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Home / News / Meet the new crew: your first look at Pokémon Sun and Moon

Meet the new crew: your first look at Pokémon Sun and Moon

Nintendo debuts the monsters you'll choose from in this year's 3DS duo

Nintendo might be dedicating its entire E3 presence to The Legend of Zelda next month as the Wii U’s twilight days near, but today the company reminded us that it actually has other games on the horizon, too.

Perhaps the biggest of those is the dual release of Pokémon Sun and Moon for Nintendo 3DS, as both games were announced back in February for a late year release. However, at the time, we had little to go on but logos and news of a link to the eShop re-releases of the original Game Boy games.

Today, however, Nintendo and Game Freak released the first trailer for the games, showcasing the brand new trio of monsters that you’ll be able to choose from in either role-playing quest.

Grass-type monster Rowlet is an adorable owl, Popplio is a water-type seal, and Litten serves the role of a fire-type cat monster. Even with more than 700 Pokémon already created for the myriad other games, Nintendo clearly isn’t ready to dig back into the existing roster for the starting crew. The tropical location, meanwhile, is called Alola and is inspired by Hawaii.

Otherwise, the trailer doesn’t hold many surprises: Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon look an awful lot like 2013’s Pokémon X and Y, also for Nintendo 3DS, as those games set the standard for a new generation of Pokémon adventures. Granted, it was an excellent entry, so the prospect of another quest using that format hardly seems like a bad thing.

We’ll surely hear about new features and other additions in due time, and hopefully Sun and Moon address some of the technical performance issues that plagued X and Y at times. Nintendo will release both games across Europe on 23 November, with the North American debut coming a bit earlier on 18 November.

[Sources: YouTube, Polygon]

Profile image of Andrew Hayward Andrew Hayward Freelance Writer

About

Andrew writes features, news stories, reviews, and other pieces, often when the UK home team is off-duty or asleep. I'm based in Chicago with my lovely wife, amazing son, and silly cats, and my writing about games, gadgets, esports, apps, and plenty more has appeared in more than 75 publications since 2006.

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Video games, gadgets, apps, smart home