Pokemon Sun And Pokemon Moon Coming Holiday 2016

Pokemon Sun and Moon are real, and herald Generation 7 of Pokemon sooner than anticipated.

This morning’s Pokemon Nintendo Direct was short, but terrifically sweet for long-time fans of the series. It opened in the style of the original games and primarily featured a video celebrating the series’ 20 years of bringing people together. The highlight, of course, was the announcement it culminated in. Pokemon Sun and Moon are, as rumored, the titles of the next generation of Pokemon games, and we’ll see them worldwide Holiday 2016 for Nintendo 3DS. (sorry, no Pokemon Z after all!)

Little information was given about Pokemon Sun and Moon during the Direct, though we’re sure to get it in bits and pieces throughout 2016, as usual. We did learn that they will be adding Simplified and Traditional Chinese to the games’ language options, and that Pokemon from the Virtual Console versions of Red, Blue, and Yellow will be transferrable to Pokemon Bank on the DS…meaning that now, every generation of Pokemon is transferrable to current games! …almost. They’re actually still missing Generation 2. Could we be getting more VC games later this year? Please oh please!

You can watch the entire Direct here:

Did you catch those concept art pieces shown briefly? These screencaps of that concept art for Sun and Moon (taken from the trailer courtesy of @Nibellion) look GREAT! (and…vehicles?)

Most promising of all was the language used in the announcement of Sun and Moon–after a montage of all the Pokemon games up to that point, the announcer says, “And, in 2016, it all comes together.” This could just be a generic statement indicating that these games are the next step, but the hopeful fan in me wants it to mean that something big is in store for Gen 7.