Coming so quickly off of the massive success of Pokemon X & Y — released in October worldwide — Nintendo announced the upcoming release of Pokemon Yellow for the 3DS.
Instead of releasing an additional Pokemon game set in the Kalos region of X and Y, Nintendo has decided to return to the original Kanto region in a rehash of what has made the Pokemon games so popular. It will be titled, Pokemon ElectricYellow.
“People have shown such a huge interest in the new style and gameplay,” says Peggy Miles-Eime, Nintendo of America’s Chief Operating Officer, “We wanted to go back to our roots and bring the new style of Pokemon back to the original series.”
For those that might not recall, Pokemon Yellow was a Gameboy release that came out in 1998 following the success of Pokemon Red and Blue (Red and Green in Japan). It followed more closely to the manga and anime versions of Pokemon instead of the game canon, featuring a Pikachu as your starter and Jesse and James from Team Rocket as frequent antagonists. It also allowed your Pikachu to stay out of its pokeball and follow behind you while walking.
Nintendo confirmed that the story and features will mostly stay the same, “with some new additions, like the updated battle scenes and better graphics. Much, much better graphics,” says Miles-Eime.
“We know how surprised players were when we changed the cry of Pikachu in Pokemon X and Y to be more in-line with the rest of the Pokemon franchise. Now, you can have Pikachu following you around outside of its pokeball, reminding you constantly that we are not going to allow this flagship to die anytime soon,” remarks Miles-Eime, “Sure, we understand that a lot of the game players are not fans of the anime or manga, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn to love it from repeated and constant reminders!”
While the original Pokemon games were updated during the Gameboy Advance age under the names Pokemon LeafGreen and FireRed, none of the Pokemon games have received such a large upgrade from the original game. The most recent re-release of the Pokemon games was Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver for the DS and still contained similar graphics and style as the original games.
“We’ve discovered that it isn’t enough to just release two games with different Pokemon on each, essentially forcing you to buy both games if you want to ‘catch them all’. We thought that re-releasing the games on new handheld consoles might also give us some additional revenue. But now we see where we can really make our bank – re-releasing older games with brand new updated graphics and gameplay styles which essentially render the old ones obsolete! No one wants crappy graphics anymore. It’s all about realistic, high-def, and immersive gaming. That’s what the 3DS brings, and that’s what we want to bring to this franchise with Pokemon ElectricYellow,” says Miles-Eime.
“I look forward to the day that we can finally re-release Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire with hologram technology, which we may or may not be developing for our next handheld console, just saying. It will make the anime/manga combination with game-canon much more seamless,” remarks Miles-Eime, “this series is not going away any time soon, so get comfortable.”