How Snap Makes Me Want to Love Pokémon Again
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A different genre of game entirely, Pokémon Snap will do away with all the RPG mechanics that are native to the Pokémon franchise.
How Snap Makes Me Want to Love Pokémon Again
Love at first snap
By Joshua Hawkins Joshua Hawkins Freelance Technology Reporter Full Sail University Josh Hawkins is a freelance writer for Lifewire who loves writing about the latest tech and gadgets that help make people’s lives easier. As an avid gamer and VR enthusiast, he also enjoys diving deep into the technology that helps bring those kinds of experiences to life. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on January 20, 2021 04:17PM EST Fact checked by Rich Scherr Fact checked by Rich Scherr University of Maryland Baltimore County Rich Scherr is a seasoned technology and financial journalist who spent nearly two decades as the editor of Potomac and Bay Area Tech Wire. lifewire's fact checking process Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Gaming Mobile Phones Internet & Security Computers & Tablets Smart Life Home Theater & Entertainment Software & Apps Social Media Streaming GamingKey Takeaways
New Pokémon Snap will release on April 30, 2021.The new Pokémon Snap will offer better graphics and animations than previous Pokémon games.It also will offer simple mechanics and a new mystery for players to solve. Chesnot / Getty Images After 20 years, Nintendo is finally reviving the cult classic Pokémon Snap, something the Pokémon franchise desperately needs now that it has made the jump to the Nintendo Switch. Since its inception in 1996, Pokémon has grown and expanded, sparking a number of one-off titles and sequels. Perhaps the most iconic of these spin-offs though, was 1999’s Pokémon Snap. Snap took the monster-catching nature of the franchise and did away with it completely, instead focusing on an on-rails experience about taking photographs of different Pokémon. Now, with over 20 years of Pokémon titles in the rear view, a return to the simple mechanics with the new Pokémon Snap is exactly what the series needs to help refresh and push it forward.Making Good
Nintendo’s history with gaming consoles over the years has been hit or miss, with the company often taking drastic approaches to make its console stand out from the competition. With the Nintendo Switch, the gaming giant broke the mold again, offering a console that could be a home console connected to your television, while also being small enough to take with you on the go. When Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield were first announced in 2019, everyone was excited to see how the Nintendo Switch would push the series further. Better graphics and animations were high on the list of things that the community expected, and when the new games released, fans and critics were disappointed. Nintendo Instead of taking full advantage of the Nintendo Switch’s hardware, Pokémon Sword and Shield offered the same simple animations and graphics as past titles had on much weaker handheld devices. With Pokémon Snap, the series finally has a chance to make good on the promises fans were looking forward to with Sword and Shield. While not developed by Game Freak—the usual company behind Pokémon titles—Pokémon Snap could show us just how beautiful the Pokémon universe can be with an extra coat of paint and some extra screws. By offering higher-fidelity graphics, the developer behind Snap, Bandai Namco, is giving players better animations. Visuals have been emphasized heavily during the teasers we’ve seen thus far, which could help future Pokémon titles break out of the box that it has been stuck in since the Gameboy days.A different genre of game entirely, Pokémon Snap will do away with all the RPG mechanics that are native to the Pokémon franchise.