Pokémon Let’s Go games will get you closer to your favourite Pokémon than ever before
The Let's Go games show off how much has changed in the past 25 years, and how some things never do
A LOT has changed since Junichi Masuda started work on Pokémon Red/Blue in the late 1980s.
Back then, Masuda reveals to Sun Online, he had to lie to estate agents just to get a roof over his head.
Video games were seen as the pastimes of delinquents, and making them was not the sort of job you wanted someone you were renting a flat to to have.
These days Masuda, who is on the board of Pokémon developer GameFreak as well as being director of Red/Blue remakes Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu and Pokémon: Let's Go Eevee, goes into schools to give careers talks and tell kids how to get into gaming.
The Let's Go games are both out next month, and could well the be the last major game in the series that Masuda oversees.
With the amount that has changed in the past 30 years, what was the most important thing about the originals that he wanted to recapture for Let's Go?
"How close the player feels to their partner Pokémon," Masuda says.
The new technology certainly helps with that goal.
Shake your new Pokéball-shaped Switch controller, and your fluffy new Eevee scampers down your arm and puts her chin up so you can pet her mane.
Click the button and move the controller around and you can do just that, and be instantly rewarded by the most absurdly cute sequence of sounds ever produced for a video game.
Even before that, though, it's clear that your new best friend is not going to be the retiring type; there's a moment in the cut scene that starts the game where Eevee scampers towards the screen and puts her paws up on it, right at the edge of the frame.
From the moment you see those toe beans it's very clear what the game is going for, and there's no way to escape it.
The changes to the game seem to have worked well. The removal of truly random battles irked some purists, but being able to see Pokémon running around the world and catch them by literally throwing a Pokéball at them is undeniably fun.
Also, any pretense you might have about missing random battles will evaporate the first time a Pokémon you were trying to avoid darts into your path, and you curse yourself for not being fast enough to catch it.
But if you feel like that, Let's Go isn't really made for you, anyway.
Masuda explains that it's aimed at Pokémon Go players who have never played a main game, at children too young to have their own phone and play Pokémon Go themselves, and at parents who loved the originals and want to introduce their children to a franchise they love and a world they know.
But the sheer joy of catching and battling Pokémon, as well as interacting with your buddy, means that despite that targeting, the games are fun for anyone who has ever loved Pokémon.
There may only be one person other than Masuda left from that original team of ten or so who made the originals, but the development team for Let's Go is filled with young talent who grew up playing them.
That passion for the games themselves as a source of joy shines through, and does start from the top.
"My hobby is my job," Masuda says, laughing, as we ask if after 30 years he might be ready to move on to something else.
He handed over the reins of Sun/Moon, the most recent iteration of the franchise, to Shigeru Ohmori, and while he's taken control for Let's Go, he's got no intention of going back to managing day-to-day production. "Moving forward I'd like to leave the main series games to the younger generation," he says.
How do the younger generation feel about this?
Sitting in on our chat is Kensaku Nabana, one of the senior map and level designers on Let's Go. He reveals that when he started in developement six years ago, his primary school teacher parents did not approve, viewing games as a bad influence on children.
However, with the launch of Pokémon Go, all that changed, and suddenly he found he had all the support he needed, and those who doubted his career choice were suddenly very glad to have a regular supply of Pokémon toys.
SO a lot really can change in games in thirty years -- but in the end, people's love of the Pokémon never will.
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