You know what was pretty awesome? Pokemon Snap. That game was FUN AS HELL. And we really, really want to see something like it again. But Nintendo doesn’t seem to be jumping at the chance! Why is that? It seems like it would really be a dead ringer candidate for the next hit 3DS or Wii U game with the way the technology is set up. You could position yourself and take the photos as if you were really in the world of Pokemon!
That would be AMAZING. We’ve heard people say that making a sequel to a game like Pokemon Snap would be pretty dull since it would just be more of the same from the original but….maybe it wouldn’t have to be, eh?
We’ve got a few ideas. Have a look at our proposal for the sequel to one of the most fun and amusing games on the N64: Pokemon Snap 2!
The original Pokemon Snap is something of a classic due to its’ simplicity. You travel in a hovercraft known as the Zero-One, which is locked to a set path throughout seven zones on the island. As you pass the indigenous Pokemon you have the opportunity to take a quick picture and attempt to get shots that look REALLY phenomenal in Professor Oak’s eyes. Sometimes you have to be a bit more crafty with your shots by feeding the Pokemon, playing music for them, or hitting them with a ‘pester ball’ to send them reeling.
That’s pretty much a sum up of the gameplay for the entire experience! And it was VERY short, too. It doesn’t take much doing to get this game finished in 2 or 3 hours. The main appeal of the game was to try out all the combinations of items on all the Pokemon to see their reactions, and to try and get the BEST possible scores on each Pokemon.
Here‘s an article with an interview with Junichi Masuda, the director of most Pokemon games, on the topic of the potential for a sequel with this same motif. He seems like he’s open to the idea, but at the same time, he expressed that he thinks it would be challenging to make it as interesting as a lot of people are thinking it would be. And we think we can agree with that, this system worked really well on the N64 because it worked around the limitations of the console and made for what ended up being most people’s first interaction with the creatures outside of the main RPG titles. So it worked! In today’s day and age, you would need to make a much more involved game in order to make it a success, which is probably why they aren’t jumping at the chance to do it.
So here’s an idea, then.
(Image by Christian Davis)
Screw the Zero-One.
We wanna see a Free-Roaming, open world Pokemon Snap.
It would be amazing!! Here’s how it would work. Professor Oak would call you to his base on the island again and would set you off in the early morning to catch the best photos you can get until nightfall. You can go as far and as deep into the world as you want, but as soon as the sun sets, you’re done, and you’re called back to the base to look over your photos with the Professor. Everything resets in the world after nightfall, making it possible to retry for photos that you messed up by accidentally spooking the Pokemon you were trying to snap a picture of simply by starting over. This would also make it possible to plan out your route and track down Pokemon you want to add to your scrapbook.
Think of it as being kind of like the system that Majora’s Mask has set up. Specific routines go down at a set time every day. Notice that there’s a bunch of footprints in the mud at about 4PM? Come back to the same place tomorrow, a little earlier this time, and maybe you’ll find that herd of Tauros you’ve been searching for! Empty nest with some scattered feathers? Perhaps a Pidove was scared out of its home by a hunting Seviper! Head there tomorrow and see if you can catch it in the act, or even lure the snake away from the nest and keep them both happy for a photo bonus!
There’s a lot of applications like this that would be REALLY cool to see in a fully fleshed out free roaming Pokemon game of any sort, but we think that Snap would pull it off the best. And here’s another idea. Wasn’t there a game that came out recently that had a pretty nifty photo taking feature to it?
POKEMON SNAP WITH WINDWAKER’S SELFIE MODE.
POKEMON SNAP.
WITH SELFIE MODE.
WHY IS THIS NOT ALREADY A THING.
Miiverse integration as well. If a sequel to Snap were made and these two features were NOT included it would…actually be kind of bizarre. They’re sort of givens at this point! If posing with your average NPC in Zelda can be as amusing as they made it, posing with your favorite Pokemon would have to be even more fun.
YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS. ADMIT IT.
Okay, so we think we’ve explained how this could work in ways that would separate it enough from the original title to work in today’s console market. Let’s talk about some other cool concepts.
One of the biggest issues I (Ark) have with the original game is that it kind of trivialized a lot of Pokemon. On your first trip to the volcano area, an area that can be accessed in about 20 minutes for experienced players, you find an egg sitting in the middle of the road.
If you throw an apple at this egg, it will bounce off of the road and land in the lava. And then Moltres comes out.
That’s kinda dumb.
Moltres was, at the time of the game’s release, SUPPOSEDLY unbelievably rare and ungodly powerful. And you just. Just find it. It’s just there. It’s actually impossible to complete this stage WITHOUT finding it. That feels pretty weak. Isn’t there supposed to be only one of those things? Why does the world even know it exists then, if you’re only just now hatching it? Does this mean there’s more than one and that they don’t even matter all that much?
This egg raises all the questions that the Pokemon world doesn’t want the players asking.
So yeah, THAT was a poorly done part of the original Pokemon Snap. Moltres, along with all the other SUPER rare Pokemon like Articuno and Dragonite (Zapdos was at least KINDA tricky to find) was just another picture! So if we had to reimagine their impact on a title like Snap 2, we’d make it so that the journey to find them would be an adventure in and of itself.
We mentioned that in our perfect Pokemon Snap sequel, the world would cycle through the day as time goes on. We’re not quite sure how long a day would be in real time, but we’d hazard a guess at it being….one hour. Perhaps two. There would be options to sleep to progress to times of the day where the good photo ops will arise, of course. This day-night cycle is good for you if you want to retry a photo, but it also has a drawback: Some of the Pokemon in the world require you to make a real trek to find them. If you don’t get to them before Professor Oak calls you back to base, you’re outta luck. Hopefully you can get close enough for a picture next time around.
The items given to you in the game help you get better pictures and faster transportation. The more pictures you get, the more points you accrue, the easier it’ll be to get even better ones. Start off with some Caterpies first, then work your way up to the Celebi and Zekrom shots.
These legendaries would be the REAL hidden challenge in the game. Just about any one of them can take a full day to hike to get to them, but the rewards will be great.
And that’s not all this game would have going for it.
If you own a Pikachu or Jigglypuff amiibo, you get to access a whole new feature to the game! Your pokemon familiar would follow you around the world at your heels and pose with some of the Pokemon in the world to get even more options for your photo album! Jigglypuff sees a Lapras out at sea and floats through the air to them, plopping down on top of one of their heads while they swim. Aww yeah, that’ll getcha at least 1000 likes on Instagram easy. Pikachu spots a group of Machokes flexing and showing off! He takes a moment to flex in your direction behind their backs, poking fun at them. That’ll make for a pretty slick meme on your newfangled Tumble-whatsits.
There’s SO many ways they could take a Pokemon Snap sequel beyond just making an updated version of the old one with new tracks. SO many! A wide, interactive world like the one we’ve just described would catch the eye of millions of gamers the world over. It could very well, with the right direction and inspiration, become one of the most innovative and incredible games the series has come out with in a long, long while.
We’d love to see it happen. The market for another Pokemon Snap game is DEFINITELY still out there. People would eat this stuff up! Game Freak just needs to find the perfect system to make the TV screens explode with color and imagination once again.
What do you think, folks? Would you play this game? What would you do to improve on the concepts we’ve just laid out?