Nintendo have surprised us with a long overdue sequel. Detective Pikachu Returns will come out for Nintendo Switch on 6th October 2023.
The game will naturally follow in the footsteps of the original game, but there’s sure to be interest in the game thanks to the hit film from a few years ago. In terms of narrative, this seems to be a bit of a prequel, or at least a sequel that focuses in on Pikachu’s detective origins, while simultaneously solcing a series of mysterious incidents across Ryme City.
Detective Pikachu might be a world renowned detective, but it wasn’t always that way. His Nintendo 3DS debut released in 2018, as a dependable, but not terribly amazing detective puzzler – “Detective Pikachu is a deceptively small game with simple cases and not a heck of a lot else,” Dave said in our review, “It certainly has the presentation chops, but the people who’ll get the most out of Detective Pikachu are diehard Pokémon fans and younger gamers.”
Yet its impact had already been felt with the original announcement trailer, as the internet went wild, memes appeared and there were calls for the game to be localised with Danny DeVito voicing the character.
That flurry of internet almost immediately saw a movie adaptation being picked up, and while we never had the specific Always Sunny in Philadelphia version of Danny DeVito pick up the role, it was a massive hit with Ryan Reynolds embodying the little lightning mouse detective. This really sparked the latest rush of video game adaptations, with the two Sonic the Hedgehog movies and the new Super Mario Bros. movie in the years since.
For our Detective Pikachu film review, Nic said, “If you can enjoy the Avengers films without reading comics, you can enjoy Detective Pikachu without a full Pokédex. I strongly encourage anyone who is even remotely curious to go check the movie out in the cinema — I, for one, am already praying to Arceus for a sequel.”
