A new wave of leaks from within Nintendo has revealed a Pokemon game for the Game Boy Color that never saw the light of day. Pokemon Picross is a puzzle game that was set for a 1999 release date, but never released for unknown reasons.
For context, Picross is a puzzle format similar to sudoku, in which players players fill in a grid to reveal pixel art. As both Picross and Pokemon were very popular in Japan in the late 1990s, it is no surprise that Nintendo would release a game combining them. Picross games continue to release worldwide, with a Picross game featuring Sonic the Hedgehog in the works.
As shared by Lewtwo on Twitter, Pokemon Picross allows players to reveal pixel art drawings of Pokemon by solving Picross puzzles. The game appears to have 150 levels, corresponding to the full number of Pokemon available at the time (minus Mew). In addition to the roster of Pokemon, Professor Oak appears to provide the player with a tutorial. The game seems to have even supported the Super Game Boy and Game Boy Printer accessories.
It remains unclear why the game was never released. The only Picross game Nintendo released in the West in the 1990s was Mario’s Picross, which (while fondly remembered like many niche Game Boy classics) was not commercially successful internationally. The leaked Pokemon Picross is entirely in Japanese, so no localization was ever confirmed. Still, this should not have stopped the game from coming out in Japan, and in fact the game was apparently promoted in Japan. Lewtwo notes this is likely the only Pokemon game to date to be advertised but never released.
Pokemon fans may be saddened to realize they never had the chance to play a seemingly-finished game. Given the popularity of Pokemon puzzle games at the time, like Pokemon Puzzle League for the Nintendo 64, many would surely have loved to play the game. The stellar sprite work and music Lewtwo has shown only reinforces the idea that the public missed out on a potential classic. If released internationally before Pokemon Gold and Silver, the game could have kept international audiences busy as they waited for the sequels to Pokemon Red and Blue.
Still, it should be noted that the Pokemon franchise never abandoned puzzles or Picross. Pokemon have featured in a huge number of puzzle games, like the recently-released Pokemon Cafe Mix, where players solve puzzles to bring more Pokemon to their virtual restaurant. Most notably, a game called Pokemon Picross actually did release for the Nintendo 3DS worldwide in 2015. Although it appears to be entirely unrelated to the Game Boy Color game, it shows that the idea behind the game never died.
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