When the original Pokémon Photograph was released, the young promising Pokémon photographer for that game, Todd Snap, was still using rolls of film on his expedition to the island. Consumer digital cameras were still relatively new in 1999, so Todd and Professor Oak were limited by the technology of the day. The photos Todd took on his trip were the final product.
This is no longer the case with New Pokémon Snap, which will adopt digital photo editing tools from smartphones and apps like Instagram. And with the ability to share your New Pokémon Snap taking photos online, taking Pokémon will be more social than ever.
New Pokémon Snap, released on April 30 on the Nintendo Switch, otherwise it follows the formula established by the original game. Players will take a tracked vehicle called Neo-One to take a stroll through a variety of environments, taking pictures of Pokémon in the jungle and hoping to get that perfect shot. Players will fill in a Photodex, the Snap equivalent of the franchise’s Pokédex record, with their best photos.
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Image: Bandai Namco / Nintendo
Players can expect a lot more variety in the new game. The original Pokémon Snap featured less than half of the original 151 Pokémon; New Pokémon Snap will include many, many more. In a demo of the game held in Zoom, I saw Pokémon ranging from classics like Pikachu, Lapras and Exeggutor to newer monsters like Crabrawler, Inkay and Sandygast, playing on the beaches of the Lental region, an entirely new area of the Pokémon world. (Don’t expect any entirely new Pokémon, however. Nintendo said the Lental region will not feature any new variants or species.)
At night, different Pokémon will appear and players can light up the room with a new item called Illumina Orb. Capturing photos of rare Pokémon behaviors is a big component of New Pokémon Snapgameplay and players will have to experiment to seek out those moments. One interaction I saw involved luring a Sandygast out of hiding, startling a nearby Octillery that ran to a nearby sandbar.
Interaction with the game’s Pokémon works similarly to the original Pokémon Snap. Players can attract Pokémon with fruit or scan the environment for reactions from nearby creatures. Playing the Poké Flute can inspire a Pokémon to dance, leading to a perfect moment.
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Image: Bandai Namco / Nintendo
After each trip on the Neo-One, players’ photos will be evaluated by Professor Mirror, who will rate them with one to four stars, based on a variety of factors: a Pokémon’s pose, size, direction and location in the photo , and whether other Pokémon are in the frame. If you didn’t get the perfect photo, you can edit your photos after the teacher rates them using the Re-Snap feature. This feature is purely for personal use, however. His photos at the moment are what Professor Mirror will judge, not his retouched, reframed and refocused work.
The re-snap allows you to adjust your photos in a variety of ways. You can re-center subjects, crop and change an image’s brightness, blur and focus levels. You can even add filters, stickers and frames and then save your Re-Snap edits to a game album that exists separately from your Photodex. It is a feature that will undoubtedly take off on social networks, as players capture strange, fun and adorable moments in the archipelago of the Lental Region.