Pokemon Diamond and Pearl remakes coming to Nintendo Switch this year

Today’s Pokemon Direct revealed a ton of new things — new games, new events, all sorts of stuff. One thing a lot of people have been waiting for some time was something new involving Nintendo DS games Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as both Pokemon and Nintendo have been hinting at it for about a month or so. If you caught the teasers, they’ve been sneaking Diamond/Pearl-related things into the background of their videos for a bit now.

What few people expected though was what we got today. The reveal of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl.

While I was a bit disappointed it was not going to be a continuation of the Let’s Go franchise as I thought it was a brilliant way for younger players to discover the original games without having to deal with their massive slog, this is still pretty great.

Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, created by ILCA, the team that works on Pokemon Home, is an intensively faithful recreation to the original Diamond/Pearl games that were released for the Nintendo DS back in 2006. All the way down to the fact that angled areas of water are just jagged teeth instead of diagonal lines.

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The game also maintains the original, shortened character design, block by block spacing of the towns and maps, and even the original font. Truth be told, it almost looks like a massive step back so Nintendo doesn’t have to deal with the weird elitists that have been harassing them over the last few years as Pokemon fans have aged into adults, often forgetting that the original target for the games is children like they used to be.

There have been some quality of life features added to the game thankfully. Battles take place in a more modern animated style so at least they didn’t transfer over the “shaky GIF” set up of the originals.

No word yet on whether Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will eventually lead to a remake of Sapphire but I’m imagining it will be future DLC for the games. For those excited about visiting the Sinnoh region again, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl will hit the Nintendo Switch digitally and physically later this year.