Pocket Monsters 64: The Pokémon Game We Never Got

Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet were the first open world Pokémon games made for the Nintendo Switch. Many years ago, however, on the Nintendo 64, there was already to be a 3D Pokémon adventure from Game Freak: Pocket Monsters 64, also known as Pocket Monsters RPG. This game was originally supposed to be released for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive (Nintendo 64DD), but the project was eventually cancelled. Apparently Game Freak struggled with Pokémon Gold and Silver, so despite much anticipation, the game never released. As a result, it was never unveiled at Nintendo Space World 1997, and nothing was ever said about the Pokémon game ever again. In this video I'll tell you the whole story of the most bizarre Pokémon game: Pocket Monsters 64!

Pocket Monsters 64 screenshots created by:

#pokemon
#nintendo
#pokemon64

[sebman]

"This Game was planned for 64DD"
Literally 90% of the n64 videos

[FTChomp]

Pokemon on the N64 would have been cool imagine a home console Pokemon experience before the Switch.

[Mnemoniforma.]

I feel like the failure of the 64DD spelled the death of many of my childhood dreams. It should be remembered as a tragedy of human history.

[f_sharp]

and now we wait for some genius game developer to craft this from scratch and compile it as an N64 rom that works on official hardware
*i'll wait*

[rodolforubens]

Heh, I made those mockup images. Nice vid!

[rudysad]

this channel is incredible, provides no useless information and its straight to the point! keep it up :D

[zachcouch]

This is a game I dreamed about in middle school.

[ZeeBeeZB]

That would have been the killer app for rpg fans for sure

[pentagonyx]

About the "difficulties" mentioned near the end of the video with Gold and Silver- here's a fun fact:

Apparently the dev team had run out of cartridge space. Then Chadoru Iwata came along and was like "I gotchu" and showed them a new compression algorithm for the game which cut the space in half. This gave them the idea to put Kanto in the game.

[odaliscanelo]

I really believe a Pokémon RPG would’ve been the best selling n64 game.

[freddiejohnson]

I can imagine most stuff about the game never got past the concept phase as even when it was starting to show up as a future release Pokemon was still in it's early days and they didn't know how they were going to take the series forward. Having Game Freak work on an N64 game at the time as well as Gold and Silver probably would have delayed both too.

[Hschlick]

'Pokemon RPGs should not be on home consoles' not until 22 years later on the Nintendo Switch with the release of Sword and Shield.

[IAmMugel]

Let's be honest, Colosseum and XD were better games anyway. Admittedly, I was not a fan of them being purely double battles (with a very small handful of exceptions in XD) but the Pokemon themselves felt far more alive. The visceral reactions to being hit, being hit with a critical or a super effective move, not to mention the emotion you could see as they fainted. It was just a better made game. I really don't know how gamefreak have managed to make pokemon feel so lifeless lately, especially when even looking clear back in stadium and stadium 2, they actually reacted to getting hit rather than just giving a split second reused flinch but not even budging from their default position..

[danzackblack]

Can't help myself from laughing at the way you keep on emphasizing the DD

[icycatelfgraphics]

I thought I remembered reading something about this in a magazine as a kid. Seems like there was a screenshot of what looked like a 3D Ash/Red riding Charizard, but that may have only been a mock-up. Thought maybe I was imagining things since I hadn't heard anything else about it after all these years.

[marinomele]

Junichi Masuda was the secret villain all along.

[Ozzyzig]

I hope someone makes this game in this art style. I would put many hours in to it lol

[infelicities]

those fan renders have 100x the soul as scarlet and violet

[kphoenix]

when i was a kid, i remember talking about how i wished they would come out with an open world kind of n64 pokemon game. like a main series pokemon game but in 3d. sad this never really happened.

[edgardeitz]

Maybe if the N64DD was released in 1997 the developers (of games) would've had enough confidence (seeing Nintendo to likewise have such confidence) to actually develop games for it.