Pokemon Black and White’s setting inspired by NYC (Pokemon Black / White)

In his recent Iwata Asks column, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata interviews Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda, director of Pokemon Black and White, on the inspirations behind the upcoming 5th generation entry in the Pokemon franchise. Among the revelations in the interview is that New York City was a major inspiration for not only B&W’s major City (called Hiun City in the Japanese version), but also for the Isshu region in general.

It’s not unusual for a Pokemon game’s region to be inspired by a real-life place, but this will be the first entry based on a place outside of Japan. This is just one example of the new territory Game Freak is venturing into with B&W, and one of the main points Masuda makes in the interview is that Game Freak’s focus for B&W was to shake things up in terms of what’s expected from a Pokemon game, especially since this will be the second generation of Pokemon games on the DS. Masuda even goes so far as to say he wanted to “destroy” the expected formula for a Pokemon game, and one of the developer’s main focuses was making B&W sufficiently different from Diamond and Pearl.

Read a summary of the interview on andriasang, or check out the whole interview in its original Japanese on Nintendo’s official site. And don’t forget to tune in on Monday to episode 17 of Pokemon Monday, where we’ll discuss the interview further.

Sep 10, 2010