 A new Pokémon Snap game is finally on its way. The inventively titled New Pokémon Snap has been a holy grail of sorts for Pokémon fans over the past two decades. Now, 21 years after the release of the original Pokémon Snap, a sequel has been announced, and everyone is understandably thrilled. So why did it take so long? Long time Pokémon overseer Junichi Masuda has been asked about a new Pokémon Snap many times over the years by eager fans. Last year, when speaking to Metro, he said, All I can say is that I don't think we can just make the same thing again, so we'd have to come up with a very unique twist on this if we do make another one. Indeed, looking at the history of the game, it seems as if nobody at the Pokémon Company has really felt confident about making a follow-up to Snap. After all, the original Pokémon Snap wasn't made by Game Freak, and it was in development long before Pokémon was even released. In 1994, a team at Hal Laboratory were working on a game for the Nintendo 64 disc drive called Jack and the Beanstalk. This work-in-progress photography game was set in a fantasy world, retelling the classic Cornish fairy tale about a boy with magic beans that would use the disc drive's clock to grow in real-time. Surprise, surprise, a game about slowly watching plants grow wasn't actually a lot of fun to play. The project needed to be dramatically reworked to give it a better focus, and as Pokémon began to blossom in popularity, the team at Hal found the perfect new direction for the game, said Satoru Iwata, who was working at Hal at the time. Originally, Pokémon Snap for the Nintendo 64 system wasn't a Pokémon game, but rather a normal game in which you took photos. But the motivation for playing the game wasn't clear. We wondered what players would enjoy taking photos of, and later on we made a somewhat forced switch to taking pictures of Pokémon. Not everyone was on board with this change, expressing a, quote, negative reaction to having to switch gears and work on a Pokémon game. A lot of the character design work for Jack and the Beanstalk had to be scrapped, although much of the game's content would be incorporated into the equally ill-fated Earthbound 64. When Pokémon Snap released in 1999, it was a very short, on-rails photography game without a lot of content. Nevertheless, it was Pokémon, so naturally it won a dedicated audience. Players loved the unique gameplay, the idea of catching Pokémon not in balls, but on film. They loved figuring out how to make certain Pokémon appear or trigger their evolutions in order to catch them on camera. It might not be the deepest game, but it's certainly a lot of fun. Naturally, fans expected a sequel, but none materialised. Why? Because nobody really wanted to make another one. The team at Hal Laboratory had moved on to other games, with a lot of them, as mentioned, contributing to Earthbound 64 before it was ultimately cancelled. Meanwhile, the team at Game Freak were busy with their own Pokémon titles, having had little involvement with Snap's development at all. As the years went by, the Pokémon Snap fans did their best to encourage the Pokémon company to make a follow-up game. There have been many petitions, and even the occasional fan remake. To hear Junichi Masuda tell it, though, the Pokémon company simply didn't know what to do next. In 2014, he said in an interview, As a player, I definitely want to play a cool new version of Pokémon Snap, but at the same time, I also think if it was just a remake with better graphics, I don't think it would be as interesting as a lot of people are imagining. While we may be reading too much into this, it almost sounds as if Junichi doesn't think the core Pokémon Snap gameplay is even all that interesting. Certainly not deep enough to sustain a remake. Junichi went on to say, If someone was to end up developing it, they'd have to come up with some cool ideas to really make it a good game for the current generation. If it was just a direct port, that would be kind of neat as well, but having new elements is definitely important. So why has it taken so long to make a new Pokémon Snap? Apparently, someone at the Pokémon company has finally found the desire to make a new one, the impetus to innovate, to try to expand the simple on-rails shooter concept to create a more satisfying experience. This is great news, because while Pokémon creators might think that Pokémon Snap is a bit basic, it's many, many players know that sometimes, simplicity in game design can create something wonderful. Let's leave that as the moral for this story. Don't be afraid to keep things simple. If new Pokémon Snap ends up being a denser version of the original game, that's great. It's all anyone's ever been asking for anyway.