Email: Why Pokemon 3d will not exist on the 3DS

Hello Malstrom,

The last sentence of your post about 3D mario for 2D Mario fans caught my eye.

“This move to 3d could possibly destroy the Pokemon franchise.”

While this is a very true statement if Pokemon were to abandon it’s 2D roots, i’m very sceptical of this happening.

For one thing, Game Freak, the company that makes the series, is a very small compagny. A 3D pokemon game would require quite a big budget and lot’s of employees to make. It is of course very much possible that Game Freak will start hiring more artists after Black and White are done conquering the sales charts, but even then…

I remember at least 2 interviews with the one of the producers of the series. A man named Junichi Masuda. The first interview was taken around the release of Pokemon platinum and when asked if the series would ever go 3D, Masuda flat out said no, stating that 2D sprites had far more charm to them then polygons would ever have and that is one the reasons why gamefreak would never go in that direction. I can’t find that one anymore but here is a link in which he states the same thing over again:

http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=151647

Now, a model having ‘charm’  isn’t the best of reasons for not going 3D. But looking at Game Freak’s output(and make no mistake, Game Freak is responsible for Pokemon’s succes), they have had ton’s of opportunities to go the 3D route. Sure enough, the Pokemon Colliseum games on the Gamecube had a big 3D adventure stuck to them. Something like that would obviously have to rely upon the basics layed down by GF so I can easily see them being asked by Nintendo to develop such a title (Nintendo could easily have made up for the low number of staff on those games) and yet they simply didn’t. Instead of that, they created a 2D platformer called Drill Dozer and made more 2D Pokemon RPG’s. In the second interview I referred too, Masuda was once again asked if they were going 3D and this time his answer was again a big fat no, only to be followed by a big laugh. This one I’m having reall trouble finding, but i swear I read it on gonintendo.

Point is: if Nintendo want’s to have a 3D pokemon, then they can have it.

Thing is, it’s going to be a spin-off as that Game Freak will never create a 3D pokemon. And seeing as that game freak is responsible for the really succesfull pokemon games, i’d say the series is pretty safe.

Game Freak doesn’t have a choice. Any game on the 3DS HAS to be 3d. It MUST use the 3d output. This isn’t like the touchscreen or motion controls where many games could forgo it. This is more like the SNES where EVERY game has to be 16-bit.

This doesn’t mean the game becomes ‘3d’, but must have ‘3d output’. What I believe is that the requirement of ‘3d output’ will warp the game in ways we cannot imagine.

For example, Miyamoto says there will be a 2d Mario game on the 3DS. But he expects to use the ‘3d output’ to do things with it. This raises so many questions. The big concern is that the ‘3d output’ will warp 2d Mario in negative ways. It won’t transform 2d Mario into a 3d Mario game, but it very well could turn it into a 2.5d Mario game. And this would be seen as a negative experience by 2d Mario fans. 2d Mario has a very pure and clean gameplay style. 3d outputs cannot benefit this. It is also why the NES revivals (where they turn the old classic games into ‘3d’ so they can charge us higher prices) won’t work. The people who buy those games buy them today precisely because they are not in 3d. Adding in 3d is going to be seen as a negative to the experience. People do not ‘look’ at games. People play games. This is why the Kotaku editor permanently turned off his 3d output on his 3DS. The purpose is to play the games, not ‘absorb the special effects’. Gamers prefer more game and less special effects… every… single… time.

P.S.: Do you have anything against Streetpass? Got that impression from you critising the 3DS commercials. To me it’s the only thing i see some potential in along with spotpass. I mean, we’re talking about Pokemon here and for that series, i can see streetpass having some really big benefits along for series such as Animal Crossing and Mario Kart.

It should be renamed as Urbanpass. Unless you live and walk around in urban areas, you will never use it.

Most of the United States does not live in urban areas. And of the urban areas, they are nothing like in Japan. For example, Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States. But no one walks around the city. Instead, people use this thing called a ‘car’ where they drive around. Perhaps Streetpass will work on the freeway. And even then, do I want to keep a 3DS always on inside the car or on my person when traveling in hopes of collecting something?

I’d prefer Nintendo to focus on the fundamentals. One of the great things the DS did was download play. However, all games abandoned it not soon after. Consider a family of five that has three kids. If the entire family is to play a game, are they to buy five copies of the same game? That is insane. It is better to buy one copy and have it download to the others. Something like download play may not mean much to the lone wolf gamer who shells out tons of money for games, but it means much to families who have multiple kids. With the move to 3d, I expect the download play to be completely abandoned since 3d games have too much data. Thanks Nintendo.