New Pokemon Snap Release Date Revealed With New Trailer

The Pokemon Company has announced New Pokemon Snap's release date. Earlier today, The Pokemon Company released a new trailer for New Pokemon Snap, the long-awaited sequel to the Nintendo 64 picture-taking game. The new trailer showed off the brand new Lental region and revealed that the game would be released on April 30th. The new trailer, which can be seen below, shows the player character viewing and taking pictures of dozens of Pokemon, including a mega-sized Meganium caused by the brand new "Illumina" phenomenon. Not only do some Pokemon react to treats like fluffruit, we also see some Pokemon fighting and playing with each other in the wild, just like in the original game.

Last year, The Pokemon Company announced that fans would get a sequel of Pokemon Snap after years of waiting. Like the original game, players will explore an area filled with wild Pokemon while taking photos of them from the safety of their moving pod, named NEO-ONE. The game will be set in the brand new Lental region, and players will explore a new Illumina phenomenon that causes both plants and Pokemon to glow. One example of this (showing the Meganium mentioned above) can be seen in trailer. Over the course of the game, players will build a Photodex of Pokemon, with photos scored based on the Pokemon's poses, how large they appear, how directly they're facing you, and their placement within the frame. As players take more photos, they might discover some Pokemon behaving differently than they did before. Interestingly, New Pokemon Snap seems to let you label your pictures, so you can collect multiple photos of the same Pokemon doing different actions.

The trailer also showed off some of the major NPCs that will appear in the game. Players will assist Professor Mirror in investigating the Illumina phenomenon along with Rita, Mirror's research assistant. The trailer also confirmed that New Pokemon Snap will feature a variety of player appearance options, an upgrade from the previous game.

New Pokemon Snap is just one of several big releases planned to celebrate Pokemon's 25th anniversary. Yesterday, The Pokemon Company announced that it was teaming up with Katy Perry and other artists to release new music as part of the P25 Music project, and more Pokemon games and announcements are expected over the next couple of months.

New Pokemon Snap will be available for pre-orders beginning today, January 14th. The game will be released on the Nintendo Switch on April 30, 2021.