Yesterday, the Pokémon company released a short, 10 minute video with a few surprising announcements. Please check out our screenshots here! The president and CEO of The Pokémon Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, presented several announcements.
They started with a really cute, albeit weird, iPhone app called Pokémon Smile. In probably the cutest video of various parents trying to get their kids to brush their teeth, Pokémon Smile turns brushing your teeth into a Pokémon GO-esque game. You can catch Pokémon, defeat evil germs, and the Pokémon sprites are incredibly adorable. This app is available now for android and iPhone.
Their next announcement was Pokémon Café Mix, a Pokémon puzzle game for Switch and mobile devices. The artistic style is very interesting and the gameplay itself is akin to match three type mobile games.
You swirl like Pokémon to make a Pokémon café drink. As you level up, you can increase the size of your cafe and work alongside various Pokemon baristas. This game will be free to start and available soon.
Their next announcement is something the Pokémon and Nintendo community have been pining for almost 20 years. New Pokémon Snap is finally coming to the switch! Bandai Namco is teaming up with Nintendo for this new iteration and New Pokémon Snap looks absolutely stunning even though it is still in development!
Ishihara then moved on to Pokémon GO announcements. The upcoming Pokémon GO Fest will be entirely digital for the 2020 year and Mega Evolutions are coming to Pokémon GO as well as Galarian Farfetch’d are available.
Finally, Ishihara announced that if one million trainers can beat the max raid battle featuring Zeraora, every trainer can receive a shiny Zeraora. He closed with stating that next week he will have more information in another Pokémon Presents video. We will be glued to the screen as soon as that presentation goes live.
Overall, I feel this presentation scratched an itch that Nintendo fans have been looking for since the pandemic shut E3 down.
Although, it is not an exclusive Nintendo Direct, in the wake of the PS5 reveal and the Xbox Series X reveals among others, Nintendo has been rather silent as they have been adjusting to the work at home environment. Even Super Smash Bros. Director Sakurai sent office equipment to his employees to make working at home more comfortable.
This announcement video, although short, was finally something directly Nintendo related, even though most Nintendo fans like myself are yearning for something more for the rest of the year.
For now, I will continue checking out The Isle of Armor DLC and patiently wait for an eventual Nintendo Direct…however long away it may be.
