I want this to be real, even for a moment
Nintendo Wire is giving us another demake mockup, and once again, I wish it was real.
In case you forgot, the Pokemon Snap series (it’s a series now!) allows players to take photos of creatures, facilitated by an on-rails mechanic. Your job is to capture as many Pokemon characters as you can on film, sometimes in different poses or situations.
This mockup shows us a full stage (Beach Course 1-1), from the start to the final assessment from Professor Oak, where you get scored on your photos and choose which one to use to put your best foot forward.
The sights, the sounds, it’s all just lovely. Even some of the more grating noises! And the little “power” light on the side of the Game Boy Color is making me want to boot my original back up. The Color was such an ingenious idea: it not only paid off big time for Nintendo (it gets lumped into the original and currently has the all-time third spot in terms of game systems sold), but it’s also a very forward-thinking device with backward compatibility for old games.
The Game Boy Advance took all this even further, in a frankly unprecedented era of care for preservation and backward compatibility. We’re kind of beyond that now outside of efforts by basically just Microsoft.