The highly anticipated games Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield were released last weekend. Although filled with a lot of mixed opinions from its loyal fanbase, it was able to hit a massive record of six million copies sold worldwide. 2 million copies that were sold came from Japan on its first-week release.
This info was confirmed in an announcement released by The Pokemon Company on Thursday. It literally broke the record for highest first-week sales of a Switch game. This achievement is definitely one for the books.
Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield were released worldwide on November 15. The two versions of the game will feature Pokemon from the Galar region, and players can choose one of the three basic starter Pokemon namely Gookey, Scorbunny, and Sobble. This is also the game where the Gigantamax forms are featured, in which Pikachu, Eevee, Meowth, Butterfree, Charizard, Alcremie, and Corviknight will be having their own said forms in this game. Two legendary Pokemon will also be introduced.
Other features in the Pokemon Sword and Shield game include the Max Raid Battles, Dynamax, Gigantamax forms, the Battle Stadium, Poke Jobs, Pokemon Camp, and Surprise trades. This is the second Nintendo Switch game for the popular franchise.
Even before the release of the two games, people have already shared their frustration and disappointment over some Pokemon are missing from the game. Fans say that this is saddening as people expected so much from the game’s developer Game Freak thinking that would be better than its first Nintendo Switch games of the franchise, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! which were based on the 1998 video game Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition.
The first Nintendo Switch games Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu, and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! was released in November 2018. The release of the games was a huge success as it had a record of more than 11.28 million combined sales as September 2019. This huge number has made the games known as one of the best-selling games for the Nintendo Switch.
Regardless of the minor backlash they have received from fans, Pokemon continues to still conquer the game industry with its new games and updates that old and new fans are waiting for.
While some have grown to love Pokemon due to its games, others have started their love for the franchise due to its card game, anime series, movies, and manga.
This year, Pokemon Detective Pikachu released in theaters on May 10. The movie highlights a 3D CGI Pikachu voiced by Ryan Renolds (Deadpool). Other main casts include Justice Smith as Tim Goodman, Ken Watanabe as Detective Yoshida, and Kathryn Newton as Lucy.
The movie is based on the Nintendo 3DS game of the same name released in 2016 in Japan, then in March 2018 in US, Europe, and Australia.
While the movie’s premiere is still a few months away, it was confirmed in a report by the entertainment news website The Hollywood Reporter that Legendary is now working on a sequel for the film. Oren Uziel, the screenwriter of 22 Jump Street and the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, is confirmed to be writing the script for the Detective Pikachu sequel.
Previously, the website We Got This Covered reported that the company is working on a “Pokemon Red and Blue” movie based from the first Pokemon games released for the Gameboy Color, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue.
According to their “official sources,” this upcoming movie project will be set in the Detective Pikachu universe but will introduce movie audiences to the lore of the franchise, the same as how players were first introduced to everything about Pokemon through the game. No plot info about the upcoming sequel was confirmed as of this time.
The Pokemon anime first aired in April 1997 and is still ongoing until this day. The long-running anime series is centered on Satoshi (Ash Ketchum) whose dream is become a Pokemon Master. He left his home Pallet Town in order to pursue this dream, meeting new friends, faced rivals, and even conquered adventures along the way. Ash is joined with his partner Pokemon, Pikachu, and two other trainers (who were originally gym leaders in the game) Misty, and Brock.
The anime series has 1,088 episodes so far as of this writing, and just recently, Ash finally became a Pokemon league champion during the Pokemon Sun and Moon run of the anime. For long-time running fans of the anime, this has been quite a journey as the Ash has taken more than a decade to achieve the Pokemon Master dream.
The current anime, titled Pocket Monsters, it focuses on Ash and Pikachu traveling to different regions, including the new one, Galar. They are both accompanied by a kid Gou.
The English dubbed version of the anime, in which the current season is titled as Pokemon Ultra Legends is still a couple of episodes away from the highly anticipated league finals in which Ash has declared the winner.
Source: ANN