‘Pokemon Sun’ And ‘Moon’ Confirmed For Holiday 2016 On Nintendo 3DS
As expected from yesterday’s leak, Nintendo announced Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon for the Nintendo 3DS during a Nintendo Direct broadcast Friday morning. The extremely short session was light on details, but did reveal a few nuggets of information.
Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon will be released to the Nintendo 3DS for “Holiday 2016.” Presumably, this means the launch will take place somewhere around the November to early December time frame. The games will have a simultaneous worldwide release, just like Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, with support for nine different languages.
The Nintendo Direct broadcast did show some very brief behind-the-scene glimpses of the game in development. Concept art from the game was shown, but no actual gameplay or even pre-rendered footage was made available.
The video does appear to confirm this will be the seventh generation of Pokémon, as speculated with the leak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmzDL1l3Fag
Trademarks for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon turned up in Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). Both trademark listings included logos for the both games, along with Nintendo tagged as the owner. The filing date was for Thursday, February 25, showing how the company attempted to slip these trademark registrations in at the last minute before the Nintendo Direct reveal.
Pokémon Sun and Moon was not the only news out of the short Nintendo Direct broadcast. PokémonRed, Green, and Yellow are being released to the Nintendo eShop, and will allow players to transfer their characters from the classic pixel-based games to the newer editions for the Nintendo 3DS.
This was obviously a limitation of the older Gameboy handhelds, as Nintendo could not overcome the limitations of the devices not being able to connect to the Internet. The eShop release of the three classic Pokémon games for the Nintendo 3DS means that players will be able to move their Pokémon from Red, Green, and Yellow to the online Pokémon Bank storage system. They can then transfer the characters to Sun and Moon.
A Pokémon Day celebration has been set for Saturday, February 27, the day after the Nintendo Direct, with special events taking place at select retailers around the United States and other countries. Details on the exact when and where can be found on the Pokémon 20th Anniversary website.
On the same day, Pokémon Red Version, Pokémon Blue Version, and Pokémon Yellow Version will all be released as digital downloads on the Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo 3DS. Note that these are faithful releases of the original Pokémon titles released to the Game Boy, so do not expect a graphical upgrade or remaster. However, they will use the Nintendo 3DS wireless capabilities to replace the link cable used with the originals.
A new Mythical Pokémon distribution event also kicked off last month. It started with Mythical Mew, which just ended. Celebi will become available at the beginning of March. This will be followed by Jirachi, Darkrai, Manaphy, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Keldeo, Genesect, and Meloetta over each of the following months, with new characters becoming available between the first of the month until the 24th.
What do you think of the Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon announcement from Nintendo? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image via YouTube]
