In 1999, Pokémon are everywhere: on Game Boy, on television, in school playgrounds. Yet when Nintendo released Pokémon Snap on Nintendo 64, it took a spectacular step sideways: you capture nothing, you don’t battle, you don’t train anyone. You take photographs. The player plays Todd, a young photographer whom Professor Oak invites to an island inhabited by wild Pokémon to illustrate his big report. In France, the game arrived on 15 September 2000, a year and a half after Japan. More than twenty-five years later, this photo safari remains one of the most distinctive spin-offs in the series, and one of the best loved.
Our verdict
Pokémon Snap is a charming, accessible and clever game that turns Pokémon hunting into observation. It is short and repetitive, but the idea holds up for anyone who likes searching through scenery. A curiosity worth trying, whether on cartridge or through Nintendo Switch Online.
What we like
- An original idea that is understood immediately
- Clever scenes where Pokémon react to your actions
- Very polished presentation for the Nintendo 64, with the series' cries
- A scoring system that makes you want to replay every course
What we like less
- Short lifespan and repetitive courses
- Scoring rules that are barely explained
- Only 63 species out of the 151 of the first generation
- Slowdown in busy scenes
A photo safari on rails
The principle fits in a few lines. Todd climbs aboard the ZERO-ONE, an all-terrain vehicle developed by Professor Oak, which follows a preset route: you don’t drive it, you simply look around. An automatic brake stops it if a Pokémon is in the way. At the end of each course, you show your shots to Oak, who rates them and keeps one per species for his Report. Critics at the time were quick to compare the game to a rail shooter: the player doesn’t control the trajectory, but controls everything they look at, and every second counts.
Seven courses unlock gradually: the Beach, the Tunnel, the Volcano, the River, the Cave, the Valley and, at the very end, the Rainbow Cloud where Mew hides. The progression page details the access conditions. The Pokémon are those of the first generation, but only 63 species were chosen, and the game shows them in a light that neither the main games nor the anime offered: Pokémon that live, that play with each other, that evolve before our eyes.
Getting started: five minutes is enough
The controls fit on the Nintendo 64 controller: the stick turns the camera, the Z trigger brings out the camera to aim and zoom, and the A button takes the shot. The B button throws the Pester Ball, the A button (when not aiming) throws the Apple, and the bottom C button plays the Poké Flute. A roll of film gives you 60 shots per run. Our 2016 review noted that in five minutes, you master all the controls, and we have nothing to take back: it is instantly easy to pick up. The beginner’s guide details every button.
What the game does remarkably well
Scenes to trigger
The real genius of Pokémon Snap is that a scene is never static. Pokémon react to what you do, and these reactions are sometimes irresistible: a Slowpoke fishing whose tail gets bitten by a Shellder, a Pikachu surfing on a board, three Magnemite fusing into a Magneton, a giant egg hatched with a Pikachu and a flute, a Jigglypuff giving a concert on a stage. These scenes are small, but they give the game its charm, and you discover them by trying things out. Gamekult pointed out in 2000 that these events make the game less limited than it first appears.
Progression through items
At the start, Todd has only his camera. Then Oak entrusts him with the Apple, the Pester Ball, the Poké Flute and the Dash Engine. Each item changes what you can provoke, and therefore what you can photograph. That is what justifies going back through the first courses: a Beach seen with the flute is not the one from the first run. The game becomes a big puzzle game, where you test every combination: throw an Apple here, a Pester Ball there, play a tune in front of a certain Pokémon. The page on items gives you the keys.
Scoring that rewards a good eye
Professor Oak rates the Pokémon’s size in the picture, its pose, the centering and the presence of other individuals of the same species, with a bonus for special situations. The system makes you want to do better: an average photo is enough to move forward, but a carefully composed photo earns far more points and raises your Report. Players have turned it into an art in its own right: specialists have explored every last framing to earn points. The details of these rules are on the page about Oak’s scoring.
Presentation
On the technical side, Pokémon Snap holds its own very well on Nintendo 64. To display several Pokémon at once, the developers used low-polygon models, but the animations are polished: the team did not take the animated series as a reference, and it was one of its members, Benimaru Itoh, who acted things out to serve as a model for the poses, according to Bulbapedia. The result shows: the Pokémon move in lively, funny and expressive ways. Critics at the time praised this animation, which still feels charming today.
On the sound side, the cries come from the TV series, which strengthens immersion for fans of the era. The only two human characters, Todd and Oak, are voiced in French; according to Poképédia, they are the same voices as in the anime. The music remains pleasant, though it suffers from the limits of the cartridge, a subject on which critics were divided. Some slowdown appears when many Pokémon move around in large spaces, a flaw that speedrunners know how to exploit or work around.
The limits
The game has the flaws of its franchise. It is short: our 2016 review noted that in barely two hours, you have taken at least one photo of around fifty Pokémon. It is also repetitive, especially since, as Gamekult noted, apart from the actions triggered by the player, every visit to a course shows exactly the same events. Finally, the scoring lacks explanation: Oak hands out scores, never precise advice, and players had to reconstruct the scale through trial and error. Many also regretted that the game offers only 63 species out of 151; IGN and N64 Magazine pointed to the possible disappointment of fans.
What is left after the credits?
Once Mew has been photographed, play continues with a Challenge mode on each course, a Report to complete and an album to fill. The speedrun community has made the game a testing ground for experiments: the speedrun and records page gives the figures. For the curious, there are still good reasons to go back: the special poses, the disguised Pokémon and the Report to perfect.
How to play it today
Three options are available. The most faithful is the Nintendo 64 cartridge, recognizable by its blue European box art: you need the console and a way to connect it to a screen. The Wii Virtual Console (2007) and the Wii U Virtual Console (2016) offered the game for purchase, but they are no longer available. That leaves the simplest route: since 24 June 2022, Pokémon Snap has been one of the Nintendo 64 games in the Nintendo Switch Online subscription with the Expansion Pack. For details on the plans, see the playing today page.
Verdict
Our 2016 review already gave Pokémon Snap 14/20, and we stand by that score: the game deserves to be played for its idea, its staging and its atmosphere, more than for its lifespan. Jeuxvideo.com gave it 14/20 at its release in France, Gamekult 5/10, judging it made for 7-12 year olds, and the American press around 8/10 (7.8 at IGN, 8 at GameSpot). For an audience of first-generation fans, it is an enchanted stroll through a world the series had never shown. For a player in a hurry, it is a game that runs out of steam quickly. If you like observing, experimenting and replaying, it holds up well. The sequel, New Pokémon Snap, picks up this spirit and builds on it.
Our earlier review, published in 2016, is still available: Pokémon Snap review.
