Pokémon Snap & the Magic of the Series

There are few times when a series as successful as Pokemon is able to capture the spirit that its mainline games create and invoke it in a game that’s entirely different from its source material. That is Pokemon Snap, a game that, in all honesty, is something that no one really expected at all. I mean, come on, a game where you take pictures of Pokemon? Lame, right? Wrong. This game is frigging awesome. I know I don’t really have to say it since it’s beloved by fans nowadays, but Pokemon Snap is something really special, not only because it’s just so different, but also because it just has this magical feeling that nothing other than Pokemon can really replicate.

But before I get too ahead of myself, let’s talk about what there actually is to this game. Pokemon Snap is an on-rails game in which you take pictures of Pokemon to show to Professor Oak. You play as Todd Snap aboard the Zero-One, in which you travel through various different regions containing all different types of Pokemon. The aim is to get the best pictures possible in order to get the highest score you can on each one. It’s a very arcade-y sort of gameplay, but it allows for a lot of replayability, which is a cornerstone of the gameplay itself. See, in a lot of cases, you have to reach a certain overall score in order to advance through levels or get new items like the apple or the Pester Ball. You’re encouraged to go through the same level multiple times to better your score, or to find new Pokemon using the items you receive along the way. You’d think this would get boring after a while, but it actually doesn’t. It’s so much fun replaying the levels, because sometimes you’ll find Pokemon that you missed the first time around; or you’ll discover that using a new item you’ve gotten, you’re able to get Pokemon to perform special poses, or even to get pictures of new Pokemon altogether. Of course, it is a bit hard to raise your overall score at times due to how stupid the game is at judging pictures, but it works pretty well otherwise. Discovery is half the fun of playing this game, and it gives the player a reason to replay the same levels. Imagine getting a Charmeleon or a Weepinbell to evolve before your eyes, by your own hand. It’s rewarding, it’s exciting, and it’s awesome. Even then, if you’re not huge on replaying levels, you’ll have to go back through all of them in order to unlock the final level with Mew in it by snapping pictures of the six Pokemon signs scattered throughout the game. And they’re not super obvious to find… for the most part, which broadens that feeling of discovery even more. It’s amazing how such a seemingly linear game can promote such an off-the-beaten-path kind of gameplay while still managing to make it feel natural.

So let’s get a bit more in-depth with the gameplay. There’s three main elements that will affect your picture’s score: size, pose, and technique. Size is how much of the frame the Pokemon takes up, the pose… can kind of mean a lot of things, and technique is just whether the Pokemon is in the center of the shot. The scoring system is really, really finnicky. First off, Professor Oak’s definition of the word “size” can change pretty much all the time. A perfect example of this is this picture of Charizard I took. Seems like it’s a pretty decent picture, right? Not to Professor Oak it’s not. For some reason, even though it takes up most of the frame and is a pretty decent indication of what a Charizard looks like, that’s apparently not good enough. And before you say, “Well Dan, most of its body isn’t in the shot,” here’s a picture of Charmeleon I took where you can hardly see it at all, but the size was “so-so” to Professor Oak. I don’t get it. Pose works pretty good most of the time, and you get extra points if the Pokemon is doing something, like Vulpix cheering when you throw it an apple or if Jigglypuff is singing. There’s nothing horribly wrong with that one. Technique just doesn’t make sense. I’m no expert on photography, but I’m pretty sure the subject doesn’t ALWAYS have to be in the center of the frame in order for it to be a good picture. Ever hear of the rule of thirds, Professor Oak? There’s also a few other things that can add to your score, like if there are other Pokemon in the shot, for example. Even though the scoring system can be really bad sometimes, it still does what it’s supposed to do most of the time. It’s nowhere near perfect, but I wouldn’t say it’s game-breaking.

Not only is the gameplay of Pokemon Snap great, but the atmosphere it provides is immaculate. It might take being a bit of a Pokemon geek to really appreciate this, but there’s something just so cool about seeing Pokemon in their natural habitat just chilling out and interacting with each other. You’ll see an Eevee and a Chansey playing with each other, a Koffing chasing around a helpless Jigglypuff, and so much more. It really feels like you’re in a living world, and it’s a wonderful feeling indeed, especially when it’s a world inhabited by Pokemon.

And even on top of all that, I feel like there’s some sort of indescribable feeling I get from playing this game. It could be nostalgia, but the problem is with that is that I’m 18 and I wasn’t old enough to experience Pokemon until Ruby and Sapphire, so I don’t have a huge connection with the original games as someone a few years older than me might. It’s like I said before: I think there’s just something magical about Pokemon. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything that Pokemon can’t make awesome. Seriously, if Pokemon could make me excited about something like photography (which is not to say I’m bashing on photography, it’s just an unlikely thing to associate with something like Pokemon. Please don’t hurt me), I think that really speaks to how incredibly influential Pokemon is as a franchise. Pokemon turned the 90’s on its head and created a fervor: this huge, overwhelming hype among both kids and adults that nothing else has been able to come even close to. There’s not a thing out there that gets people as excited as Pokemon does. Hell, it even turned 2016 on its head with Pokemon Go, a game that was literally about walking around and looking at your phone. Sounds boring as hell, right? Again, wrong. I was so, so excited for Pokemon Go, and I played the crap out of it with my friends for a decent amount of time that summer. And even though it sucks that the hype died down fairly quickly because Niantic are a bunch of turds and completely blew their chance to have something special, it still proves that Pokemon has just as much, if not more leverage in the modern day as it did 20 years ago. What with the advent of the Internet and a new generation of kids and adults who once held that same childlike awe for the games that started it all, Pokemon now more than ever has an insanely important place not only in gaming, but in pop culture in general. I’m very much looking forward to where the series goes next, and I can only hope that something as special as Pokemon Snap comes around soon enough. It’s a testament to the fact that Pokemon is here to stay, and twenty years later, it’s still kicking.