It's time to catch them all one more time. Nintendo confirmed during its Pokémon Direct on Friday that the newest iteration of the long-running series will be "Pokémon Sun" and "Moon." The release will introduce the seventh generation of Pokémon into the ever-expanding series and will mark the newest installment since "Pokémon X" and "Y" in 2013.
The announcement had been long been expected. Not only does 2016 mark the 20th anniversary of the series, but, according to Serebii, a new Pokémon was shown off in a recent issue of CoroCoro that goes by the name of Magiana. However, what really clinched it was yesterday's discovery of trademark applications for both "Sun" and "Moon," including logos that had been published on a European trademark registry. The timing of the filing was uncanny, it was filed Feb. 25 - one day before the Nintendo Direct briefing.
There isn't much information to go on, such as the legendaries who will be associated with each version, who the starters will be or new mechanics, but the games are confirmed to be coming to the Nintendo 3DS in 2016. They will be available at the same time worldwide, and launch in nine different languages, including traditional and simplified Chinese.
"We hope that, through Pokémon, players can overcome language barriers and interact with other players from around the world," Tsunekazu Ishihara, CEO of The Pokémon Company, said during the presentation.
In related news, Nintendo announced that the Virtual Console versions of the original Pokémon games will now allow for Pokémon transfers. This means that Pokémon caught or traded in "Red," "Blue" or "Yellow" can be transferred via the Pokébank app to the newest iterations of the game.
This year has proven to be a busy one for Pokemon and there are several new titles, including "Sun" and "Moon," that fans can look forward to in the coming months. Next month will see the release of "Pokken Tournament" on Wii U, brought to fans by Bandai Namco, the creators of "Tekken" and the "Soul" series. While later this year, the augmented reality game "Pokémon Go" will drop on iOS and Android.
