New Pokemon Snap is a nonviolent game about taking photos of adorable little cartoon animals.
It’s charming, wholesome, and family friendly. It’s interesting to note, then, that while the
game is obviously a successor to the original Pokemon Snap on the Nintendo 64, New Pokemon
Snap can also very clearly trace its lineage back to fighting games like Tekken and Soul Calibur.
While the first Pokemon Snap was developed by a team HAL Laboratory,
New Pokemon Snap was developed by Bandai Namco. The company was given this opportunity because
of their successful work on the Pokken fighting game, which in turn came about
simply because Pokemon Company director Tsunekazu Ishihara is a fan of Tekken.
It was never originally the plan to create a New Pokemon Snap,
or even a Pokemon fighting game. These two projects came about because The Pokemon Company
was exploring collaborating with Bandai Namco on a Pokemon rhythm game akin to Taiko Master.
When director Ishihara heard of the collaboration, he is quoted as having said:
“If we’re going to work with Bandai Namco, I want to do a collaboration with Tekken.”
And that was that. The higher-ups at Bandai
Namco didn’t need to look far to find the perfect developer to spearhead this new fighting game.
All they had to do was ask the leader of the in-office Bandai Namco Pokemon Gym.
Masaaki Hoshino has had a role in developing each Soul Calibur game, starting as a camera
programmer on the first game, and rising up the ranks to serve as a technical manager
and director on more recent games in the series. He is also a tremendous Pokemon fan. He started
his own little Pokemon club at work, encouraging other developers at Bandai Namco to play the game
with him in their spare time. This was purely for their own simple entertainment, without any plans
of making a game. They just love Pokemon. Said Hoshino:
“We were looking at who at Bandai Namco could lead [Pokken], and because of my history with Pokemon
it fell on me. It was a great honour.” Hoshino was a perfect fit for the game,
and he and his Pokemon-loving colleagues set to work. Their primary goal was to avoid making a
Pokemon-themed Tekken game, but rather, something that felt authentic within the Pokemon universe.
He said: “When we first announced [Pokken],
a lot of people had the impression that it’s Tekken gameplay but with Pokemon characters,
but that’s not what we wanted to do. We wanted to make sure it was a lot more approachable,
something that’s really easy to understand and pick up and play for pretty much anyone.”
Making Pokken feel organic paid off, as The Pokemon Company was
so impressed that they offered Bandai Namco the chance to work on a new Pokemon game.
Said director Haruki Suzaki: “Pokkén Tournament utilized Bandai Namco
Studio's strengths and it made Pokémon appealing in a new way. Because of this, we got another
opportunity to do something together again and this led to the development of New Pokémon Snap.
We were able to talk with the developers [from the original game] and the project started with
the involvement of many people.” According to Suzaki,
there had been several attempts in the past to resurrect the Pokemon Snap franchise,
but nothing had progressed very far. He said:
“The idea of photography has changed so much in the last 20 years, combined with the new Nintendo
Switch hardware, that we thought it was the perfect time to create a new version of Pokémon
Snap, and that’s why we started the project.” As such eager fans of the Pokemon series,
the team at Bandai Namco had worked hard to make Pokken feel like an extension of a living,
breathing world. This went on to form the basis of New Pokemon Snap.
Suzaki said: “The main focus was to build
the world where wild Pokémon actually live in this game. To do this, we first set out to create an
exciting world by thinking about the environment in which Pokémon live, creating scenery in detail,
and also using Switch hardware's capabilities to the fullest. While doing so, we tried to
make Pokémon the star of the game by making them move naturally and with the feel of presence so
that it's fun to just watch them and it's even more fun to take pictures of them."
Some environments, like space, were considered, but the team decided that it would be better
to stick to areas where they could show a wider variety of Pokemon interacting with each other.
Said Suzaki: “We created the behaviour and reactions
of pokémon by imagining what they would do as living creatures. In doing so, we would reference
various ideas such as the inherent nature of pokémon, their actions from other Pokémon titles,
as well as the behaviour and characteristics of animals of a similar lineage in the real world.”
The result is an incredibly cute, colourful, and charming game that many Pokemon fans
have been waiting for decades to play. And it’s all because a group of fighting
game developers have a special love for Pokemon. The moral of the story? Have fun, enjoy yourself.
You never know what incredible things can come out of your passion for the things you love.