After months and months of waiting, Nintendo is finally ready to pull back the curtain on its plans for Pokemon.
Fans everywhere knew that 2016 would be a big year for the franchise — Pokemon debuted all the way back in 1996, and for the past two decades, it's absolutely dominated pop culture. Outside of Superman and Mario, it's hard to find characters who are as universally-loved as Pikachu — who knew a tiny electric mouse would be so popular?
That being said, Nintendo hasn't actually celebrated much just yet — save for a strangely-vague Super Bowl commercial, fans don't really know what's going on with the series at the moment. For one of the company's biggest franchises, most would have expected Nintendo to detail its plans by now. Thankfully, it looks like it's finally ready: the Big N has just announced that a new Nintendo Direct video is scheduled to launch on Feb. 26.
Outside of the time, date and subject matter, Nintendo hasn't revealed anything about its upcoming Pokemon Direct ... though it's easy to assume what the publisher has up its sleeve.
Given that 2016 is the franchise's 20th anniversary, it'd make perfect sense for Nintendo to release a brand new Pokemon game this year. While there was nothing particularly wrong with the Ruby and Sapphire remakes, they were remakes nonetheless — after three years, Pokemon fans are desperate for something they haven't played through before. Also, considering just how big of a step forward Pokemon X & Y were for the series, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see more drastic changes in whatever game Nintendo has planned.
Of course, there's always Pokemon Rainbow — just yesterday, a rumor began spreading about Nintendo's next Pokemon title, and that it'd be ready for launch later this year. To be honest, the rumor itself is a little shaky — word from one unverified source via a random YouTube channel is hardly concrete evidence — but given the timing, some sort of new Pokemon game does make sense.
Either way, it won't be much longer until fans finally know what's going on with the series: Nintendo's Pokemon Direct is set to go live this Thursday, Feb. 26, at 10 a.m. EST.
