Pokémon Snap

Professor Oak needs your help!

Professor Oak has asked you to capture the Wild Pokémon of Pokémon Island on film! Tour the Island in your ZERO-ONE vehicle and snap pictures of Pokémon in their natural habitat. Wild Pokémon are often camera-shy, so you'll have to use special items to bring them out in the open. Only the best shots will do for Professor's Pokémon Report so sharpen your photography skills and get ready to SNAP!

• The first-ever N64 game to feature the world-famous Pokémon - fully rendered in 3-D!
• Explore the many environments of Pokémon Island, like the sunny beach, the mysterious caves, and even a red-hot volcano!
• Many different types of Pokémon inhabit the island. See how many you can catch on film!
• Print your photos as stickers at Pokémon Snap Stations! Visit www.Pokémon.com or call 1-800-859-4521 for all the details and to find the nearest Snap Station nearest you!

• Professor Oak
• Todd Snap

• Pokémon Island
  • Beach
  • Tunnel
  • Volcano
  • River
  • Cave
  • Valley
  • Rainbow Cloud
• Professor Oak's Laboratory

63 species of Pokémon appear in this game:

Pokémon Signs

Six Pokémon appear in the form of a Pokémon sign.

• Kingler
• Pinsir
• Koffing
• Cubone
• Mewtwo
• Dugtrio

The Pokémon Snap Station

For a period of time after Snap's launch, Pokémon Snap Sticker Stations were available at Blockbuster in the United States, and Lawson in Japan^[16]. These stations which would print out stickers of pictures which were taken in the game for 3 Dollars/300 Yen^[17], by loading credits on one of five cards that featured Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Pikachu, or Jigglypuff.

There was also a mode in Pokémon Stadium which would take and save pictures of Pokémon and print them out at the Stations. Special overlays were made to promote Pokémon Stadium, so there exists two variations of the station.

Internally, these sticker stations are just a Nintendo 64 with a printer that connects to P4 port, a special version of the cartridge for the printing tasks, and a special cartridge adaptor to switch between Pokémon Snap Station and Pokémon Snap or Pokémon Stadium.^[18][19]

Pokémon Snap was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console with a few small changes. This version can upload pictures from the game to the Wii's Message Board, where they can be transferred to people on the Wii's Address Book.

In this release, Jynx were recolored purple from the black color they were in the original game, to reflect the changes in its design and to avoid controversy that Jynx's original design caused.

To celebrate this re-release, the Japanese Yahoo! Kids Pokémon page streamed all of the episodes in which Todd Snap appeared from December 14, 2007 to January 14, 2008.^[20]

In 1994, Nintendo put an ad in Famitsu Magazine, seeking to hire new talent for a team that would be given creative freedom when making games. The team, later known as Jack and Beans, would start working in 1995 on three separate projects, one of which was a camera-based game called "Jack and the Beanstalk". The team's inspiration for a camera game came from the Nintendo 64DD's ability to read and write data from disks, which had the potential to then move the photos to another medium to print them.^[21]

By summer 1997, Jack and Beans' three projects were merged into one. Jack and the Beanstalk's characters and setting were then replaced with a Pokémon setting, to give players a clearer motivation and goal for taking pictures.^[22]

Pokémon Snap would be announced for the Nintendo 64DD at Space World '97 in November 1997, with a release planned to coincide with the movie Mewtwo Strikes Back the next year - but this announcement was made without informing the development team beforehand. However, the game would not meet this deadline, and in 1998 would change format to a Nintendo 64 cartridge for three reasons: Nintendo could not find a suitable time to release Snap for the 64DD; Snap would not be compatible with Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions, so it had to be released before them; and Snap being on the 64DD would make it the odd one out among existing Pokémon releases on the Nintendo 64.

The development team aimed to have several Pokémon appear on screen at once - but to achieve this, they would have to use low-poly models - this meant that they could not use the same Pokémon models and animations as Pokémon Stadium, which was being developed at around the same time. The team's animations would not use the Pokémon animated series as reference material - instead, team member Benimaru Itoh would act as a reference model, posing and acting as various different Pokémon, and other team members would serve as models when Itoh was unavailable.

Voice acting for Professor Oak and Todd Snap was added to the game last-minute, with the lines obtained during a recording session for Pokémon the Series.

The idea of printing pictures was tested through various methods, one of which was by using a combination of a Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak, a Game Boy, a Game Boy Camera, and a Game Boy Printer, but the resulting photos would only be grayscale. HAL Laboratory's hardware technician Masayoshi Tanimura then printed the photos as stickers with a video printer, and these stickers were well-received by Nintendo's business partners. The concept of players printing out photos from Snap would later be realized with the Pokémon Snap Sticker Stations.

Main article: Staff of Pokémon Snap

Virtual Console icons

• 

  Wii U Virtual Console icon (English)

• 

  Wii U Virtual Console icon (Japanese)

The game received good reviews in the media, scoring a 7.8 on IGN, an 8.0 on GameSpot, and a 77 on Metacritic. The game has a strong fan following, even a number of years later, giving it a status similar to that of a cult classic.

• This is the only game to show Slowpoke's evolution happening true to the Pokédex. Using Pokémon food, Slowpoke can be lured to the River where it will dip its tail in the water. When Shellder chomps down on Slowpoke's tail, Slowpoke will evolve into Slowbro.
• Although the game features voice acting from the animated series, certain Pokémon that were given new voices for the dub still have their original Japanese voice acting in the game. These include Metapod, Diglett, Dugtrio, Magnemite, Magneton, Geodude, Graveler, Psyduck, and Porygon.
• This was the first Pokémon game released for the Virtual Console service, the only Pokémon game from the Nintendo 64 to be released for the Wii U's Virtual Console service and the first Pokémon game released for the Nintendo Switch Online service.
• Ekans was intended to be included in the game, but was ultimately cut.^[23]
• A song called Fantasic Horror was cut from the game. The song was meant for a Ghost-type level, but as there were only three Ghost-type Pokémon in Generation I, said level was cut. Additionally, there was a boss song exclusive to the level that also did not end up in the final game.^[23]