It’s Been 10 Years, and Nintendo Still Has Come Up With a Weirder Pokémon Spin-Off Than This

Released ten years ago today, Detective Pikachu remains one of the strangest games that Nintendo has ever released. While it’s far from the first spin-off title in the larger Pokémon franchise — and not even the first one that gave the typically monosyllabic creatures full dialogue — this mystery narrative threaded the needle between genuine noir homage and self-aware parody of the genre. The result was something that felt different from anything Nintendo had done before, even compared to other adventure, narrative, and mystery games.

Starring a disgruntled Pikachu and the only boy who can understand him, the pair investigate a disappearance and find themselves entangled in a larger web of intrigue. It’s nothing at all like the franchise that spawned it, but that may be exactly why it stands out so much. A decade later, it’s worth looking back at how the game came to be, the impact that it had, and how Nintendo feels different in light of their oddest Pokémon game ever.

Detective Pikachu Is Such A Weird Concept

Debuting in Japan on February 3, 2016, before getting a worldwide release a month later, Detective Pikachu stands out as one of the strangest diversions the Pokémon franchise has ever taken and has grown in the last decade from an oddball entry in the series to one of their most unexpected high-profile releases. After releasing PokePark 2 in 2011, game developer Creatures Inc. decided to move forward with an adventure game set in the universe. The thing that really drove the developers’ attention was the idea of a version of the cuddly mascot Pikachu who had the personality of a grizzled middle-aged man, a strange concept that they took even further by steadily making him into a hard-nosed detective.

Wearing a deerstalker hat and jacket to help distinguish himself from other Pokémon, that version of the Pikachu really stood out from the rest of the franchise. Detective Pikachu follows the titular creature as he teams up with a young boy named Tim Goodman, who can actually understand what the Pikachu is saying. It’s a wild turn away from the typical format of the series, while also fully recognizing the inherent bizarre aspects of the series. The inclusion of characters like Mewtwo firmly planted it into a world that felt thematically connected to other adaptations or games, but the noir-esque tone fully separates it from the rest of the series. It turns out that Pikachu had belonged to Tim’s father, Harry, who has gone missing.

This leaves the pair to embark on an investigation into what happened to him, unraveling a conspiracy that involves amnesia, drugs, and power players seeking to direct the flow of information. A full-blown mystery game more in the vein of the Ace Attorney or Professor Layton games than the turn-based combat and world exploration of the mainline Pokémon series, Detective Pikachu‘s noir elements gave it a clearly different energy than what propelled other entries in the franchise. The game received mixed reviews from critics, with the overall Metacritic score of 71/100 reflecting the strength of the execution and the strangeness of the concept, as well as the simple gameplay and straightforward plot. Notably, many critics noted in their reviews that the story might have worked better as a movie than a game, something Nintendo seemed to take to heart.

How Detective Pikachu Went From Cult Favorite To Blockbuster Movie

In the ten years that have passed since Detective Pikachu launched for the Nintendo 3DS, the game has become more than just a random curiosity in Nintendo’s history. The game proved to be a moderate success for Nintendo, earning a tidy profit for the company. The title became fodder for plenty of internet memes and trends, especially a viral push to cast Danny DeVito in the lead role of any prospective adaptation. Perhaps the biggest impact of the game’s success was the way it influenced Nintendo’s cinematic aspirations. While Nintendo had largely avoided live-action feature-length adaptations of their games following the infamous release of 1993’s The Super Mario Bros., the reception to the strangely charming story of Detective Pikachu led to it being used as the primary inspiration for a movie.

Released in 2019 with a fusion of CGI effects and live-action actors, Detective Pikachu cast Ryan Reynolds in the lead role and tweaked the overall story while still retaining the major aspects of the story. The film was a blockbuster hit, earning three times its budget at the box office. It was also seemingly crucial in laying the groundwork for more Nintendo movies like Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the upcoming Legend of Zelda adaptation. The game even got a sequel in 2023, Detective Pikachu Returns.

There’s a lot of brazen weirdness in the Pokémon franchise, but Detective Pikachu might be the oddest of them all. The tonal fusion and focus on dialogue are a wild change for a series where the titular monsters can typically only say their names, and yet the story is surprisingly funny, subversive, and even emotional. More than anything, Detective Pikachu underscored the flexibility that Nintendo’s most established franchises could embrace and laid the groundwork for what Nintendo has increasingly become in the last decade.