2020 saw the celebration of Nintendo’s oldest franchise: Super Mario. With the red plumber’s 35th Anniversary, fans got plenty of new releases and announcements, including Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Super Mario Bros. 35, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, and more. Another popular Nintendo franchise, Pokemon, is seeing its 25th Anniversary next year and many fans are expecting a similarly big celebration. Fans are theorizing that Nintendo will be planning anything from a brand new Pokemon game to some sort of collection akin to Super Mario 3D All-Stars.
But one theory that doesn’t seem too far-fetched is the idea that Nintendo is planning on releasing a full remake of the fourth generation of Pokemon, Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl. This actually lines up quite well for various reasons and could be the big Pokemon game coming in 2021. And with the fact that Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s DLC is likely finished, fans have nowhere left to look other than the next entry in the franchise.
Next year is huge for the Pokemon franchise. Not only will it be the 25th anniversary for the franchise as a whole, it will also mark the 15th anniversary for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as well. The titles were the first games to be released on the Nintendo DS and, as such, are quite dated by this point and could really use some graphical enhancements. The games at this point still only used 2D pixelated graphics, so allowing players to experience the Sinnoh region in full HD and 3D graphics would be a massive upgrade. Though most gamers aren’t quite as nostalgic towards this generation as the prior three, it still makes perfect sense for the games to get remade given the Pokemon Company’s schedule of releases.
And speaking of The Pokemon Company’s release schedule, Diamond and Pearl remakes fit in perfectly when looking at the company’s history of game releases. So far, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen were released in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver were released for the Nintendo DS in 2009, and Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2014. Historically, each generation has gotten a remake on each consecutive Nintendo handheld every five years, so technically Diamond and Pearl should have been released last year in 2019.
So if anything, a 2021 release of these remakes is overdue. One could also factor in the fact that there was a remake of Pokemon Yellow in 2018 with the release of Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, but those titles were more so spin-offs than direct remakes. Regardless, it’s been six years since a Pokemon generation has gotten fully remade, so now seems like the perfect time to release a new one.
Looking at the release schedule for standard Pokemon generations, The Pokemon Company has historically released a brand new game every three to four years (Red and Blue in 1996, Gold and Silver in 1999, Ruby and Sapphire in 2002, Diamond and Pearl in 2006, Black and White in 2010, X and Y in 2013, Sun and Moon in 2016, and Sword and Shield in 2019). Because of this schedule, fans shouldn’t expect the ninth generation of games until 2022 at the earliest, so releasing remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl next year just seems like the most obvious next step.
On top of it simply making sense, fans of the games have been very vocal in their desires to see the games get remade. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl are now fifteen years old, and many of the gamers who played these titles as children are now adults. As the sales for Super Mario 3D All-Stars have illustrated, nostalgia is a very powerful thing. Remakes of old classic games typically sell very well, so Nintendo would be silly to not take full advantage of this market and remake these titles. Nintendo is no stranger to remakes and HD remasters, with the aforementioned Pokemon remake games as well as the various Legend of Zelda HD remasters as some prime examples.
Pokemon isn’t the only Nintendo franchise that’s getting a big anniversary celebration in 2021, as The Legend of Zelda happens to be celebrating its 35th anniversary next year as ell. Arguably, these are the two of the biggest Nintendo franchises alongside Super Mario, so they’re both likely getting some celebrated in big ways. Yet another reason for why the remakes of Diamond and Pearl make sense is that they likely won’t go head-to-head with the sales of whatever the Zelda series is getting next year. Most fans are theorizing that the sequel to Breath of the Wild is coming next year, which also happens to line up quite well with the Zelda franchise.
It makes a great deal of sense for Nintendo to release a remake for one juggernaut franchise alongside a brand new release for the other franchise in order to pace the larger releases out throughout the years. A Diamond and Pearl remake paired with Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 would avoid most sorts of in-house competition from happening, as these two releases will be intended for somewhat different markets.
Overall, it seems fairly likely that full remakes for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl are due to release sometime next year. The timing not only feels perfect, but fans have been asking for these games for quite some time. Whether this will be the case or not is still yet to be seen, but fans should probably expect the announcement to come from some sort of Pokemon-focused Nintendo Direct sometime in the near future. Fans should probably expect other Pokemon news to be coming later in the year as well, as next year marks a huge milestone for the series after all. Even if it isn’t Diamond and Pearl, there’s going to be something.
Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield are available now for the Nintendo Switch.
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