Pokemon Black/White - Iwata Asks feature brings new details

- This Iwata Asks feature includes Pokemon Co. CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara, Black & White director Junichi Masuda, and 2D art director Ken Sugimori…

- main city was designed in the style of New York City
- Masuda always wanted to make a second true Pokemon game for the DS
- this is because the system has become so popular
- emphasis on making sure the game didn’t end up being just like Diamond and Pearl
- made a point to ‘destroy’ the common knowledge of the series, which helped them to develop new ideas
- Masuda thought about what he would change about the series in order to bring back people that may have gone away
- the New York City-like location was chosen to make a big series change
- the idea spawned from wanting to take the Pokemon concert to NYC, but not being able to do so
- Masuda traveled to New York’s Museum of Modern Art to sit down and finalize his ideas for Black/White
- the Isshu name comes from a similar Japanese word meaning “single type.”
- this mimics NYC, which Masuda views as a place with many types of people, but they all blend into one melting pot of culture
- making all-new Pokemon proved to be quite difficult
- considerations such as Pokemon looking too similar to past titles, or creatures not looking like Pokemon came up
- the dev team visited a zoo to view real life animals for inspiration
- 17 graphic designers came up with the Pokemon, compared to 10 designers for Red/Green
- this team had old and new staffers
- every final official Pokemon illustration is drawn by Sugimori himself
- Sugimori also does the preliminary artwork