New Pokemon Snap is finally here, and new fans of Pokemon and old alike are loving this game. There’s a sentimental attachment from those who played the old Nintendo 64 version, moving through the levels as Todd to find Mew at the end (and you can find him in the new one too!). New players just love that this is a different style of Pokemon, one that’s easy to zone out to and play on a lazy day since the gameplay is beautiful but not particularly complicated.
However, there are a few things about the story and gameplay itself that just don’t make sense!
8 Todd Has Barely Aged
In 1999, we had the release of the original Pokemon Snap where we played as Todd. We were delighted to see the appearance of Todd again, popping up pretty early in the new game.
He doesn’t seem to have aged much, though!
It’s been 22 years since the original game and he only looks a few years older. Are we to believe this game isn’t set very long after the first? Or did the developers just want Todd to keep his young, boyish look?
7 No Trainers Have Found This Place
These islands have a plethora of rare and awesome Pokemon, and it’s hard to believe the word hasn’t spread. Of course, it would ruin our experience to be trying to take photos while trainers ran around trying to capture the Pokemon that we’re using as subjects, but it’s just hard to believe no one has come here to look for the amazing Pokemon.
6 No Pokemon Battles
Although there are a couple of instances of bullying within the game where we see some Pokemon ganging up on another, there seem to be no actual battles.
That’s hard to believe when so many Pokemon are co-existing together. It also suggests that the only reason Pokemon battle are because people force them to, which leaves us with an uncomfortable moral quandary — after all, every other Pokemon game is based around the perspective of a player!
5 Meganium Is Enormous
Meganium is supposed to be 5'11", which is around the height of the average man.
However, if you complete the first course during both day and night in New Pokemon Snap, you’ll be faced with a Meganium that towers above the trees. This is likely to make the glowing Pokemon look super impressive, but it still doesn’t make all that much sense when looking at canon statistics.
4 Is Raichu Surfing On The Sand?
On Research Level 2 at the beach, you’ll come across two Alolan Raichu — and they’ll be surfing!
What’s incredibly weird is that one of them seems to be surfing on the sand. While the other is cruising around the water, like you’re supposed to on a surfboard, one of them weaves in and out of the rocks and the surfboard seems to function more like a hoverboard.
This opens up a lot of questions. Raichu isn’t a flying Pokemon, so this isn’t how he’s managing to stay on the board. The fact he’s Alolan would suggest it’s definitely intended for surfing, but perhaps they should have both been on the water. There’s plenty of it at the beach, after all!
3 The Illumina Phenomenon Hasn’t Spread Elsewhere
It’s pretty strange that the Illumina phenomenon is specific to these islands. How hasn’t it spread elsewhere?
If it was a purely natural occurrence, this might make more sense. However, it doesn’t seem to be — Professor Mirror creates orbs that can be thrown at Pokemon and plants to create the event, so it seems strange this is the first time everyone is coming across it.
Of course, after New Pokemon Snap, we might well see this pop up in other games. Likely, though, it’s going to remain a Snap thing and not be mentioned again, and it’ll never be explained how it’s so contained to those islands alone.
It does make for some pretty photos, though!
2 Teleportation
Teleportation is not unheard of in the Pokemon world. Psychic Pokemon have been using this move, and Sabrina the gym leader managed to harness it from them too.
Pokeballs can even be teleported to the professor in both the games and anime.
It’s never explained, however, how Oak in the old Snap and Mirror in the new one have harnessed this power to teleport an entire machine and person! If this is possible, why isn’t it used more in the canon world? After all, it’d be so much easier than trainers having to walk back and forth between cities and towns.
1 So Many Great Pokemon Were Snubbed
The really sad thing about Snap is that so many Pokemon were snubbed. We see so many Magikarp, but there’s never a Gyrados — and people from the old Snap will remember that you could persuade Magikarp into a waterfall and have a ferocious Gyrados emerge. We miss that!
All of the Pokemon in the new Snap are adorable, but they could have benefitted from including a few old favorites. The choice to leave some of them out was strange.
