 Dust off your beret and charge up your poketch because the Pokemon franchise is heading back to Sinnoh. Not only are we getting the long-awaited Pokemon Diamond and Pearl remakes in the form of brilliant diamond and shining pearl, but we're also getting a brand new open world game set in feudal Sinnoh, Pokemon Legends Arceus. Fans have been clamouring for Diamond and Pearl remakes for years now, so it's not surprising that Game Freak are finally answering their calls. Both the remakes and the Legends Arceus are a deliberate attempt to appeal to nostalgia, which, according to long-time series producer Junichi Masuda, is a core tenant of the Pokemon experience. In an interview in 2019, he said, I think we always try to avoid, if we can, having people guess what we're going to do next. But it's always fun doing like the remakes and revisiting things that we've done, doing a new take on it. But at the same time, we always want to make new things. So it's kind of about finding that balance, but we've kind of torn between the two all the time, so we just try to think about what people might want at a certain time. As a new take on an older game, the newly announced title certainly fit this description, and it's likely that some plans for the new games were already in the works when Masuda made this statement. That said, the Pokemon Company's history of utilizing nostalgia goes back long before this. In fact, the entire series is built on revisiting happy memories from the past. As we noted all the way back in our very first video, Game Freak founder Satoshi Tajiri first came up with the idea for Pokemon when he was daydreaming about his own childhood, exploring the countryside and discovering new bugs. Similarly, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire were inspired by Junichi Masuda's childhood by the coast. So when the developers at Game Freak work to create new Pokemon games, they're always driven by a sense of nostalgia, including their own nostalgia for previous games. Said Masuda, I don't think we're focused exclusively on making all new stuff. I think it's important, the nostalgia factor is one thing, to give these memories, this content, another chance to shine for new players. And as a player myself, I enjoy that kind of thing as well. When developing these remakes, Game Freak don't like to simply create a graphical update of an older game. They try to incorporate new gameplay elements to help make each remake unique in its own way. Following their work on Diamond and Pearl, Game Freak took many of the game's new functions, such as online play, and applied them to their gold and silver remakes. This cycle now continues as elements from Sword and Shield are making their way into Legends Arceus. When speaking about a previous Pokemon remake, Shigeru Omori made it clear that the team at Game Freak is just as interested in moving the series forward as they are with revisiting the past. He said, We challenge ourselves to create new gameplay every time we develop a new Pokemon game. I believe such effort is received very well by the players. Perhaps the most fascinating element of the new announcement is the fact that, for the first time, the Pokemon remakes will be handled by a second studio. ICLA Limited are developing Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, which is a significant step towards addressing fan complaints about Pokemon Sword and Shield. The Pokemon Switch games are often compared negatively to titles like The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, but the difference in quality is in large part because Game Freak are perpetually caught in an annual release schedule for new games. The Pokemon company puts out a new game, or rather a pair of versions of a new game, every year. With ICLA handling Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, Game Freak essentially have an extra few months to work on Legends Arceus, which means that they'll be able to put a little more love and polish into the title. Whether this extra development time will pay off remains to be seen, but if the Pokemon company is happy to show off their new Sinnoh prequel at this point, it suggests they're confident their new project will bear fruit. It'll be a mix of nostalgia for the original Diamond and Pearl, and a nice change of pace for the series that has previously always stuck to the same vague time period in Story Arc. We'll have to wait and see whether the new games live up to fans' expectations. Because there are two new Sinnoh remakes on the horizon, there's double the chance that at least one of them will be well received, or fans will be twice as disappointed. We'll have to wait and see.