9
Verge Score
Nintendo’s new Pokémon smart device is a nostalgic throwback with a few new tricks.
Pokopia is out this week, and it’s one of the more interesting Pokémon spinoffs, mashing up games like Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Dragon Quest Builders. If you’re curious just what’s going on in the game, The Verge’s poké-experts Charles Pulliam-Moore and Kallie Plagge will be answering questions at 2PM ET.
Nintendo’s new Pokémon spin-off game tasks you with rebuilding the world.
As a reminder, now that the stream is over, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen — remakes of the original games for the GBA — are now available on the Switch.
The battle-focused spinoff Pokémon Champions has a launch date — or a month, at least. The Nintendo Switch version is out in April, while mobile players will have to wait until later in the year.
Sure, you can just pull up digital versions of the Junichi Masuda’s music from Pokémon Red and Blue. Or you can pick up one of the new Game Boy-inspired music players Nintendo is releasing along with 45 different cartridges that seem to play one song each.
As part of the Nintendo Classics line for NSO subscribers, Nintendo is bringing the GameCube cult classic Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness to the Switch 2. There’s no release date, though it’ll be launching some time in March.
The latest Pokémon Presents showcase streams this morning, and given the fact that it also marks the franchise’s 30th anniversary, we’re expecting some good announcements. You can watch it right here.
The machines could be some of the priciest merch released for the franchise’s 30th anniversary. There’s fun details like a Master ball plunger handle and a Meowth balloon that swoops down, but to get all the best features you’ll need to skip the $6,999 Pro and $9,699 Premium machines, and splurge on the $12,999 Limited Edition option.
Toymaker Wow! Stuff has announced a new Pikachu puppet featuring blinking eyes, moving ears, and a “first-of-its-kind animated mouth moving feature.” Pikachu also has sensors that respond to touch with light up cheeks and over 100 sound effects. It will be priced at £89.99, or around $122, according to Insider Gaming.
Yep, Little Saint James had a single Pokéstop until it was removed by Niantic this week after Pokémon Go players kept spoofing their locations to “visit” the island. We don’t know if Epstein himself used it, though emails show he recommended the game to Deepak Chopra and Sheikh Fahad Bin Hamad.
The Pokémon Company, Koei Tecmo, and Game Freak’s new life sim game is more than a charming spin on Animal Crossing.
This Super Bowl ad pulls together a grab bag of global celebrities (Lady Gaga, Trevor Noah, Jisoo, Charles Leclerc, Lamine Yamal, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Young Miko) to ask which one is their favorite.
While, the latest trailer for Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s upcoming Mega Dimension expansion introduces a new kind of Mega Lucario, the real surprise is that Mewtwo has been added to the game as part of a new side quest that you can play starting today.
The mythical pokémon Zeraora has been almost impossible to obtain in the mainline games since it was first introduced in Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon. But that’s probably going to change next month when the monster’s new Mega Evolved form debuts in Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s Mega Dimension DLC.
There’s a new extended trailer for Pokémon Pokopia showing off more of the monsters you’ll encounter on your cozy island like Professor Tangrowth, Peakychu, and Smearguru. It’s all very cute, but the trailer also makes it clear that these pokémon are living in the wake of some kind of wild catastrophe.
Pokémon Pokopia is a Minecraft-like cozy game in which you play as a “Ditto that has taken the appearance of a human,” learning to build homes, farm crops, and other activities you wouldn’t expect a Ditto to do. If that sounds like your kinda game, it’ll be available on the Switch 2 next year.
Patent and Trademark Office director John A. Squires has ordered the 12,403,397 patent — often oversimplified to “summoning characters and making them fight” — to be reexamined, citing two older Konami and Nintendo applications that raise “a substantial new question of patentability.” This isn’t one of the patents in Nintendo’s ongoing legal battle with Palworld-creator Pocketpair.
8
Verge Score
The third-gen Rotom Phone’s handy zoom and beefed-up safety features make for a solid upgrade.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A launch day has finally arrived, and if you haven’t checked out our review breaking down how surprisingly good the game is, there’s a new overview trailer out to get you hyped for the new Lumiose City.
Nintendo’s Pokémon Legends series continues to feel like the franchise’s future.
While the six-minute-long Pokémon Legends: Z-A overview Nintendo just posted doesn’t feature all that much new information, it does give us an even better look at many of the game’e snazzy new character customization options.
Deluxe Pack ex, the newest Pokémon TCG Pocket expansion, will feature reprinted cards from multiple previously-released sets. But this time around, many of the cards will feature fancy new artwork, and each Deluxe pack will include at least one high-rarity card. The expansion will be available from September 29th to October 29th.
Everything about The Pokémon Company’s “My Friend Malamar” Pokémon Legends Z-A marketing blitz has felt unsettling as hell, but this new video spells it all out pretty clearly: the Dark/Psychic squid monster is using enhanced telepathy to warp people’s minds. Fun!
Dragonite came first, then there was Victreebel, and now Hawlucha has joined the ranks of pokémon who are getting snazzy new Mega Evolution forms when Pokémon Legends: Z-A drops this fall. Sorry to this Machamp.
The jury is still out on whether Entei, Suicune, and Raikou are based on cats or dogs, but the trio of legendary beasts are definitely the headliners for Secluded Springs, Pokémon TCG Pocket’s latest set that’s dropping on August 28th.
