Presents For All!
Alright, time for more Pokemon news! It says a lot for the massive popularity of Pokemon as a franchise that it can have its own entire showcases – such things usually cover games from across entire platforms, both first- and third-party. As I’m writing, we’re less than a minute away, so I’m interested to see what drops. New games? Remakes? Cross-media? A Pokemon theme park? Let’s see how it goes.
Stop-Motion Ain’t Stopping
This isn’t the first time any of us have seen Pokemon Concierge – even if, like me, you haven’t gotten around to seeing the original four episodes since they dropped on Netflix in late 2023, you will absolutely have seen and loved the adorable trailers. Stop-motion animation is an incredibly impressive medium and art form that requires a great deal of patience, so it’s wonderful to see these kinds of results, especially when paired with a franchise that goes so well with it. This trailer has a couple of Concierge announcements – new episodes coming in September, and the original 4 being available for free on YouTube for a very limited time – but I especially appreciated the brief glimpses of test footage, offering viewers a closer look at the work that goes into making these models come to life on-screen. I hope to see more of these behind-the-scenes demonstrations in the lead-up to the new episodes.
Hmm, That’s A Lot Of Pokemon Mobile Games
Well, if you thought this video was just covering Switch games, you were wrong. Pokemon GO!, Pokemon Masters EX and Pokemon Cafe ReMix are here with updates for the dedicated fans. Pokemon GO! brings an event with certain Legendary and Shiny Pokemon available for catching and in Raid Battles for a limited time, Pokemon Masters EX is bringing new Master Sync Pairs along with a 3,000 gem award for logging in until March 27, and Pokemon Cafe ReMix adds a new Appletun Fruitilicious Jelly Soda, that I really really want in real life (which is actually happening, but only at the Pokemon Cafe in Japan) as well as Sweets Outfits for several Pokemon. It’s difficult to know what to say about these when I don’t play the games, but they seem like the kinds of small, reasonable updates you expect from these sorts of live-service games. I’m sure they’ll do their job by getting the current users to keep logging back in.
There Are So Many Pokemon Mobile Games
Oh wow, it ain’t over. Pokemon Sleep, Pokemon Unite and Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket are also here with new updates. Sleep offers a relatively simple pair of new Pokemon in conflict. Unite starts with a similar 3 new Pokemon being added to the game, but then goes bigger – the Remoat Stadium area is returning to ranked matches, the new First To 500 match type is coming (the explanation is all in the name), and the game’s map and wild Pokemon are both being updated. Trading Card Game Pocket confirms new rewards, a new booster pack and upcoming Mega Evolutions, but it goes big with it – the trailer blasts these announcements out with live-action footage and expensive CGI. You can really see the money on screen. So that’s 6 Pokemon mobile games in total, which… damn, I did not realise there were that many. Almost makes you wonder about the importance of the central video games. Speaking of which:
Scarlet and Violet anniversary updates
Despite a launch marred by major technical issues, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet were massively successful games, and that’s reflected here as they continue to get updates. With no sign of their direct sequel, Scarlet and Violet get new in-game phone cases, a limited-time “outbreak” of shiny Pokemon, and new Tera Raid battle events. Upcoming Tera Raids are also confirmed, reinforcing that the updates aren’t stopping here. So while we’ve emerged from the deluge of Pokemon mobile games, the “main games” Scarlet and Violet are actually still following a similar playbook for now. It all comes back to that modern desire of some companies to improve retention by making their games feel constantly alive – no always a good thing, but this approach is nice enough.
Champions Of The Stadium
Here it is, the big new game announcement of the show, Pokemon Champions, coming to both “the Nintendo Switch family of systems” (hopefully Switch 2 isn’t considered separate to this) and iOS and Android mobile devices, continuing this trend of main games and mobile games not being worlds away from each other. The mostly CG trailer and “Now in Development” in lieu of a release date suggests we’ll be waiting a while for Game Freak and The Pokemon Works to deliver this, so let’s break down the announcement. Pokemon Champions is a new, modern evolution of the Pokemon Stadium concept dating back to the beginnings of the franchise, so the trailer starting with a big, nostalgic, dramatised look at people playing the various Pokemon games’ PvP modes throughout the years is extremely appropriate. What I really like is that rather than just following a single pair of friends throughout the years, an effort is made to show a variety of different people from different countries playing together – there’s a heavy emphasis on bringing players from across the world together, leading up to the moment where an American man playing on a Switch and a Japanese woman playing on here phone are sucked into the game and smile at each other. There’s a healthy theme of global togetherness and friendly competition (combined with connectivity between Champions and other Pokemon games that emphasise the same) that I really like here, and I want to see that continue as the marketing for Champions ramps up.
Latin America
Pokemon Champions is followed by a real champion of an update – the Pokemon Company’s Regional Director for Latin America, Mr Tomas Cortijo, confirms that Latin American Spanish is the tenth language that multiple Pokemon products will be distributed in going forward. Specifically, Pokemon Champions and Pokemon Legends Z/A (along with presumably future Pokemon games) will have full Latin American Spanish support, and “future expansions” of the Pokemon Trading Card Game will be available in Latin American Spanish. This is great news, doubling down on making Pokemon something that as many people in the world can partake in, both within their own communities and as a means to interact with those outside them. It’s possible to look at these kinds of initiatives cynically, with the idea that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company simply wanting as many paying customers as possible, but the results are the results, and with a great announcement like this that goes hard on celebrating the Latin American Pokemon Community, it feels sincere to me. Good for them.
A Final Update
And so Pokemon Presents closes with a major overview trailer of Pokemon Legends Z/A, the already-announced mainline Pokemon game coming to Switch in late 2025. Multiple interesting innovations are covered here – a modern single-city environment is an interesting change from the other Pokemon games that have you moving across a country or operating in the distant past, and the battle system changes are even more exciting. The traditional Pokemon battle setup gets some very tactile, real-time innovations here, as while you’re still trading Pokemon abilities, they now have varying ranges and area coverage, and real-time movement around the battle arena via running and dodging is a key part of the gameplay. Changing up Pokemon’s simple turn-based combat seems like a risk at first, but I appreciate them adding a little more detail to it – it’s the most exciting thing I see in the trailer. The visuals unfortunately continue to be rather mediocre compared to the best Switch exclusives, though I’ll be very interested to see how this game may look on the Switch 2 – will it be restricted to simple resolution upgrades, or will the graphics actually be fundamentally enhanced? The Switch doesn’t just have a new chip, after all – the memory upgrade is a path to better textures and assets across the board. In the end, I have no doubt that Legends Z/A will sell gangbusters.
Conclusions
Well, I was way off on that “Pokemon theme park” thing, but overall this was a very solid showcase. I can’t really imagine any Pokemon fan not having at least one thing to be happy about here – Latin American fans especially. Maybe some Legends Z/A Switch 2 footage would’ve been nice, but it seems clear that Nintendo is holding that close to their collective chest until the Switch 2 blowout Direct arrives on April 2 – unless that will be followed by a Switch 2-specific Pokemon Presents? But here we got stop-motion, mobile live service updates, new language support, a celebration of competitive battling and a release date. Good work, Nintendo. Bring on the next one.
