Game Freak Says Pokémon Champions Protects Classic Turn-Based Battles

Game Freak discussed the importance of Pokémon Champions in preserving the traditional format of Pokémon battles.

This was revealed in a new YouTube series featuring two company representatives, Shigeki Morimoto and co-director Kazumasa Iwao, who talk about the game’s development.

Pokémon Champions Keeps Traditional Battles Alive

Iwao explained that the development team had been considering how to evolve battles for quite some time. As the turn-based battle system has become less prominent in traditional Pokémon titles, they aimed to provide players with a way to experience that classic style of battling, which has existed for 30 years.

First of all, in the Pokémon series, the rules of battle, which have been around for a long time, will gradually change with each new Pokémon game. At that time, some people had been playing the series for decades, since Red and Green, and we didn’t want to tell them to play the new version when the rules had changed.

There has always been a concern at Game Freak, and we want to try new challenges in the series, but at the same time, we don’t want to abandon the battle system that has been around until now. So we thought it would be good to continue the battle system that has been around until now and make it playable for a long time. I think the idea of ​​creating a game was the starting point for the development of Pokémon Champions.

The next mainline Pokémon games, Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves, will be released sometime in 2027. An exact release date is unknown at this time. Insider Gaming will continue to monitor the story and report any updates as more information becomes available.

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