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How Pokemon and Nintendo Could Fix Mobile Gaming

How Pokemon and Nintendo Could Fix Mobile Gaming

With Nintendo moving forward into the mobile arena, I think mobile games can be just as interesting and innovative as console games. If other developers followed, I think we would see some very fun and exciting games.

Pokemon Go is an upcoming title for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. This title is being published by The Pokemon Company and is separate from Nintendo’s own mobile app line-up which begins launching this month via social game Miitomo . Pokemon Go looks and sounds exactly like most Pokémon games, with similar game mechanics and a lot of the same Pokemon we love. As always, if you want certain Pokemon, you’ll have to go to their respective environments; the beach for Water-type Pokemon, mountains for Rock-types, and inside active volcanoes for Fire breeds. There will, of course, be new Pokemon for the Pokedex. What’s more, there might even be player location-based Pokemon to discover.

Miitomo is a mashup of Miiverse , the company’s social network that it launched with the Wii U, and Tomodachi Life , the weird friend-collecting toy for the 3DS. Miitomo is a lovely free phone app that pulls in friends from Facebook and Twitter, in addition to personalized news and feeds. The new app lets you spend real money to buy in-game items. So far, it seems to be the Nintendo version of Second Life with progress made simply by adding friends, answering questions and so on. This exciting social network is the first of five apps Nintendo plans to release over the next year, and the following four will be more traditional games that are expected to include some of the company’s famous characters. Miitomo is available in Japan today for iOS and Android, with a global release set for later this month. Though this is a social network app, the in-app games and operations are very similar to regular online games. Thus, another easy adaptation to mobile that other developers could do too.

How Pokemon and Nintendo Could Fix Mobile Gaming

Since Nintendo is going to launch more game apps, other developers might very well follow. There are already a few mobile games out there that not only use the mobile format to their advantage, but have the same feel as a console game. El , for example, is a beautiful Indie game by Gree Inc. Gameplay is easy with increasing difficulty per level, the animation is stunning despite being so simple, and the plot is emotional enough to make you play the game again. You touch the screen to move through the level and try to collect umbrella pieces to survive, the story unfolding as you fly by the various backgrounds. El may not be a game that takes hours to finish, but I think the half hour it takes is worth it and speaks to the potential of mobile games. A more lengthy game that feels a lot like a console game, is Slender: Noire by DarkFusion Games. Though the game is quite glitchy, for my phone anyway, the camera and move touch buttons are just like a PS or Xbox controller. The animation looks like the usual gritty horror game, filled with dark corners and suspiciously empty streets. The plot evolves slowly, with each area completed and items found.

If EA or Ubisoft thought more creatively and plunged wholeheartedly into the mobile game genre, I think they would succeed. If Telltale Games can, the big-name developers can too. Thanks to Nintendo, it’s very clear that mobile games don’t need to be shorter on creativity or revolutionary techniques any more than console games are.

Image Credit: Douglas Gray

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