About three years ago, some information came up about a detective game featuring a motion-captured talking Pikachu on the Japanese documentary TV series The Professionals. Now, after a long period of silence about this strange project, Nintendo has put out a trailer and announced that the game will be hitting the Japanese eShop next week on February 3. Called Great Detective Pikachu: The Birth of a New Duo, the game features an unusually talkative Pikachu dressed like Sherlock Holmes solving crimes with a human partner named Tim. It’s hard to tell what exactly the actual gameplay will entail, but it seems to be a radical departure from the usual JRPG mechanics of a mainline Pokemon game.
One thing this trailer doesn’t show us is whether the game will still feature an evil blue talking Pikachu as its antagonist. While this was said to be the case when it was first shown years ago, it’s possible that this has changed during the game’s continued developement. Also unknown is whether this unusual entry in the Pokemon series will be making its way overseas. Hopefully with this year being the franchise’s 20th anniversary, we’ll see this odd game make its way west.
