Pokémon Colosseum was born from an ambition: to give the series its first true role-playing game on a home console, just as the GameCube was looking for its big titles. A look back at its creation, its release and its place in Pokémon history.
The heir to the Pokémon Stadium games
On Nintendo 64, Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Stadium 2 let you battle in 3D with the Pokémon from the Game Boy games. Pokémon Colosseum was meant to play the same role for the third generation, that of Ruby and Sapphire. The studio Genius Sonority chose to go further: grafting a real adventure onto the battle simulator. The team, led by director Manabu Yamana and scenario writer Kazunori Orio, drew on role-playing games such as Final Fantasy VII and Persona 2 rather than on the model of the Game Boy games.
Junichi Masuda, at Game Freak, explained at the time why the classic formula (tall grass, wild Pokémon, trading) remained reserved for handheld consoles: communication between players, the heart of Pokémon, works better there. Hence the idea of the Snag: you don’t capture wild Pokémon, you snatch them from the villains.
A new world
Orre, the game’s region, borrows heavily from Phoenix and the deserts of Arizona: canyons, empty roads, towns set down in the dust. The hero, Wes, was drawn to look older and more mysterious than the usual heroes, around 17. For the Pokémon, the team reused many of the models and animations from Pokémon Stadium and Stadium 2, and modeled the third-generation ones.
Announcement and release
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| January 2003 | Japanese magazines mention a new Pokémon game on GameCube, linked to Ruby and Sapphire |
| May 2003 | First official images, presentation at E3 |
| November 21, 2003 | Release in Japan |
| March 22, 2004 | Release in North America |
| May 14, 2004 | Release in Europe and France, with the Mega Pak |
| 2005 | Release of the sequel, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness |
| April 2025 | Announcement of a re-release in the GameCube library of Nintendo Classics, on Switch 2 |
In France, Pokémon France followed the game from its Japanese release: our walkthrough was first written on the Japanese version, then completely redone on the French version. A big tournament was then announced in Paris to accompany the European release.
Reception and sales
The press praised the first true 3D Pokémon role-playing game and its more mature tone, but regretted the small number of Pokémon to catch and the lack of wide open spaces. The average score hovers around 73 out of 100. The public followed: about 2.4 million copies sold, including more than 1.15 million in the United States, making it the best-selling role-playing game on the GameCube. In the United Kingdom, it doubled the console’s market share in its first week.
The legacy
- A sequel: Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness returns to Orre five years later, with a new hero and a more flexible purification system.
- A manga: the story was adapted in 2004 in the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comic.
- Tournaments: in Europe, the game served as the basis for major tournaments, such as the British “Battlemaster 2004”.
- Ideas carried forward: Shadow Pokémon return in XD, then in the Pokémon Trading Card Game, and Double Battles became a pillar of Pokémon strategy.
