Nintendo Reveals Pokémon X and Y for 3DS

By Jorge Ba-oh 08.01.2013 40

Nintendo Reveals Pokémon X and Y for 3DS on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

The wait is over folks as a Nintendo has lifted the lid on a new Pokémon title that has been teased for over a week.

This morning the company aired a brief announcement video, Pokémon Direct, around the globe officially announcing a brand new pair of games in the longrunning series:

Introducing Pokémon X and Pokémon Y - a new generation of Pokémon games for Nintendo 3DS, to be released worldwide in October 2013 (some countries excluded).


 

Satoru Iwata started by reminiscing about the classic Pokémon games - Red Version and Green Version and how offering two versions of a game was a new idea at the time. Likewise using link cables for connectivity - trading and battling - was a pioneering concept for Nintendo back in the day.

Image for Nintendo Reveals Pokémon X and Y for 3DS


The Nintendo president then recalled the different improvements and functionality introduced in sequels Pokémon Gold/Silver and Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire as the series expanded into new generations of Pokémon. Not content with simply using cables and local wireless adapters, Nintendo roamed into the online world up until the latest games Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2.

As highlighted with previous entries, these two new games will fully utilise the new functionality introduced in the Nintendo 3DS, including a vibrant new world to explore, a new visual style with critters to meet, battle and collect.

Image for Nintendo Reveals Pokémon X and Y for 3DS


Image for Nintendo Reveals Pokémon X and Y for 3DS


Nintendo also confirmed the three starter Pokémon for the games:

Image for Nintendo Reveals Pokémon X and Y for 3DS


What do you think of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y - with around nine months to go, are you excited? Be sure to vote on our poll below and check out the Official Pokémon X and Y topic.

Box art for Pokémon X and Y
Developer

Game Freak

Publisher

Nintendo

Genre

Turn Based RPG

Players

2

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  9/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  9/10 (42 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now    Also on Also on Nintendo eShop

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Comments

So hyped!!! I love the new style, especially the battles. They look like they retain the classic feel but with 3D models that actually look really great! So going for the fire starter Fennekin, it looks like a tiny Flareon! Smilie

Oh WOW, the battles look amazing! Love the cell shading. Not sure about the overworld graphics, I thought the 3DS could do a bit more? Still impressed! Froakie is MINE.

( Edited 08.01.2013 11:50 by Ikana )

Ikana said:
Oh WOW, the battles look amazing! Love the cell shading.

Totally agree! The battles put even Battle Revolution on the Wii to shame and I thought that looked great. Game Freak's style is just so much better.

HOLY SHIT! Negativity out the way: map graphics look like a DS game, and still only 4 directional walking?

Other than that wow! It's the biggest change the series has ever had, and the new Pokémon look brilliant! I'm so so SO excited and it's coming out so soon! SmilieSmilie

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery

Cool I guess?  Hooray for 700 pokemon Smilie

The grass starter looks kinda derpy.

IkeFE said:
Cool I guess?  Hooray for 700 pokemon Smilie

The grass starter looks kinda derpy.


Aw I really like it, it's my favourite of the bunch so far
It's.. a mystery!!

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery

Graphics wise pretty disappointing, especially outside of battle. 

I honestly never cared much about how the overworld looks in Pokémon because most of the time is spent in battles. That said, it does look pretty rough but my main concern was how they would handle the battles and thankfully they look fantastic.

Really glad about a worldwide release, that will make avoiding spoilers much easier than before. I did a media blackout for Black/White but I'm not sure if I can do it again...

SirLink said:
I honestly never cared much about how the overworld looks in Pokémon because most of the time is spent in battles. That said, it does look pretty rough but my main concern was how they would handle the battles and thankfully they look fantastic.

Really glad about a worldwide release, that will make avoiding spoilers much easier than before. I did a media blackout for Black/White but I'm not sure if I can do it again...

But even the battles look kinda poor, do they really need to still do that small circle of ground instead of designing an environment. Also do the pokemon still have to stand still waiting to be punched in the face(Grandia got rid of that silliness about a decade ago). A tiny bit of movement would go a long way.

( Edited 08.01.2013 13:06 by JayUK )

Yeah the visuals are disappointing and battles could have been changed more, but they probably wanted to keep a feel of familiarity or make the transition more gradual, idk. The battles still look great to me, whether they're more streamlined or not remains to be seen, I hope they're not slow as hell. Besides.. they could have done what I'd expected, and just made the battles look like they do in Gen5 but with models instead, but now we have panning cameras and full on attacks.

C3 Official Pokémon XY Thread

Let's make this place active!!

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Pretty excited for this.

Not too worried about graphics, it says Game Footage Not Final, so I think it MIGHT get some more polish before release. Plus, having watched the trailer on my smaller screened phone just now, it looks pretty sweet.

Still peeved about 4-way walking. They even snuck it in there all sneakily. Bad Gamefreak, bad >=( ..

~Getting on C3's massive tits since 2K5.~

Looks like a great Pokémon game! Sadly I'm a few generations behind... I haven't even started Diamond.

Canyarion said:
Looks like a great Pokémon game! Sadly I'm a few generations behind... I haven't even started Diamond.

There's little point in playing every single game when it comes to "catching up" unless you're really in the mood to. If you must play Gen4, go for Platinum, and with Gen5 go for BW2. If I were you I'd skip D/P/B/W totally.

Or you could just skip both gens and wait for XY to come out, then you'd have even more newness!

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Well, I already own Pokémon Diamond on cartridge... so I'd feel bad for playing Platinum instead. But I guess it does make sense...

It's quite possible that I'll never play any Pokémon game again. I fear the amount of time they'll consume. Smilie

Life complete

Coming worldwide in October? As in simultaneous release? As in the Western world doesn't have to wait 3 months after the game is out in Japan? Tell me I'm not reading this wrong.

NNID: crackedthesky
My blog, mostly about writing: http://www.davidjlovato.com

justonesp00lturn said:
Coming worldwide in October? As in simultaneous release? As in the Western world doesn't have to wait 3 months after the game is out in Japan? Tell me I'm not reading this wrong.

That's exactly what it means, Iwata even spent half the presentation saying that people typically had to wait a year or more to get the game in English and was happy to announce that Pokémon X & Y are launching globally this October.

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery

Does that mean the Pokémon names can't be translated from Japanese???? Smilie Smilie

(just kidding, that would be silly)

SuperLink said:

That's exactly what it means, Iwata even spent half the presentation saying that people typically had to wait a year or more to get the game in English and was happy to announce that Pokémon X & Y are launching globally this October.

That's pretty awesome, seems like the Gamefreak office has been a busy little beehive the last few years.

NNID: crackedthesky
My blog, mostly about writing: http://www.davidjlovato.com

I'd feel a lot better about the Region Lock if more games had a worldwide release like this one.

On topic, holy crap at those visuals. Smilie

Bleh, I can't be bothered with pokemon anymore.
Yeah, the 3D world is a mild step forward, but probably one that should have been taken about 5 years ago, ditto with the battles.

I wish they'd stop making new pokemon as well. Aren't there enough already!?
PS: Sorry for sounding like an old moanbag, but I've got sucked into pokemon hype before, and it's always an inferior version of the original couple of gens.

( Edited 08.01.2013 20:16 by Cheesing it up )

Cheesing it up said:
 it's always an inferior version of the original couple of gens.

That's the only thing that makes you sound like a "moanbag" Smilie

Fair enough if you're sick of the stagnation, I am too, and the main thing that stopped this being a totally positive announcement for me was that it's blatently the same. But the new Pokémon games definitely aren't inferior to the old ones, neither are the new Pokémon themselves - I personally still love getting surprised by seeing creatures I've never seen before when I venture out into the grass.

What would you do with Pokémon instead? (Besides the obvious, get rid of the grid system, change up battle mechanics a little more, etc) Because chances are it'll be done by a spinoff at some point.

Unfortunately I get the feeling that GameFreak do not want Nintendo's first parties "interfering" with their development, which is why their games always look crap, technologically. Nintendo have the resources to make this Pokémon game look as good as a Wii game, but GameFreak want none of it. Them's the breaks, I doubt GameFreak is going to become capable of doing amazing things with modern graphics overnight seeing as they've been mediocre at it for the last decade.

They won't fix what isn't broke, but advances like this in the series helps me believe that it someday will advance to the sort of level we'd be more than content with.

( Edited 08.01.2013 20:36 by SuperLink )

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I wish they'd finally give those critters some more attack options. A max of 4 is silly... and this is why nobody ever uses moves like 'leer' and 'growl'. The stat-changing moves just aren't worth it if you only have 4 move slots available.
I suggest they add 2 extra slots... which can then only be used by non-damaging moves.

Then go from turn-based to time based... and we're finally getting somewhere. Smilie

SuperLink said:
Cheesing it up said:
 it's always an inferior version of the original couple of gens.

That's the only thing that makes you sound like a "moanbag" Smilie

Fair enough if you're sick of the stagnation, I am too, and the main thing that stopped this being a totally positive announcement for me was that it's blatently the same. But the new Pokémon games definitely aren't inferior to the old ones, neither are the new Pokémon themselves - I personally still love getting surprised by seeing creatures I've never seen before when I venture out into the grass.

What would you do with Pokémon instead? (Besides the obvious, get rid of the grid system, change up battle mechanics a little more, etc) Because chances are it'll be done by a spinoff at some point.

Unfortunately I get the feeling that GameFreak do not want Nintendo's first parties "interfering" with their development, which is why their games always look crap, technologically. Nintendo have the resources to make this Pokémon game look as good as a Wii game, but GameFreak want none of it. Them's the breaks, I doubt GameFreak is going to become capable of doing amazing things with modern graphics overnight seeing as they've been mediocre at it for the last decade.

They won't fix what isn't broke, but advances like this in the series helps me believe that it someday will advance to the sort of level we'd be more than content with.

If I was gamefreak this is what I'd do.

-Put less of a focus on the amount of Pokemon, how many do they even have now. I think anything over 300 is excessive.
-No Random battles, I want to be able to see Pokemon in the world interacting with each other. Have discovering new Pokemon down to investigation and exploration rather than a random number generator.
-Have Pokemon vary their looks a bit, so your Pikachu doesn't look identical to your opponents. It can be simple things like their size or colour varying.
-Have your main Pokemon follow you around and act like a tamagotchi like in Pokemon Yellow.
-Don't have people just standing around, give them a routine like in majora's mask or skyrim.
-Have the Pokemon trading card game as a sidequest, like how FFVIII did tetra master.
-Don't know if they've improved this yet, haven't played Pokemon Black and White but make the Pokemon make noises like in the television series instead of sounding like a spectrum.
-Give you some control over the story, it doesn't just have to be a quest to defeat the elite four.
-Make catching Pokemon less random number effected. 
-Have Pokemon move around in battle.
-Balance Pokemon more, some become useless after level 40.
-Have a more modern level up system(Skill trees etc, more customisation)
-Have more pro's to not evolving Pokemon.
-Include a Pokemon Snapesque sidequest. 



( Edited 08.01.2013 21:36 by JayUK )

JayUK said:

-Put less of a focus on the amount of Pokemon, how many do they even have now. I think anything over 300 is excessive.
-Don't know if they've improved this yet, haven't played Pokemon Black and White but make the Pokemon make noises like in the television series instead of sounding like a spectrum.
-Have a more modern level up system(Skill trees etc, more customisation)
-Have Pokemon move around in battle.
-Balance Pokemon more, some become useless after level 40.

Disagree with these quite a lot, the last two because they're pretty much already being done to some level, the last one is done pretty actively each Gen.

First point: I kinda agree, but every single Pokémon there is has fans, they're not going to kill off Pokémon because what would be the point? It'd do far more harm than good.
Second point: While I agree that sounding like game sounds is a bad idea, sounding like anime noises is even worse because only about 10-20 Pokémon actually sound anything other than embarassing in the anime. Sure, Pikachu and Squirtle sound ok, everything else sounds shit. If the Pokémon start saying their names like in the anime, Nintendo better spend the money to hire way better voice actors or I'll be seriously put off hearing some dull human voice repeating a nonsensical pun word over and over like "Staravia, Staravia.".
Third point: Pokémon is for kids, no complex anything - Pokémon isn't "old fashioned" in its level up system, it just chooses simplicity over that for the sake of its target audience.

-No Random battles, I want to be able to see Pokemon in the world interacting with each other. Have discovering new Pokemon down to investigation and exploration rather than a random number generator.
-Have Pokemon vary their looks a bit, so your Pikachu doesn't look identical to your opponents. It can be simple things like their size or colour varying.
-Have your main Pokemon follow you around and act like a tamagotchi like in Pokemon Yellow.
-Don't have people just standing around, give them a routine like in majora's mask or skyrim.
-Have the Pokemon trading card game as a sidequest, like how FFVIII did tetra master.
-Give you some control over the story, it doesn't just have to be a quest to defeat the elite four.
-Make catching Pokemon less random number effected. 
-Have more pro's to not evolving Pokemon.

I agree with most of this, especially doing down with the random number generator. I wish GameFreak would do some of this too, but a lot of people would not.

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