I remember when the original Pokemon Snap came out for the N64, all the kids I knew were super excited. It was the first Pokemon game in 3D, and while people were hoping for a game that featured 3D battles, the game was extremely popular anyway. It was a novel premise to photograph Pokemon in their natural habitats, and not only was the game the first 3D console release in the franchise, it was the first example outside of the anime to give more life to Pokemon as creatures. In addition to that I knew a lot of folks who went to Blockbuster to get their stickers printed out of the photos they took in-game.
I had the game as well. I got it pretty close to the end of the N64’s life cycle, and it’s one of the few N64 games that I still have the cardboard box for. While it was a very fun railgun shooter, I had to admit it was very short. Shorter still for me because I was never able to unlock the final of the four routes because I could never knock that damn Mankey onto the button in time, no matter how often I went down that river.
Fast forward, 4 console generations, 7 Pokemon generations, and roughly 25 years later and Nintendo finally released a sequel. Z and Swan were nice enough to get it for me for Christmas, and I’ve been playing it a lot recently.
The original game only had 60 of the original 150 Pokemon, which was a fraction even then. All these Pokemon later and Nintendo chose north of 300 hundred species to feature across 11 routes that often feature viewing Pokemon both day and night. A lot of my favorites made it in, but with over 1000 designs at this point, I had hoped for a few more species, or at least, more games in the franchise so we get a better variety of creatures in a variety of environs. While the game has much more content (including available DLC) it’s still pretty simple in execution, with many of the same features as the original Pokemon Snap.
But a game doesn’t have to do things differently, if it just does things well, and New Pokemon Snap really does. Because the tech is more powerful, the Pokemon on the routes are more lively and animated, making them feel more natural in their actions and behavior. They repeat themselves for the most part, so if you do the same path multiple times you’ll eventually catch the action you need in order to get higher ranked pictures, but behaviors do change up randomly, and the way you act during the route affects the way the Pokemon act. And if you pay attention, there are actually specific story lines of the lives of the Pokemon that you can see play out, like a hide and seek game in Florio. Pester balls got combined with bait into the single Fluffifruit item so hitting a Pokemon with them can get their attention, or they notice the food and get enticed to come closer and face the camera. You can also scan the area for secrets and info, use the melody function which plays the Pokeflute sound or throw ‘Illumina orbs’ that will sometimes cause Pokemon to change behavior, or make them or certain types of flowers light up. And while getting good scores or unique pictures is enticement enough, the game actually bothers to provide you with a plot and a specific mission: learn about the mythic Illumina Pokemon and their connection to a meteorite that nearly hit 5000 years ago.
There are more characters than the player character, Professor Mirror, his assistant Rita, your rival Phil and original Pokemon Snap player character Todd Snappit. It makes you wish they’d find a way to emulate the first game too so younger players could know why that guy was so significant aside from a couple of cameos in the anime. The game has some voice acting, though fully voiced cut scenes are fairly seldom. The story is pretty simple, but if you need some incentive beyond beating your high score of taking a specific picture, it is there.
The large turtle is saving the little guys from the mean bird!
Most of the routes are pretty good though some are definitely more interesting than others. The desert was pretty boring because it’s relatively short and has the fewest variety of Pokemon. So to me it felt the most tedious to go through, and the hardest to level up because it was difficult to catch the Pokemon doing anything new or interesting as you went through the sands. The night is a little more interesting than the day, but I definitely felt the least incentive to keep going to over and over again. My favorite was probably the volcano. It had a huge variety of species and some really interesting landscapes. A lot of the mission quests could be tedious as well, because it’s not always clear how to get the Pokemon to do the thing you need them to do. Sometimes you have to do certain things in order, sometimes it’s just a random matter of the game giving you a split second to catch a rare behavior, and sometimes you just have to do the same route 20 times over until a Pokemon gets used to you. So the most boring routes are the biggest grind to work through.
Getting to save and edit your pictures can be fun, though that’s not a feature that is super important to me in a game. But overall New Pokemon Snap is a really fun, joyful casual game that you can play for long periods of time or short bursts between other tasks, and I really, really hope it doesn’t take Nintendo another two decades to create another sequel.
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