Weird Stuff We Want To Come Back In 'Pokemon Snap 2'
Yesterday's Pokemon Presents really played with everyone's emotions. The first game shown was the tooth-brushing assistance app Pokemon Smile, which is cute, but I probably won't use it since, honestly, I'll probably forget to. Sorry Pikachu and gingivitis. Then we got Pokemon Cafe Mix, a puzzle game that also looks super cute and will inevitably drain me of a few hours. At this point, though, I figured that we probably wouldn't get anything truly huge in the presentation. I'd seen a lot of people wish for things in the days prior, with the most notable dream being shouted into the ether being an announcement of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl remakes. But we didn't get that, and I wasn't too shook up. What we did get was Pokemon being cute in multiple formats. Not a bad offering, all things considered.
And then the bomb dropped.
NEW POKEMON SNAP, Y'ALL.
Finally, a sequel to a 1999 Nintendo 64 game is on the way, one where you ride a little cart on a railway and take pictures of Pokemon in their various habitats. It's a fan favorite, and I remember going to Blockbuster and seeing the Photo Sticker printing stations. And it always seemed like despite numerous calls for a Pokemon Snap 2 that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company had always had their sights set elsewhere. But no longer. It doesn't have a set release date, but now that I know that it's out there, I'm willing to wait as long as it takes. New Pokemon Snap will keep me going.
My one hope for it? That it's as weird as the first game.
First off, Professor Oak better be back as the totally unlicensed judge of your photographs. A year earlier, he was forgetting his grandson's name in Red and Blue and hanging out in his rural science lab, and now he's qualified enough to be your goddamn art school professor? It reminds me of when a teacher would be out in elementary school, but instead of hiring a sub, the gym teacher would sit at the empty desk for 45 minutes and put on a tape of Homeward Bound. Only Professor Oak is super confident in his abilities and totally down to tell you that the picture of Kangaskhan has bad composition and also sucks hard.
Next, I hope that your interactions with the Pokemon are still crazy. In the Volcano area of the original, you could bean a Charmeleon in the head with an apple or Pester Ball and knock it into a magma pit. This causes it to evolve into Charizard and give you a great photo moment. But it's also a real gamble, and the first person who discovered this trick was actively seeking Pokemon manslaughter. 'monslaughter. Ha. I bet that'll catch on, me.
In the same level, you can actually make a group of Charmander march and sob. You can make two Magmar fight one another. In other levels, you harass Meowth, infuriate Scyther, knock them dozens of species around, and generally interfere with the environment in every way possible. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience," but in Pokemon Snap, your general duty is to make nature hurry the hell up and do something interesting in the ten seconds you have before you zoom by. And I think that sounds great.
Daniel Dockery is a writer for the internet. Come be his Pika Pal on Twitter!
Top Image: Nintendo
