Pokémon Snap

Pokémon Snap

Developed by: HAL Laboratory

Released: 1999

Platform: Nintendo 64

In Pokémon Snap, take pictures of Pokémon and use items to capture the best possible pose of the little creatures in their natural habitats.

Pokémon Snap is a first person rail shooter photography game. It is a spin off from the (very popular) Pokémon games. The player is summoned to Pokémon island to help Professor Oak make a visual record of the Pokémon he’s studying.

A different way to catch ’em all

The game allows the player to select a course and take photos of the Pokémon you see. You get extra points for Pokémon size, how well the image is framed, if there’s more than one, and if they’re doing any cool poses!

The game was developed by HAL Laboratory who are a Japanese videogame developer founded in 1980. The game originally started out as a non-Pokémon game called Jack and the Beanstalk and was intended to be released for the 64DD, a peripheral for the N64. After progress in the development of Jack and the Beanstalk was deemed unsatisfactory, the idea arose to turn it into a Pokémon spin-off.

Pokémon Snap eventually got a sequel – a whole 22 years later!

Interesting Facts

• The total number of Pokémon that appear in the game is 63.

• Ekans ( a snake type Pokémon) was planned to be in the game. This would have made the final total number of Pokémon 64 (see the link?). It’s not certain why Ekans was left out but it has been speculated that it may be to do with the difficulty of making a snake move properly due to graphic limitations.

• Most of the voice clips for the Pokémon are reused from the anime. Although several of them still retained their Japanese voices, since some had yet to appear in the dub.