It's cool to finally a new Pokemon Snap that I see Nintendo is irritating us with the "New" naming convention again.  That sort of naming make gaming seem very disposable, which is odd coming from Nintendo since they seem very aware that their games can be resold on later platforms for all eternity.

The trailer looks nice but it looks like you're still on rails.  That's fine I guess but I always imagined a Pokemon Snap where you can freely wander through an environment and try to get photos of Pokemon, like how a nature documentary filmmaker would do it.  I figured the on rails element was more due to the limitations of the N64 hardware and that a lot more could be done with the photography concept.  This looks a lot like it just makes things prettier and has more Pokemon.  Of course by now I figure fans are just happy to have another Snap game.

The on-rails probably also allowed them to focus more on the graphics and making a tighter gameplay experience, which I would rather have than an attempt at an open-world photography game that felt half-complete or buggy. Being a spiritual successor to the N64 title probably also kept the budget and dev time down. This just seems like a project that was green-lit due to the low overhead required to get the game out the door, and hopefully the price mirrors this if that is the case.

Much of my interest in a free-roaming Pokemon Snap comes from Majora's Mask.  It had a camera and was a full 3D game on the same console.  So when I played that I felt like Snap's approach was outdated.  Really I feel like the camera concept would work well as a sidequest in a full 3D Pokemon game, much like the cameras that appear in a few 3D Zeldas.  A game where you can see Pokemon in real time and try to catch them might as well also let you photograph them.

Cool announcement, but I feel like I would have been into this so much more a decade ago on something like the Wii, before I'd lost all interest in the franchise altogether.

It's weird to think that's it's been over 20 years and we're finally getting the first sequel to it.  20 years before Pokemon Snap came out Nintendo was making their first videogames period.  But I think at the time Snap was something put together to get a Pokemon game on the N64.  It didn't have all of the Pokemon and the assumption that they were still making the 3D models for Pokemon Stadium but it was time consuming so they threw together Snap with the models they already had completed.  In that sense Nintendo may not have felt the game should have become a series because it was more of a holdover for Stadium.

I'm excited for this and really interesting to see if the on-rails style will feel outdated.  There have been so many quality open-world games, that going back to rails may feel more restrictive than anything.  Also a shame they never put one together for the Wii U.