Collection essentials #422: Pokémon Snap (N64)

Pokémon exploded onto the Game Boy during the lifetime of the Nintendo 64, so it was only a matter of time before the lovable creatures made an appearance in 3D. Gamers outside Japan would have to wait almost a year to get a Nintendo 64 Pokémon game, which probably seemed like an eternity for eager kids back then. The first one we got was this amusing spinoff title which was not about catching or battling the monsters, but rather, taking photographs of them.

Pokémon Snap was not the first video game based on photography, but it was certainly not a concept you saw very often, and certainly not in a prominent mainstream release. The concept here is that you choose one of the game’s levels, and then you are “on rails” riding on a track as the wild Pokémon appear around you. The object of the game is to get as high a score as possible. The quality of each photograph determines your score. There are various rules to scoring which are pretty intuitive. You want your Pokémon to have their whole body appear large in the frame, for them to be facing the camera, and you can get bonus points in various ways such as when they are making some kind of pose or if there are others of the same species also in the shot. 

The first time you play the game, there’s not much interactivity. But you’ll be given more and more tools as you progress to make gameplay more interesting. You’ll get things to throw at the Pokémon, those being an apple that you can whack or feed them with, and a “pester ball” which will bother them. You’ll also eventually get the ability to speed up your machine at will, and a flute to play music that affects Pokémon behavior. Most Pokémon actions will occur in the same way every time you play a level unless you interfere in some way. Unfortunately less than half of the original 151 Pokémon are present in the game.

Something neat about this game back in the day is that you were able to bring your cartridge to certain stores and have photos of your Pokémon printed out onto stickers! I never did that for some reason. If you did, leave me a comment and let me know! Do you still have yours somewhere? 

Pokémon Snap was the first Nintendo 64 game that my family owned, when we first got the console in 1999. When we got our 64, my dad had both me and my sister Abby choose what game we wanted to start off with. My choice was Mario Kart 64 and Abby’s choice was Pokémon Snap, which I certainly didn’t object to as a huge Pokémon dork. So the cart technically belonged to her originally, though I definitely planned to play it a lot too so we named the main character “Sabby” as a combination of our names. The cartridge in the photo is the very same one from back then (though not the box and manual), and our old save file is still intact, probably one of the top oldest surviving video game save files of mine for any console. Before too long my sister stopped caring about the Nintendo 64 and the game just kinda wound up unofficially becoming mine at some point. I think every single high score on the cartridge was mine, and I intend to digitize all of them soon. (How the heck have I not done that yet?)

Pokémon Snap isn’t a huge grand title, it doesn’t have a ton of content and you really need to be a fan of replaying levels many times to try and get better scores to get a lot of mileage out of it. You probably won’t hear many gamers cite it as one of their very top Nintendo 64 tiles, and I’m no exception, but it is certainly fondly remembered nonetheless. For being a very nostalgic childhood title and for being a creative and neat little game, Pokémon Snap has earned its place as one of my collection essentials.