Last week, footage of a fan-made Pokémon FPS went viral across several different social media websites like Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. As is often the case with any fan project affiliated with Pokémon games — or Nintendo games in general — that receives widespread attention, it has since been mostly removed from the various sites it was hosted on.
Developed by a user named Dragon_GameDev, the Pokémon FPS is the first installment of a year-long project in which the dev hopes to launch one fan game every 30 days. According to a comment on Reddit, this is to keep them occupied while they take a break from their main project, which they’re “tired of working a ridiculous amount of time on … for it never to see a release date.”
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Obviously the premise of a Pokémon FPS is a) a bit weird, and b) absolutely not the kind of thing Nintendo wants to see associated with one of its flagship series that is largely intended for children. It’s no surprise that the clip has been taken down from everywhere it was posted except Reddit, which, at the time of writing, is still hosting the footage across several subreddits (cheers, Kotaku).
As you can see from the video above (provided it’s still viewable at the time you’re reading this), the Pokémon FPS looks like a fairly rudimentary open landscape filled with all kinds of Pokémon. The difference is that instead of catching and befriending Pikachu, one of the best starter Pokémon, this dev is headshotting it with a shotgun. Not exactly the most PG version of Nintendo’s illustrious catch-’em-up.
According to Dragon, all of the models are imported from Pokémon Sun & Moon, the Gen 7 Pokémon games for the Nintendo 3DS, while the world is rendered in Unreal Engine. All in all, it looks a bit like a first-person version of Monster Hunter where the Rathalos is actually Zapdos and your sword or spear or whatever is an M16. We’re not sure how effective bullets would be against Steel Pokémon or Ghost Pokémon, but we digress.
Dragon’s Pokémon FPS is no longer viewable on Twitter or YouTube, and likely won’t be again at any time in the near future. If you’re curious about it, you’ll just have to hope the Reddit link posted above is still active. If it isn’t, the closest thing we can offer you is a list of the best Dragon Pokémon, which uses both the words “dragon” and “Pokémon” and is therefore perfectly relevant.
Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.
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