Pokemon Legends Arceus offered fans of the franchise a completely different take on capturing and battling, and a fan-made concept has fans begging for Gen 1 remakes in the same style.
In 1996, Pokemon was introduced to the world with the release of Red, Green, and Blue on the Nintendo Game Boy. Over the course of 26 years, Pokemon would become the highest-grossing media franchise in the world.
One of the most nostalgic aspects of the first generation of Pokemon is the official artwork for each monster. This iconic watercolor style was developed by none other than Ken Sugimori.
Over the years, the artwork would evolve into the now-popular digital style Pokemon fans are used to. However, some fans continue to hold Sugimori’s original art style near to their hearts.
Fan project recreates Gen 1 in Legends Arceus style
A fan project, known as pokeyugami on Twitter, is creating their own Pokemon game in style similar to Legends Arceus. However, instead of traditional Pokemon graphics, they’re using assets inspired by the art of Ken Sugimori.
A short clip of the project showed the player character, Red, walking through stylized grass near a few different Pokemon, including the iconic Gen 1 “fat Pikachu”. Red also walked into the line of sight of a bug catcher who then requested a battle.
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The clip may only have been 17 seconds long, but it’s been viewed over 3 million times and shared by tens of thousands of users. And hundreds more headed to the comments section to share their love for the project.
A large number of users agreed they’d pay any amount of money to play a Pokemon game with this art style. One user comments, “I would trade the entire Donkey Kong franchise for a single Pokemon game in this style. Incredible!”
これは時空の歪みによって生まれた、懐かしくも新しい『ポケットモンスター 初代』！(トキワの森編)#pokemon pic.twitter.com/Mm7bF4M80F
— 時空の歪み研究員 (@pokeyugami) May 20, 2022
Others praised pokeyugami for how they were able to transition Ken Sugimori’s 2D art style into a 3D game. Some even pointed out nods to the original games like Pikachu holding a berry as it had a 100% to have a berry when encountered in the first few games.
If you want to keep up with this project, you should follow pokeguyami on Twitter and Instagram. It’s unknown whether this project will become anything more than just a fan-made concept, but the internet is sure hoping it will.