During the Pokémon Gifts broadcast this week, The Pokémon Company announced remakes of the Nintendo DS games, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. While Game Freak normally deals with games like this, right now, he’s busy with the prequel to the open world Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which will be released next year.
This leaves the launch of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl in 2021 at the hands of a Japanese studio called ILCA. Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda will oversee the project as a director, alongside ILCA’s Yuichi Ueda. If you are not familiar with this studio, here is a quick summary:
Who is ILCA?
ILCA, Inc. is a Japanese studio based in Tokyo, with other offices located in Shinjuku, Nagoya and Kyoto. It was created on October 1, 2010 as a CG-based video production company with a focus on animation, films and television, and eventually added video game development to the list. As of December 1, 2020, it had 288 employees.
What does the ILCA logo look like?
Here it is in all its glory (without those beautiful walls):
So, who’s in charge?
ILCA is led by CEO Takuya Iwasaki and director Satoshi Takamori.
What does ILCA mean?
According to the company’s website, ILCA is named after the acronym “I Love Computer Art”.
“I LOVE COMPUTER ART”
Has the studio worked on any Pokémon projects before?
Yes – before Diamond and Pearl were remade, he was responsible for the cloud-based storage application, Pokémon HOME.
What other games did it work on?
As we mentioned earlier, ILCA is a support studio. As a result, it worked on all types of games, including normal ones, augmented reality titles, virtual reality games and several other things, including a Domino’s pizza app featuring Hatsune Miku.
Some of the more serious projects you are assisted in include Yakuza 0, Dragon Quest XI, NieR: automata, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 and more recently Ace Combat 7: Unknown Skies.
Do you want to know more about the ILCA?
Of course, go to the company’s official website – you’re even hiring! There are also officers Twitter and Facebook pages.
So, there is your intensive course at ILCA – the team behind Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Do you think they have what it takes to remake Generation IV Pokémon games? Share your ideas below.