The 25th anniversary of Pokémon’s first appearance on the GameBoy is coming up soon, on February 27th – and rumor has it that remakes of the Gen IV Diamond and Pearl games could be announced.
The rumor comes courtesy of Spanish fan site Centro Pokémon, with the key information roughly translating to the below (thanks, NintendoLife).
"Centro Pokémon can confirm that, according to sources close to the company, remakes of Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, originally released in 2006 for the Nintendo DS, are in development for the Nintendo Switch."
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Diamond and Pearl were the first generation of Pokémon games made for Nintendo DS, taking the Pokémon formula to the region of Sinnoh, where Team Galactic are up to nefarious sci-fi deeds. It features some of this writer’s most beloved Pokémon creations, such as the grass/ice heavyweight Abomasnow, but the rumor is largely interesting because of what it doesn’t include.
Nintendo is largely expected to release another iteration of its Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee titles on Switch, taking place in the Gen II region of Johto. It would be surprising to see the publisher skip remakes of Gen II and Gen III, though it’s worth noting that the Gold/Silver and Ruby/Sapphire games did all get remakes for the Nintendo 3DS, making Diamond/Pearl the oldest mainline Pokémon games to have gone without a revisit so far.
Even more notable is that the rumor suggests these remakes won’t be in the Let’s Go format, meaning we could get a brand new style or something closer to the original releases – a boon for those after more serious mainline releases than the accessible Let’s Go versions.
While the announcement is expected during a February Pokémon Direct, it’s likely the games wouldn’t release until late 2021.
Happy anniversary!
Nintendo certainly has a lot of celebration going on: 2020 saw the 35th anniversary of the Super Mario games, with a 3D All Stars collection of old titles, revamped red-and-blue console, and even a battle royale game made to commemorate the occasion.
It's pretty certain that Nintendo will have something planned for Pokémon's anniversary, though the exact details won't be firm until we hear it from Nintendo itself.
With The Legend of Zelda series also turning 35 this year, you can be sure something will be in the works there too – Breath of the Wild 2, perhaps?
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