New Pokémon Snap gets a release date: April 30 on Nintendo Switch

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Heads up, trainer: in mid-January 2021, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company dropped a new trailer for New Pokémon Snap and locked in the date. The photography game would arrive on April 30, 2021, exclusively on Nintendo Switch. The title had already been announced in June 2020, in a Pokémon Presents broadcast, but until then had no set day.

For those who didn’t catch the Nintendo 64 era: the first Pokémon Snap, made by HAL Laboratory, came out in 1999 and put the player in the role of a photographer, not a trainer. No battling: the mission was to take the best photos of Pokémon in their natural habitat. New follows the same line. In the official description, Nintendo called the place “an unspoiled natural wonder”:

“Get ready to visit the many beautiful islands of the Lental region in New Pokémon Snap for the Nintendo Switch system. Featuring diverse ecosystems, from dense jungles to vast deserts, the region’s archipelago is an unspoiled natural wonder, and full of Pokémon in every nook and cranny, waiting to be discovered!”

How it works

The player joins Professor Mirror’s research team and travels through the stages aboard the NEO-ONE, a floating vehicle that follows a fixed path on its own while the camera rotates 360 degrees. At the end of each run, the professor rates each photo from one to four stars, depending on how rare the captured behavior is. Good photos earn points that raise the research level of the areas and unlock new Pokémon and interactions. There are also night stages, bosses and the mystery of the Illumina phenomenon, which makes Pokémon and plants glow. Photos can be shared online with other players.

Development was handled by Bandai Namco Studios, the same team behind Pokkén Tournament.

What came next

New Pokémon Snap launched on schedule, on April 30, 2021, during the franchise’s 25th anniversary, and was well received by critics, who saw the game as an evolution of the original. In August 2021, a free update brought new courses and raised the roster from 214 to 234 species. It arrived with a splash.