Welcome back to this week’s special feature: See Me in 3D, a look into how some of Nintendo’s biggest franchises might be realised on 3DS! We kicked off proceedings yesterday with a look at the future of handheld Zelda and now we turn our attention to arguably the most prolific portable franchise of all time: Pokémon.
Much like Zelda, Pokémon is no stranger to 3DS. While neither series has enjoyed the ubiquity of Mario on the fledgling console, both Link and Pikachu have dabbled in the third dimension with limited offerings up until this point. And while we’ve enjoyed Pokédex 3D almost as much as the console’s Ocarina of Time remake, it hasn’t really left us satisfied. The surprising delay in console jump during Pokémon’s fifth generation (the Black and White games and their upcoming sequels) that resigned us to another turn on DS hasn’t slowed down the franchise on 3DS either, with an expanded Pokédex 3D Pro and 3DS-exclusive companion game for Black 2 and White 2 dubbed Pokémon Dream Radar on their way to the handheld soon. (Think of Face Raiders with Poké Balls and you’ll get the gist.)
And all of that’s good. It’s great! I can’t wait to run around my living room like a maniac trying to catch Venomoth all day long (beats trying to catch the actual moths that plague my living room) but it’s not what I really want to get my hands on. Much like the slight disappointment brought by Ocarina‘s third rehashing, I’m craving a new adventure built from the ground up on 3DS and the inevitable sixth generation of the franchise that it will bring along with it. But what are these new entries in the Pokécanon likely to bestow upon us mere Pokémaniacs?