N64 Pokémon Snap Coming To Nintendo Switch Online

If you’ve never played it, here’s an excerpt from an appreciation post we ran back in 2018:

I’ve gone back to Pokémon Snap on a few rare occasions over the last twenty years. Every time I do, I find something new to love.

It is a rather slow affair, but it was obviously designed as such. The game wants players to have time to check their surroundings and take everything in. The rustling of a Meowth slinking through the foliage or the splash of a Poliwag diving into a nearby river. I realized that Pokémon Snap was providing an aspect of this fantastical world the original games never had — witnessing Pokémon in their natural environments. Red and Blue’s top-down view never truly portrayed Pokémon in the wild. It hid them away within the tall grass of Viridian Forest or the dark corners of Mt. Moon. Pokémon Snap was all about giving players a less stressful look into the world of Pokémon. An interactive field trip of sorts.

And here’s some of Fahey’s review of the more recent game:

Back in 1999 on the Nintendo 64, if we wanted to share Pokémon Snap photos we had to invited people over (gross) or have our cartridges stolen by ex-girlfriends (true story). Now we have the internet, which we can fill with be-stickered pictures of Pokémon until the cloud runs out of space, which will never happen because clouds are magical.

New Pokémon Snap is pretty magical as well. It takes the unique formula of the 1999 original and expands on it just enough to feel like a completely new adventure, without diluting the simple joy of riding and snapping photos of impossible creatures.