarlet And Violet’s Preorder Bonuses Are So Terrible, They're Getting Mocked
The community is not impressed by the in-game items that they will receive for purchasing ahead of launch
By
Sisi Jiang
Gamer salt over preorder bonuses is nothing new. But this time, the Pokémon community’s salt feels partially justified. Amazon recently showed an infographic that details what fans can get by ordering Scarlet and Violet digitally ahead of launch: A set that includes 10 potions, 10 antidotes, and three revives. The rewards feel so inconsequential that fans are mocking the bonuses online.
We already learned of these bonuses earlier this month, But having the paltry rewards shown in an image is a lot different than simply reading about them in a bulleted list.
“I originally had zero interest in these games, but once they said I could preorder to receive 10 potions in-game, that’s when everything changed,” one user sarcastically remarked, pointing out that the paltry bonuses likely weren’t going to compel anyone to buy one of Nintendo’s most anticipated games of the year. Another fan was more overt in their criticism: “You can literally just defeat two or three trainers on the first route to get enough Pokédollars to buy all of these items”
To be fair, players who buy the game digitally will also receive five full heals, three ethers, a rare candy, and a nugget. But those are still somewhat common items that you’ll regularly stumble upon in-game. Some fans have pointed out that Japanese Scarlet and Violet buyers are getting physical artbooks, which is more in line with what most fans expect when they preorder a game. Others are relieving the days of getting exclusive Pokémon in distribution events, like a special Torchic in Pokémon X and Y.
However, that’s just for if you purchase a single game digitally. Players who purchase the two-pack of both versions will receive 100 Pokéballs. If you buy the game from the official Pokémon Center, you’ll be able to obtain this floral-print backpack. Maybe I’d be more excited if the Pokémon Center hadn’t given me a Scorbunny plush toy for preordering Pokémon Shield a few years ago.
What the store listings should have advertised is the special crystal Pikachu that players will get if they buy the game before February 28, 2023. This Pikachu can use the flying-type move Fly, which it can’t learn naturally. So there is a special bonus for buying the game early, but it’s not exclusive to simply buying Scarlet and Violet before the launch date.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be released on November 18.
The Pokémon Company Buys Its Trading Card Manufacturer While Demand Soars
The Pokémon Company wants to make it easier for people to get their hands on the cards
By
Sisi Jiang
The Pokémon Company has announced that it will be acquiring The Millenium Print Group, the manufacturer that has been printing the Pokémon trading card game since 2015. According to a press release put out by TPC, Millenium will remain autonomous, while benefiting from TPC’s investments and expertise to expand its current production capabilities.
According to Kenji Okubo, the president of TPC: “By joining forces in a more meaningful way, our goal is to enhance the ways our organizations work together and continue to bring the highest quality Pokémon TCG products to market. Simultaneously, we aim to develop Millennium into an even better, bigger, state-of-the-art version of their already exceptional organization, benefitting not just Pokémon, but all of their customers.”
Pokémon cards have been going for enormous sums in recent years. Just this month, Logan Paul bought a Pikachu card for $6 million, setting a world record for the most expensive card sold in a private auction. While Pokémon cards have become one way for the mega-rich to flex their wealth, there’s still a ton of interest among ordinary collectors and enthusiasts. Twitch content creators have been capitalizing on the Pokémon card meta by opening card packs on stream.
The acquisition does raise some hilarious questions about why The Pokémon Company didn’t already own their own card printer. Its partner company, Nintendo, has recently made similar moves to acquire companies I already assumed that it owned. I am expecting Nintendo to also acquire TPC any day now (this is a joke).
From the big games like Zelda to Switch accessories and merchandise, there’s something for the Nintendo fan in your…
By
Kenneth Shepard
Do you have a loved one on your holiday gift list who is perpetually attached to their Switch? Are they always trying to save a princess, pay off their debt to an anthropomorphic raccoon, or catch ‘em all? Are they so busy upholding the monarchy and putting cute little creatures into ball prisons that they aren’t telling you what they want for presents? Well, we’ve got a few suggestions to help you find the perfect gift for the Nintendo fan in your life.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - $70
Image: Nintendo
The biggest game of 2023 for the Switch was easily The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and anyone who somehow didn’t buy the game in the past six months will be overjoyed to see it under the tree come Christmas morning. Link and Zelda’s latest adventure is huge in scope, designed around experimentation and creativity, and has some really affecting story moments that rank among the series’ best. It’s a lovely next step in Breath of the Wild’s open-world evolution of the series and remains one of the most frequent mentions in conversations about what deserves to be 2023’s Game of the Year. If your loved one hasn’t played it and owns a Switch, this is the kind of game that makes a holiday morning memorable.
Detective Pikachu Returns - $50
Image: The Pokémon Company
A sequel to the 2018 3DS game, Detective Pikachu Returns is a simple, but really solid adventure game set in the Pokémon world. If you’re buying this for a younger child, just know that it will require some reading to get through, but it’s otherwise easy to parse. The game follows the titular Pokémon sleuth and Tim Goodman as they solve mysteries in Ryme City. It has puzzle solving, deduction, and an actually pretty great story without all the competitive battling that Pokémon typically centers on.
Pikmin 4 - $60
Image: Nintendo
Much like Detective Pikachu Returns, Pikmin 4 is a pretty approachable take on a genre that can often be hard for people to get into. Nintendo’s take on the RTS genre is cute (if secretly harrowing in premise), and finds a welcome balance between challenge and accessibility. The first three games are also available on Switch, as well, so if you wanted to spend roughly $170 for four games, you could buy someone the entire set.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder - $60
Image: Nintendo
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an absolute delight. It riffs on the series’ sidescrolling formula in innovative ways, and is all the fresher for it. Wonder can also be played cooperatively with a group of four, so it makes for a great family activity right after the presents have been opened.
Joy-Con charging accessories
Image: Nintendo
When the Switch comes out of the box, the only way to charge its detachable Joy-Con controllers is by attaching them to the device itself. That means if you’re trying to play on your TV but your controllers are dying, you have to switch to handheld mode just to charge them. You have a few options in this scenario, including buying multiple sets of controllers, but even then, you won’t be able to charge them all at the same time. That’s why it’s worth investing in a dedicated Joy-Con charger like the Charging Dock Nintendo sells for $30.
But if you want something more immediate, the Joy-Con charging grip lets you charge your controllers while using them like any other controller. You can find those for as cheap as $20.
Custom Joy-Con commissions
Image: Nintendo
If you want something really tailored to someone’s interests and are willing to shell out a bit more cash, there are artists who make custom Joy-Cons on sites like Etsy. The options range from choosing distinctive colors to getting original designs on your controllers. Speaking personally, I’d love a custom set of Joy-Cons to put on display rather than play with, but to each their own.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie on Blu-ray - $25
Image: Nintendo / Illumination
While it might have been divisive, there’s no denying people showed up in droves to see TheSuper Mario Bros. Movie this year. The film is available on digital storefronts, but if you want something to put under the tree, the Blu-ray version has a bunch of special features to watch through after you’ve heard Jack Black croon for Peach.
The Tears of the Kingdom Amiibo figures - $16
Image: Nintendo
The Amiibo craze isn’t quite what it used to be, so it’s pretty easy to find Nintendo’s small, high-quality figures for a reasonable price. That includes the Tears of the Kingdom set, which has figures of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf. All three make for lovely display pieces, but they also unlock materials and other doodads in Tears of the Kingdom.
The Super Mario Lego sets
Image: Lego / Nintendo
Nintendo’s collaboration with Lego has brought several building sets featuring Mario, his friends, and his enemies to store shelves over the years. Every time a new one sprouts up I’m reminded how expensive Lego sets can be, but also once again I see how high-quality the final product is. Nintendo has a whole page on its store for the Mario Lego line, ranging from smaller, $10 sets featuring maybe a character or two, to an elaborate, $270 one to build a giant Bowser. You can also see Super Mario sets highlighted on the Lego website.
HORI Split Pad Pro - $50
Image: HORI / Nintendo
If you like playing your Switch in handheld mode but find the Joy-Con form factor lacking, the HORI Split Pad Pro gives you a better grip and bigger buttons. It even has back buttons you can assign to whatever you like. It’s frankly a steal at $50 considering Joy-Cons retail for $80 and feel worse.
A Pokémon Sitting Cutie plush
Image: The Pokémon Company
Are you looking for something for the Pokémon trainer in your life? The Pokémon Company has spent the last few years in an ongoing effort to make an affordable plush for each of the 1000+ Pokémon with the Sitting Cuties line. Right now they’re about halfway through the Pokédex. As the name suggests, these plushies sit, which makes them perfect to place on a desk or shelf. This is one of the few merch lines in Pokémon history that is making something for every Pokémon. Statistically speaking, each Pokémon is probably somebody’s favorite, so this is a great pick if your loved one’s fave doesn’t get a lot of attention.
They’re high quality, cheap, and right now you can get one of any of the first 649 Pokémon from the first five generations. Some of them can be found on the Pokémon Center website, but others might not be in stock. Your best bet in that scenario is to check something like eBay.
Nintendo Hanafuda Cards - $25
Image: Nintendo
A lot of people don’t realize Nintendo started out as a manufacturer for Hanafuda cards. These are for traditional Japanese card games, and while Nintendo has since become a giant in the video game industry, the company still pays tribute to its roots with modern, Mario-branded cards like the ones it made in the late 1800s. If your gift receiver-to-be might appreciate something that feels like a part of Nintendo’s history, this is a perfect, inexpensive gift.
Ask Iwata book - $15
Image: Viz Media
Satoru Iwata, the late president of Nintendo from 2002 until his passing in 2015, took part in a regular interview series called “Iwata Asks,” in which he would discuss game development, the industry, and leading Nintendo with candor and insight. These interviews have since been translated into English and compiled into a book called Ask Iwata. The book offers a lot of behind-the-scenes knowledge into Iwata’s thinking during his tenure at the company, and even if you think you know the stories discussed, it’s worth reading it all in one place to get a sense of his storied career and what others can still learn from his life.
Animal Crossing welcome sign - $95
Image: WayforkWoodworks on Etsy
The best part about making your home in Animal Crossing is furnishing something that feels uniquely yours. We know the people who poured their heart and soul into their New Horizon islands are all about interior decorating and giving their space a personal touch. So why not combine those things and give the Animal Crossing lover in your life a sign that welcomes people into their home, bedroom, or establishment, all in the style of Nintendo’s beloved life sim? These wooden signs are handmade by WayforkWoodworks on Etsy by commission, so you’ll definitely want to get an order in as soon as possible.
The Legend of Zelda manga Legendary Edition Box Set
Viz Media
Manga adaptations can be hit or miss, but the Legend of Zelda manga actually does a pretty great job of adapting the video game source material to paper. Viz Media is translating the series to English, and it covers the events of games like Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, A Link to the Past, and many more. However, if you want to buy several of these runs, why not try the Legendary Edition box set Viz released, which includes eight series into five hardback books in a treasure chest that makes the Zelda treasure chest sound when you open it? You can find it ranging from $80 to $125 depending on where you look, and it contains Ocarina of Time, Oracle of Seasons / Ages, Majora’s Mask, A Link to the Past, The Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, and Four Swords.
Splatoon squid hats
Image: Etsy
Is someone on your list a squid that’s also a kid? It turns out there are some pretty cute Splatoon-like squid hats on places like Etsy that will keep their head warm while they also cover the sidewalk with paint to mark their territory. Plus, it’s a lot cheaper than buying any of the Splattershot replica water guns that it’s too cold to play with anyway.
Digital eShop cards
Image: Nintendo
While it might not be as exciting as having something for them to rip open on Christmas day, a Nintendo eShop card is probably the safest bet for buying a Switch owner a gift this holiday season. They can buy their own games, and you don’t risk getting them something they don’t like and resent you for. Now, the power is in their hands to waste their own money and you get to know you did your part and are not responsible for what comes after. These cards are valued at $10, $20, $25, and $50, so choose what’s in your budget and let them figure it out.
Pokémon Pioneer, Game Freak Co-Founder Junichi Masuda Leaves Studio For Bigger Role
The co-founder and Pokémon director makes the jump to 'transcend the boundaries of video games'
By
John Walker
Junichi Masuda, Game Freak’s former managing director and one of the company’s founding members, has stepped down from the role, to take up a new, far more senior position as The Pokémon Company’s “Chief Creative Fellow.”
Masuda has had a pivotal role in the creation and development of the Pokémon franchise. A programmer on the very first Pokémon Red/Blue (and indeed 1996's Japanese Pocket Monsters), he went on to become director of the mainline series from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire to Pokémon X & Y. Alongside these roles, he frequently created the music for the series too, as well as being directly involved in naming and designing many of the monsters. Now, he’s ascended to a far more powerful position, with responsibilities for the Pokémon franchise as a whole.
The developer worked on every mainline game in some capacity, and was even the person who wrote the base game concept document for Pokémon GO.
In 2018, Masuda made it clear that he was ready to move on from directing Pokémon titles, telling the official Pokémon site that Let’s Go, Pikachu, and Let’s Go, Eevee, would be his last time at the helm. He wanted “the younger generation” at Game Freak to get a chance with the series.
Four years later, and he’s officially left the studio, but not the franchise. Taking on splendid title of The Pokémon Company’s Chief Creative Fellow (which sounds like it should be one rank up from Top Ideas Chap), where it seems his role will be continuing his innovative approach the the pocket monsters. This new title gives him far greater responsibility for Pokémon overall, including the card game, screen adaptations, brand management, manga and so on.
This is a significant move for mainline Pokémon games too, given Masuda’s constant involvement with the series from its creation. It means Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be the first main entries in the series with which Masuda won’t have been directly involved, which will likely give newer developers a better chance to imprint on the games.
“I would like to express my heart-felt thanks to all Pokémon fans,” Masuda says in a statement. “I hope to transcend the boundaries of video games by trying to offer greater surprises, fun and excitement to people all over the world, while doing my utmost to connect people, expand the circle of ‘play’ and to help bring about a richer world for us to share.”
Every Pokemon is interesting and worth talking about. I don’t play a ton of Pokemon, but I do enjoy the universe and…
By
Zack Zwiezen
Every Pokemon is interesting and worth talking about. I don’t play a ton of Pokemon, but I do enjoy the universe and I love learning more about the creatures in it. So, Here’s Another Pokemon! It’s Pikachu!
Pikachu Details
Type: Electric
Average Height: 1' 04"
Average Weight: 13.2 lbs
First Added In Generation I
Happy Birthday, Pokemon! Today is the 25 anniversary of the Pokemon franchise. Wild! It’s probably older than a lot of folks who read Kotaku. I was only four years old when Pokemon started. While I had some cards and books, I never quite enjoyed it as much as others I knew. But I did like Pikachu. So on this big day, it seemed the perfect time to finally talk about Pikachu. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
Sometimes when writing these posts, I have to really, REALLY dig to find interesting information or facts. With Pikachu, that’s even more true. But not because there isn’t a lot of words on the internet about Pikachu. The opposite is true. Basically, everything about this famous little rat that could be said has already been said. I doubt I could surprise or entertain you with any weird facts about it because... it’s Pikachu. I don’t need to say it, you already know, but it’s an electrical rat that is one of the very first Pokemon we ever see in the anime.
I wonder, when the artists were working on the first generation of Pokemon, did any of them realize that Pikachu was going to be so popular. It’s become the de facto mascot of the franchise and is possibly one of the most iconic characters on the planet. And what I find so impressive about Pikachu and its success is that, not to be mean, but its design is so simple. It’s a chubby rat with a weird tail and some red dots on its face. It’s so simple, so basic and so damn perfect. It can be drawn by most people and kids, even if they lack any artistic skill. And yet, it is instantly identifiable. Like I said, impressive.
I know there is some hatred and anger directed at Pikachu, which I can understand. It’s the Elmo situation. A popular and cute character overshadows an entire show or franchise. But it’s not Pikachu’s fault he’s so adorable and looks great in any hat. And at the end of the day, Pokemon fans should be thankful that Pikachu ended up being the mascot of the franchise. I doubt as many folks would be into Pokemon in 2021 if like... Mr. Mime was the Pokemon that Nintendo and Gamefreak pushed all the time. So thank you Pikachu, you saved us all from that horrible timeline.
Random Facts
Oh yeah, while digging through the HUGE Bulbapedia page for Pikachu, I found the tidbit about how it if is tired it isn’t as powerful. The more it sleeps the stronger its electrical attacks become.
It’s wild how Pikachu’s design has changed over the last 25 years. From a super chubby rat to a lean and sleek rodent. Though, I’ll always have a soft spot for that original plus-sized boy.
I don’t understand why people get so mad at folks who say Pikachu is their favorite Pokemon. People are allowed to like popular things. At least they don’t like Pyukumku or something awful like that.
Best Comment From Last Week
Most importantly, its mouth looks like an anus. Why?
-Zap Rowsdower
Because this thing was designed by someone after they were challenged to create the worst Pokemon ever. (I assume.)
The Pikabug Is An Important Part Of Pokémon History
Only 22 of these Pikachu-inspired Volkswagen Beetles were made
By
Kenneth Shepard
In 1998, Nintendo was in the early years of promoting Pokémon while Game Freak’s monster-capturing phenomenon was making its way to the west after success in Japan. Part of that effort included repurposing 20 Volkswagen Beetle cars to look like Pikachu, the series’ adorable, electric mouse mascot, complete with pointed ears on the roof, red cheeks underneath the headlights, and the signature lightning bolt tail coming out of the trunk. These cars were used at events, traveled to malls and toy shops, and housed Nintendo 64 consoles for fans to play games on. After the company was done with them, the cars were given away in contests. Now, collectors are searching for the Beetles, and archivist Grace Klich has one parked at her Virginia home.
Klich, who is known as @mewisme700 on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, has been collecting vintage Pokémon merch since 2010 when she was in high school. While some fans best know Pikachu and all his friends from video games or the anime, Klich tells Kotaku that merchandise has always been her biggest attachment to the franchise. This has been in service of preserving Pokémon’s forgotten history, which extends to the Pikachu Volkswagen Beetle.
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise.
These 20 cars (two sets of 10 and two additional vehicles were made by FAO Schwarz, based on Klich’s research) were originally used in promotional events, including one in Topeka, Kansas. Each of them were numbered, and Klich has the seventh one. By the time the Pikachu Beetle car started circulating through collector circles, it had been repurposed to promote Pokémon 3: The Movie. Initially, the cars were given away in a contest held by Warner Bros. and AOL for the movie, and the winner of Pikabug #7 lived in Norfolk, Virginia, about two hours away from Klich. After some time, the winner gave the car to a family friend.
Klich had heard stories in high school that one of these cars was somewhere in Virginia and even tried calling the DMV to find it. As it turns out, the car wouldn’t enter her sightline until much later when she stumbled upon a listing for it on Facebook in 2019.
“[The previous owner] was having all these issues with it and was just tired of messing with it and was selling it,” she said. “I was just like, ‘I can get it tomorrow. I will be there, like, I’m only two hours away, like, please let me buy this car.’ He had tons of interest in it, and he ended up selling it to me just because I was so close and I was pretty well knowledgeable on the car itself.”
Klich says Pikabug #7 was in “rough shape” when she first got it, as it had been mostly sitting in a field for several years by the time it was listed on Facebook. In the years since she bought it, she estimates she’s spent around $6,000 in repairs and registration taxes, at least $1,000 of which went toward fixing the tail on the trunk. However, the car recently became eligible for antique plates, meaning she no longer has to pay for registration state inspection. After years of repairs, Klich says she mostly just has minor bodywork left, but it took quite a bit of time and money to get there.
“The previous owner was in an accident with it. So it has some very minor damage on the back bumper,” she said. “And then the hood has a dent, but otherwise, like, I have completely gutted it and replaced the inside. It had a lot of mold damage, and it was a mess. I don’t know if you ever sat in a new Beetle, but their insides are horrible. They are like just cheap plastic junk. They’re terrible. So I had all the inside replaced. That is an older car. I have to spend a lot of money trying to keep the thing going. [...] Thank God, that has been such a process to get on. But I’m very excited that it’s so close to being done.”
The others are likely still out there in one form or another. As such, she’s been in contact with a handful of collectors in Kentucky, Mexico, and elsewhere in Virginia who own the other parts of the set, while some remain unaccounted for. Though she knows about sightings in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“There was one that a car dealership owns in Illinois that’s been on display for years. I’ve actually been talking with the car dealership and they just use it kind of as like an eye-catcher in their parking lot,” Klich said. “I ran the Carfax on it. It is an official Pikachu car, and a lot of people like on my TikTok will be like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s one in Chicago. I’ve seen the one in Chicago, and it is an official one.’ I kind of makes me sad that it’s a billboard, but I’m just happy that it exists.”
Photo: Grace Klich
Despite being in contact with other collectors and knowing the location of other Pikachu cars, Klich says she’s content with the one she has and isn’t looking to buy up any of the others. Though she also has a Lugia PT Cruiser, which was part of the Gold and Silver marketing campaign. With just five produced, these cars modeled after the psychic/flying bird are far more rare. Klich managed to find one through a Facebook group dedicated to New Beetle cars. When she posted a photo of her hers, someone messaged her about the Lugia Cruiser, resulting in the sale.
“I made him an offer and had it shipped here I’m beyond thankful and blessed by the Pokémon gods that I have it,” Klich said. “But I’m good. No more Pokémon cars. Two is plenty. I’m broke as it is with the two.”
Since fixing up the Beetle, Klich now takes the car to anime conventions. Initially, she would display the car at events and allow people to take photos in the car for a fee, but now she sells her own merchandise (often based on old Pokémon items) to fund her work. It’s also become a centerpiece in her online platform and community, with social media platforms like TikTok helping her draw in vintage Pokémon merch fans. According to Klich, the platform she’s built has been key to her and others in archivist work finding new media and merchandise to document Pokémon’s lost history. That means finding old promotional materials, footage of the Pokémon Center New York store, or images and video of original promotional events that featured the Pikachu cars. She hopes her reach online will encourage people to come forward with pieces of history they may not realize they have.
“A lot of archiving is a waiting game,” she said. “It’s waiting for people to come forward with stuff because we didn’t have digital media. And so I’m sure there’s tons of footage sitting on VHS tapes in people’s closets and attics all across America. It’s just a matter of people coming forward with them and digitizing them and uploading them online.”
mewisme700
Klich says she first gained interest in Pokémon archival work because of the now-defunct Pokémon Center New York flagship store.
“I was looking at merch from there, and I realized how much the internet was lacking in information on the store. And that was kind of my first piece of archival work, was working on a website to essentially gather as much information as I could about this defunct store. So before that website, the store was basically lost to time,” she said.
Because of that focus on preservation, much of Klich’s collection is made up of some oddball items. Examples include wrappers for Pokémon popsicles, unused Colgate toothpaste emblazoned with Pikachu’s face, and old promotional cereal boxes.
“I love myself a good hunt for hard-to-find merch,” she said. “That’s kind of why I’m not into cards. I don’t think it’s interesting when I can just go on eBay and buy essentially any card that I want. Obviously, there’s some exclusions to that, like specialty cards and stuff. But for the most part, you know, you can just buy whatever card you want on eBay. And I like things that are a little bit more difficult to find, things that people look at my collection and think, man, I totally forgot about that existing, you know, things that people didn’t think to keep, you know, things that were thrown out.”
Photo: Grace Klich
But beyond the already elusive candy wrappers and cereal boxes, a great deal of digital media from the time has become nearly impossible to preserve. The demise of Flash, for instance, has made it nigh impossible to find viewable images and videos of Pokémon events from the 90s period Klich focuses on through sources like Wayback Machine.
“I know there was a lot of footage of the launch Pokémon event in Topeka, Kansas, listed on the website for the Topeka Capital-Journal,” she said. “It was all archived on the site, but it would not let me download any of that video footage, which was just devastating because there’s no footage from that event besides like a few clips. So yeah, sometimes it’ll work. I’ve gotten footage to work before, but it is like once in a blue moon.”
Klich notes that she prefers the neglected sides of the franchise that haven’t been kept up with. Alongside merch, she tries to find information about old promotional events like a live-action pirate ship show that took place in Australia, which is only documented through tiny magazine articles. These events might have been forgotten by some, but were likely exciting and formative for young fans in the early days of Pokémon. Klich doesn’t want this era of the series to be lost just because we didn’t have the same tools to document these moments we do now.
“We got to know the history of the greatest franchise ever and of every piece of history, even the weird and obscure events,” she said. “It’s important. At some point in time, that event made hundreds of kids happy. Like that was the highlight of their little child life. It’s important to make sure that these events don’t get forgotten to time. So, that’s what I’m trying to do as an archivist making sure this stuff doesn’t get forgotten.”
New Nintendo Numbers: If Mario Kart 8 Keeps Selling Like This, We’re Never Getting A Sequel
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still putting up Pokémon-tier numbers
By
Ari Notis
If you were holding your breath for news of Mario Kart 9, you might as well exhale. The racer’s immediate predecessor, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, is still one of publisher Nintendo’s best-selling games on Switch. It has sold a hair short of 10 million copies over the past year, according to an earnings statement published today.
Just to reiterate: 2017’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a moderately spruced-up version of a game that launched alongside the printing press, is still putting up numbers that come within spitting distance of Pokémon, a perennial sales blockbuster. In fact, for Nintendo’s fiscal year 2022, which ran from last April through the end of this March, Pokémon is the only series whose games outsold Kart.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a spin-off from the mainline series that came out in January, sold 12.6 million copies. November’s Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes, meanwhile, sold a staggering 14.6 million copies. (It’s worth noting, however, that some Pokémon fans tend to buy both versions to more easily trade for version-exclusive Pokémon.) Mario Party Superstars, another Nintendo nostalgia cash-in, sold close to 7 million copies, while pandemic time-sink Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold roughly 6 million.
Nintendo has demonstrated an impressive ability to squeeze blood from the Mario Kart 8 stone. During a February Nintendo Direct, amid a fever-pitch rumor mill that suggested Mario Kart 9 may or may not be in the works, Nintendo revealed the game’s Booster Course Pack, a wave of new downloadable content for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The pack didn’t include anything totally new, mind you: It was a collection of 48 reimagined maps from Mario Karts past, partitioned into bundles, where a handful would come out every few months.
Fans said these versions of the maps are a graphical downgrade compared to even, oh, Mario Kart Tour, a mobile spin-off. Subscribers to Nintendo Switch Online’s premium tier can access the not-quite-new courses as soon as they’re released. Otherwise, the Booster Course Pack is available separately for $25. The last batch of maps is planned for release before the end of next year.
Nintendo Osaka is coming to the Japanese city later next year
By
Brian Ashcraft
While you’d think Nintendo would have a slew of official shops in Japan, the Kyoto-based game company only has one. Located in Tokyo, the store, cleverly called Nintendo Tokyo, opened in November 2019. But that is going to change because now, in November 2021, Nintendo has announced a second one.
Located in Osaka, it will also have a very clever name: Nintendo Osaka. Opening in late 2022, the shop will be in the Daimaru department store in Umeda, which is one of the central locations in the city. Above is the store’s logo, which looks exactly like, you guessed it, the Tokyo branch’s one.
As with Nintendo Tokyo, Nintendo Osaka will be filled with character-branded merchandise. In case you missed it, check out this previous report showing the Tokyo location around when it first opened. Nintendo manages its retail locations directly, which helps ensure the product quality and the overall experience.
This will be only Nintendo’s second official shop in Japan (there is also a Nintendo New York, which was previously called the Nintendo World Store), but I imagine other possible locations in Japan for shops could be Kyoto, Fukuoka, and Sapporo. Pokémon has official retail stores all across Japan called Pokémon Centers, so we’ll have to see if Nintendo plans to expand these stores similarly.
Back when Nintendo first announced Nintendo Tokyo, the company explained its goal for the shop in the official announcement, writing, “In addition to selling products such as video game systems, software and character-based merchandise, we plan to host events and offer opportunities to play games at Nintendo Tokyo. We are preparing to make this store, which will be a new base for communicating Nintendo information in Japan, an enjoyable place for a wide range of consumers.”
Nintendo will announce more details about its upcoming Osaka location at a later date.
The infamous ‘bus’ ad for Pokémon Red and Blue haunts me to this day
By
Kenneth Shepard
Over the years I’ve caught many a Pokémon memory. From my first glimpse of the poster for Pokémon: The First Movie in a movie theater as a young child, to facing the final boss of last year’s Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, my nearly lifelong experience with Game Freak’s multimedia franchise forms a flowing tapestry of wonderful moments that I never want to forget. But I had completely forgotten about an infamous 1998 TV/VHS commercial for Red and Blue, in which a manaical bus driver squashes Pikachu and company with a car crusher. And now that I remember it, I wish to forget.
The Pokémon Company / Someguy12121
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s weekly Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise.
In fairness to the ad, it’s very much a product of ‘90s video game marketing, which was often over the top, crude, and edgy. But looking at the video of a bus driver collecting swaths of Pocket Monsters all under the guise of public transit, it’s kind of wild to compare the tone of Pokémon marketing at the turn of the century to what it is now.
A lot of modern Pokémon marketing leans into the “wholesome” side of the franchise, with themes of friendship and how a journey is best taken when taken together. Some of the most recent live-action ads, like the original Scarlet and Violet reveal trailer, lean into the wonder of the world more so than hamming up the collectathon aspect.
The old “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” slogan has been retired from the franchise for around a decade at this point, having last appeared as part of a defunct website promotion for Pokémon X and Y, so the idea that Pokémon are something to be tricked and captured hasn’t been a major point in how The Pokémon Company presents the franchise for a bit. It feels like a major contrast to the “power of friendship” framing the franchise preaches lately. Mechanically, the concept of catching Pokémon remains the same, it just seems like The Pokémon Company wants to place the focus elsewhere. All that in mind, watching this ad from the ‘90s is a little unsettling, but it’s still funny and gets its point across.
It does seem like Nintendo realized there was some uneasiness with the ad, because there are two versions of it online in which alternate takes and strategic cuts make the bus driver seem a little less menacing, even if he has the same malicious intent. There’s less maniacal laughter, he’s nicer to Pikachu when the little guy enters the bus, and the actual carnage done to the bus in the press is almost entirely cut from the ad. No need to traumatize kids watching their favorite Pocket Monsters getting violently squished any more than you have to, I guess.
But ultimately, the commercial’s conclusion is still the same. When the hydraulic press re-opens, all that’s left of the bus is a Game Boy with Pikachu and friends struggling to get out through the screen. It’s very clear the Pokémon are scared about what’s happening, and I, too, am scared because that’s not the Pokémon League-approved method of catching these critters, Mr. Bus Driver. Get your Pokéballs and beat them up until they’re too weak to fight out of their spherical prison like everyone else.
The Pokémon Company / Foulowe59
The bus ad is like a fever dream from a time when companies were less precious about the pristine image of their billion-dollar properties. Nowadays, it feels like the Pokémon franchise is more on the same page in terms of the tone of its games, anime, and advertisements. Even so, we sometimes still catch glimpses of the down-and-dirty Pokémon of the 90s, such as the Detective Pikachu movie having a dark, occasionally crude tone, and recent games like Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet having more grandiose takes on their worldbuilding.
But it does feel like The Pokémon Company wants to keep the public-facing image of the series as friendly, light, and wholesome as it can. The more I reflect on it, the more the bus ad captures a moment before branding was airtight, and staying on message was all that mattered. I respect that. I just wish it wasn’t also nightmare fuel.
Where To Catch Up On Pokémon Before Ash And Pikachu's Farewell
Whether you’re looking to catch up or relive old TV memories, here’s where to watch every Pokémon season
By
Kenneth Shepard
The Pokémon Company has announced that Ash and Pikachu, the longtime protagonists of the Pokémon anime, are officially getting their walk into the sunset moment at the end of the current season. Liko and Roy, two new characters accompanied by Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly, will take their place later this year. As such, some longtime fans naturally may want to relive treasured memories or catch up on seasons they’ve missed before we bid Ash farewell. The trouble is, the Pokémon anime isn’t well aggregated, and finding the episode or season you want can be a challenge. Let us help you out.
Which seasons are which?
The Pokémon anime is 25 seasons long, which may sound like a lot, but when you divide them up with their corresponding games and regions, it becomes much more simple to keep track of.
Seasons 1-2, Pokémon Red and Blue/Kanto
Seasons 3-5, Pokémon Gold and Silver/Johto
Seasons 6-9, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire/Hoenn
Seasons 10-13, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Sinnoh
Seasons 14-16, Pokémon Black and White/Unova
Seasons 17-19, Pokémon X and Y/Kalos
Seasons 20-22, Pokémon Sun and Moon/Alola
Seasons 23-25 Pokémon Sword and Shield/Galar (this season is set in a lot of different places, but Galar is central to overarching stories)
Pokémon TV doesn’t have every episode, but it is a free option to watch a chunk of the anime.Image: The Pokémon Company
The free option for frugal fans
At the moment, the Pokémon anime is most readily available in three places: Netflix, Prime Video, and the Pokémon TV app. However, none of these has all 1000+ episodes of the long-running show. The Pokémon TV app is the best place to start, and that’s because, unlike Netflix and Prime Video, it’s a free service. You can download the app on your phone or tablet through both the iOS and Android app stores, but if you want to watch the show on a TV there are options there, too. Pokémon TV is available on set-top boxes like Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, and Android TV devices. But if you want to keep Nintendo shows in the Nintendo family, it’s also available on the Switch eShop, which is another perk Pokémon TV has over Netflix.
Where things get complicated is starting with the third season, as Pokémon TV doesn’t have every episode of Pokémon as part of its service. It has the first two seasons, which will take you all the way through Ash and Pikachu’s journeys through Kanto and the Orange Islands. However, Pokémon TV is missing a whopping seven seasons between season two and season 10, which takes place in the Sinnoh region and focuses on Pokémon from Diamond and Pearl. This means it skips over the entirety of the show’s Hoenn and Sinnoh arcs, and there’s more skips to come as we keep going. And those aren’t the only missing seasons there are to contend with. In total, Pokémon TV app has 10 out of the show’s 25 seasons broken up into three distinct blocks: 1-2, 10-12, 20-24.
Pokémon TV still has the first 112 episodes, so there’s a lot to watch for free before you start dealing with any missing seasons or need to consider paying for a subscription. Because it offers a fair bit of the show for free, it’s the best option for the seasons it has, as you’ll have enough episodes to watch that you should be safe canceling a subscription for a different service while you catch up to the next missing season. So while you can’t see everything, it’s still a good, officially supported alternative to other services for the seasons it has.
The one-stop shop
In terms of episode selection, Prime Video has the biggest catalog of Pokémon episodes, but is also the most costly. The first 22 seasons are all available on Amazon, and most of them come as part of a Prime Video subscription. There are a few exceptions, with seasons 6-13 needing to be bought outright rather than coming as part of the service. Notably, half of those are available for free on Pokémon TV, as of this writing.
Seasons 16 through 19, which cover Ash and Pikachu’s journey through the Kalos region, have an extra wrinkle to this. They can be bought outright, or you can add $2.99 USD a month to your Prime subscription to gain access to them through paying for Prime’s Pokémon channel, which gives you access to these seasons. It’s a weird detour, but if you marathon these seasons within a month you should be able to cancel that additional subscription quickly.
Prime Video has seasons 20, 21, and 22 as well, but those are also freely available on Pokémon TV, so you don’t need to maintain a subscription to watch those.
Netflix currently owns exclusive streaming rights for Pokémon’s latest seasons starring Ash, Goh, and Chloe.Image: The Pokémon Company
Netflix’s exclusivity rights
When it comes to the most recent episodes of Pokémon, Netflix has some exclusive streaming rights that put it ahead of the Pokémon TV app. Seasons 23-25 first aired in English through Netflix, and that’s still the arrangement The Pokémon Company has today. That being said, some of these episodes are available on Pokémon TV, which means if you’re without a Netflix subscription, you won’t need one until the most recent episodes. As of this writing, Pokémon TV has up to the first six episodes of season 24, with Netflix having exclusive streaming rights of the remainder of the season and the first 12 episodes of season 25. The service rolls out new episodes quarterly, with Pokémon TV getting these episodes sometime later. So, Netflix is always slightly ahead of its free alternative.
Bringing the big screen to the small screen
While much of Ash and Pikachu’s adventures aired on television, the duo has also starred in over 20 movies over the years. Almost all of these are available through Amazon Prime. Some are available as part of a Prime subscription, while others require a rental or purchase. Notable omissions include Pokémon Heroes and Pokémon: Jirachi—Wish Maker, but the rest of them are all available through the service. Jirachi—Wish Maker can be purchased on Vudu, for some reason. Heroes is almost nowhere to be found through official means, except on Manga TV, according to Roku’s site. As a Latias fan, this feels like violence toward me, specifically.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that Netflix has the Secrets of the Jungle movie and the 3D animated remake of The First Movie available to stream right now. So don’t rent or buy them if you’ve got a membership over there.
An All-New Pokémon Series Is Coming
But what about these Ash and Pikachu special farewell episodes?
If you’re not looking to catch up on everything or go watch old episodes, you’re probably here to find out where you can watch the 11 episodes that will show Ash and Pikachu running into old friends as the show gives them a proper goodbye. The first of these episodes will air next week in Japan on January 13. I imagine a lot of people who bounced off the show over the years are going to want to watch these episodes, but do keep in mind that it will be some time before they’re available in English.
Unfortunately, Pokémon doesn’t have any official simulcast, so there’s no legal option at the moment. The Netflix rollout is over 30 episodes behind the Japanese weekly episodes right now, with each quarterly Netflix release consisting of around 12 episodes each, so these specials will likely not be made available in English until later this year. On the plus side, this means that if you wanted to take on the gigantamax task of rewatching all of Ash and Pikachu’s adventures before these episodes are made available, you’ve probably got time.
Absurd NFT Project Just Got Taken To Court By Pokémon
The crypto bros are at it again, and this time they're bringing Pikachu
By
John Walker
The Pokémon Company International (TPCi) works pretty hard to keep its monsters in their proper pens, fervently stamping out any attempts to use pocket beasties without a licensing agreement in place. Just a few months ago, we saw the company going after six Chinese firms that had crossed the line with their own Pokémon-like, and now they’re back in the courts with a new target. Except this time it’s NFTs, the digital JPGs crypto bros pretend that they own.
Australian site Vooks noticed papers filed with the Federal Court of Australia, showing The Pokémon Company taking action against a company called, incredibly, Pokémon Pty Ltd, who claimed to be making a mobile game called PokéWorld. Because when it comes to crypto, there’s no bottom to the barrel o’ stupid.
Pokémon Pty Ltd, seemingly based in Melbourne, was registered as a business in 2016, and appears to be operating under the name Kotiota Studios. All these entities, according to the court papers, boil down to one individual, Xiaoyan Liu. Kotiota, which doesn’t appear to exist at the address given, then created a website for PokéWorld, a paltry mobile game in which you battle Pokémon like Charmander and Pikachu, to win “$POKESHARD” currency, linked to Etherium. All the in-game items you buy are, of course, minted as NFTs, so everyone can trade them down to their core value of zero.
Vooks reports that the company then brazenly sent out press releases to gaming sites, while they’ve made ridiculous claims about working alongside TPCi to produce their NFT rubbish. On NFTCalendar, the claim is made that “the first Pokémon P2E NFT collection brought to you by The Pokemon Company International and Kotiota: bringing the spirit of your 2000s nostalgia to WEB3.” On the game’s site, this amazing lie appears:
Screenshot: PokeWorld
While the Twitter account has been suspended, the game’s website is still online, which is bold of them considering the court action. It’s replete with Pokémon characters, even including narrated animated videos, showing the unpleasantly shiny 3D monsters lamely shooting attacks at one another against a 2D backdrop.
However, the whole project is breathtaking to investigate. Given the repeated claims that TPCi are involved, it’s not even trying to disguise the complete lifting of a world-famous IP, just plastering the site in the franchise’s most famous characters. What was the plan; how did they see themselves getting away with this? It reminds me of the group that thought they could create original Dune works and NFTs because they’d bought a copy of a book, but somehow even more stupid.
Either way, the group has now been ordered by a court to immediately stop suggesting it has any rights to develop Pokémon games, stop using Pokémon properties, and especially to no longer claim that its Pokémon NFTs are anything to do with TPCi.
The court papers say that The Pokémon Company became aware of this project in November this year, hired a cybercrime investigation team to look into it, and then tried to serve papers to Xiaoyan Liu or the companies involved, but were unable to. The ruling was made without any response from Kotiota, Liu, or Pokémon Pty Ltd. The court has asked for more details before it’s willing to rule on damages, but has made it abundantly clear who’s in the right here.
It’s worth noting that, bemusingly, this isn’t the only “PokéWorld” in existence. There’s a whole other NFT grift using the same name, although its website is dead and the Twitter account hasn’t updated since last November. And then, somewhat more legally, there’s a very popular Rimworld mod called PokéWorld, only making picking this all apart more confusing.
We’ve reached out to Pokémon Pty Ltd and Kotiota, and really hope anyone involved responds, because it would be fascinating to learn where else they could have thought this was heading.
Report: Netflix Is Making A Live-Action Pokémon Series
Lucifer showrunner Joe Henderson will write and produce the series for the streamer
By
Zack Zwiezen
Variety reports that a new Pokémon series is in the early stages of development at Netflix. According to its story, the in-development Pokémon series will be a live-action project similar to the 2019 film Detective Pikachu.
It’s still early days for Netflix’s live-action Pokémon series, which hasn’t officially been announced by the streamer. Reportedly, Lucifer’sco-showrunner and executive producer, Joe Henderson, will write and produce the series. As of yet there’s no release date information or any other concrete details, but based on the mention of Detective Pikachu, it seems likely this live-action series will use real human actors and CGI-created Pokémon, blending the two together as seen in that 2019 film which starred Ryan Reynolds as the voice of Pikachu.
Frankly, it makes sense to create a live-action series after the successful live-action movie and with demand for Pokémon content higher than ever. Plus, as Variety points out, Netflix has become the U.S. streaming home for multiple existing Pokémon shows, including “Pokémon: Indigo League” and “Pokémon Journeys” among many others. And with Netflix’s push into gaming, it isn’t surprising to see news of a live-action Pokémon series in the works.
No additional details were reported by Variety. Season 6 of Joe Henderson’s current show, Lucifer, will air on September 10. It’s that show’s final season, so now he should have plenty of time to craft this new live-action Pokémon into another fan-pleaser.
Over the years, there have been oodles of Pokémon branded products. For example, I bought Pikachu toothpaste earlier…
By
Brian Ashcraft
Over the years, there have been oodles of Pokémon branded products. For example, I bought Pikachu toothpaste earlier today in Japan for my youngest son. But if you really think about it, that doesn’t have much to do with Pocket Monsters. This product, though, definitely does.
These are insect baskets, known as mushi kago (虫かご) in Japanese. In the summertime, children in Japan carry them around and hunt for insects—which is exactly what inspired Satoshi Tajiri, who spent his childhood catching bugs, to create Pokémon in the first place.
The Poké Ball version was released previously in 2019, but according to Famitsu, the Master Ball one will be out this month. They’re priced around $15 in Japan.
The amount of Pokémon branding in Japan is intense. And with the arrival of these fishing lures, it seems the pocket…
By
Brian Ashcraft
The amount of Pokémon branding in Japan is intense. And with the arrival of these fishing lures, it seems the pocket monsters can be slapped on just about anything.
As Go Nintendo points out, Japanese fishing equipment company Duo has teamed up with The Pokémon Company for made-in-Japan Pikachu and Kygore-themed lures. One is a “slow jitter type,” while the other is a “crawler type.”
Duo explains that Pikachu’s tail “is not only a well-designed element but is also functional and effective in getting you that catch.” (It adds that the ears can be easily damaged so be careful when casting the lure!)
In all my time covering games, I’ve never seen game-themed fishing equipment. A first for me!
Genre Bests, Personal Top 10 Lists And More: One Last Look Back At 2023
From the Nintendo Switch's surprisingly stellar year to 2023's best RPGs, it's a smorgasbord of great retrospectives
By
Kotaku Staff
This week, we continued taking stock of 2023 with looks back at how the Switch and the Steam Deck fared, our picks for the cream of the crop among shooters and role-playing games, and more juicy commentary on everything the year had to offer.
The Switch is going out with a bang. Ahead of the likely reveal of the Nintendo handheld hybrid’s successor next year, the aging hardware continued receiving an amazing slate of new games in 2023, includingThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, one of the best entries to date in the long-running fantasy adventure series. Last year, the Switch felt like it was quietly fading away. 2023 proved that the barebones console still had a few more tricks up its sleeve, showing once again why it’s one of the most beloved gaming machines ever made. - Ethan Gach Read More
Mech pilots have feelings, too. Armored Core VI is a game about blowing up everything in sight with a smorgasbord of overpowered weapons. But it’s also a game about vain, self-righteous men who think it’s their God-given right to take over a planet. While you only know them as codenames, characters like Snail and Handler Walter vie for power throughout the game’s story. - Hayes Madsen Read More
Valve introduced the world to the Steam Deck in 2022 and it was an instant hit with countless Steam users who jumped at the chance to take their games just about anywhere. As we close out 2023, the Steam Deck remains one of the best pieces of portable gaming hardware you can buy, both on the hardware and software side of things. It’s also started a bit of an arms race in the PC gaming space, one that’s exciting to watch and, with the launch of the Steam Deck OLED, one that Valve doesn’t seem to be keen on falling behind in whatsoever. - Claire Jackson Read More
Last year, I said 2022 was an odd year for games, with some feeling that it was largely devoid of great releases and others, myself included, finding them plentiful. But this year was even stranger, as it was better than ever while simultaneously being the worst in a long time. - Zack Zwiezen Read More
To some, 2023 was one of the best years for video games in a long time. It didn’t quite land that way for me, but that’s okay. Even if I don’t rank the likes of Super Mario Bros. Wonderand Baldur’s Gate 3among the year’s best, I still admire the impulse they exhibit to try something fresh and new, or to make the familiar bigger and better, with orders of magnitude more intricacy and complexity than it’s ever been done. 2023 was, refreshingly, a year of big swings, in which the safe and conventional were overshadowed by the daring and visionary. My own short list of personal favorites includes two of the most high-profile successes of the year, as well as a few games that look back at visionary efforts of the past, and one intimate gem that speaks to the place games occupy in the lives of those of us who love them. - Carolyn Petit Read More
Image: Sabotage Studio / Square Enix / CD Projekt Red / Kotaku
The lastfew years have been full of amazing RPGs, but 2023 took things to a whole new level. It was the year we got Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo 4, and Bethesda’s long awaited Starfield. It was also the year Baldur’s Gate 3 appeared and blew them all out of the water. Fans of stat-based combat, meandering side-quests, and spending way too much time navigating menu systems are eating well. - Ethan Gach Read More
Image: Epic Games / SgtOkiDoki / Gunfire Games / Embark Studios / Focus Entertainment / Kotaku
2023 was yet another solid year for fans of shooty-shooty-bang-bang video games. While the Golden Era of shooters might be slowing down as the year wraps up, we still got some dang good ones, both in first-person and third-person variants, over these past 12 months. - Zack Zwiezen Read More
2023 is nearly over, finally, but at least there were some great games to get us through it, right? This year was full of great releases, but marred by myriad layoffs across sectors (including the games industry), and larger, global issues that made it hard to find the light in the dark. But video games, with their captivating worlds, moving stories, and nuanced characters, gave me a semblance of hope when I felt hopeless. - Levi Winslow Read More
Pokémon’s profit margins probably don’t reflect it, but the franchise had a rough year in 2023. Without a new mainline role-playing game to dominate the series’ headlines, Pikachu and friends were, instead, shrouded in controversies throughout the past 12 months. Between Pokémon Go angering swaths of its community, scalpers making a public embarrassment of the franchise to people who don’t even pay attention to it, and Scarlet and Violet’s DLC underlining the problems ingrained within the Pokémon pipeline, the screws are coming loose on the hype train. - Kenneth Shepard Read More
