More than 120 Pokémon games have been released since the first game came out in 1996. It gives whole new meaning to the phrase gotta catch ’em all. If you count yourself among the top Pokémon fans, there is a lot of extra fun to be had in seeking out the more obscure spin offs. These include unofficial fan content and minor titles that never officially made it out of Japan. Here are a handful that we believe deserve to reach a wider audience.
Pokémon Battrio
Released in Japan in 2007, this stadium-based battle game was Pokémon’s first foray into the arcade world. Pokémon were attained separately on coins known as pucks that would be physically fed into the cabinet. The game was sufficiently popular in Japan to spawn a sequel, Pokémon Tretta, but neither was ever released in English.
Pokémon Go Slot
Nintendo has never dallied with the world of real money gaming, even for the pokies-mad Australia market, so you can search the real money online pokies in Australia as long as you like, you won’t find an official real money Pokémon slot at any online casino. However, where there is a will, there is a way. The developers at makeslots have created all the ingredients you need to make your own Pokémon slot game – just for fun. These include 10 Pokémon reel symbols, with Squirtle as the jackpot, scoring 500x for a full line down to Hoppip at 20x.
Pokémon Dash
A Pokémon racing game? It sounds great and would surely be a massive hit. Unfortunately, the execution did not live up to the promise. The game involved a top down race between checkpoints and the controls were anything but intuitive. On top of that, the fact that only Pikachu was available as a playable character in single player mode left players cold. The result? Pokémon Dash vanished into obscurity almost as quickly as it appeared.
The Thieves and the 1000 Pokémon
This charming little adventure was released to the Japanese market as a Nintendo 3DS downloadable in 2014. The game was a promo for the anime movie Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction – which is also something of an obscurity, although it did get a global release.
Pokémon: Catch the Numbers!
Here’s a real curio that could almost be described as a Pokémon prequel. It was an educational game published on an obscure little console from the 1990s called the SEGA Pico. The graphics comprise somewhat crudely rendered art from the original anime and the voiceover features the original Japanese anime’s cast. The game itself consists largely of number games loosely tied together by a plotline that involves Pikachu and Togepi being kidnapped by Team Rocket.
PokéPark: Fishing Rally
Fishing Rally was released as a demo in 2005 and was only available for direct download at the Pokémon theme park. Even then, the download was only supposed to last for 12 hours whereupon, we can only surmise, it would self-destruct in the style of Mission: Impossible. It is believed to be lost media – unless you know otherwise!