Pokemon Travel Through Time and Fight Samurai

New Pok?mon games usually aren’t notable. They’re solid little quasi-RPGs and they still make Nintendo obscene shitloads of money, but they’re also kid-oriented games that don’t take many chances. Well, someone at Nintendo must’ve grown tired of the same old formula, because the latest Pok?mon game is a crossover with infamous Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga. No kidding. As you can see in the trailer, Pok?mon + Nobunaga’s Ambition takes the bloody times of Japan’s 16th century, when Nobunaga and rival feudal lords all slaughtered each other in a bid to conquer the nation, and adds a bunch of cute little anime critters.

Sadly, the game’s early previews suggest that it’s not half as insane as the concept might allow. There’s no scene of Pikachu cleaving the heads of his samurai foes as he tears around a battlefield. It’s a Pok?mon game infused with Koei’s long-running Nobunaga’s Ambition series (which frequently come sto North America). So players wander around and trade Flareons or whatever with Nobunaga’s scheming generals and relatives. All of them have become kiddie-anime characters, and each of them gets an accompanying Pok?mon. Nobunaga, who’s become a demon lord and crazed villain in countless anime and video games already, gets what I assume is the scariest Pok?mon the franchise could muster: a vaguely dragony thing called Zekrom.

The game might come out over here, since it’s Pok?mon and all. Then again, Nintendo could pull the same crossover with Koei’s Liberty or Death strategy games, thereby letting us play grueling Pok?mon campaigns against Ben Franklin and his high-level Psyduck.