Detective Pikachu Returns has been in development for around 5 years

It has been a long time since the original Detective Pikachu game graced the Nintendo 3DS system back in 2016, leaving fans on a typical cliffhanger ending. The sequel, Detective Pikachu Returns, heads to the Nintendo Switch in October, and IGN managed to catch up with Creatures’ Senior Creative Director, Yasunori Yanagisawa, to get the lowdown on the latest mystery. Mr. Yanagisawa told the site that Detective Pikachu Returns has been in development and production at the company for roughly five years. The team set about reworking the game from the Nintendo 3DS to the more powerful Nintendo Switch hardware. He confessed that they found it “hard to narrow down and figure out exactly what sort of things the developers wanted to do with this game,” which was presumably due to the change of hardware and the opportunities it offered them compared to the older Nintendo 3DS system. Here’s what he had to say:

IGN: When you start up [Detective Pikachu Returns], you kind of get a recap of what happened in the first game. It’s been a long wait for fans for a sequel to Detective Pikachu. Can you share any info about why there was such a long gap between the reveal in 2019 and now?

Yasunori Yanagisawa: Yeah. As you mentioned, there was quite a bit of a wait. The overall development and production was about five years for this game.

One of the main reasons behind this is mostly the change in hardware, and that with the more specs available hardware-wise there are just a lot more things that were possible to do. It was hard to narrow down and figure out exactly what sort of things the developers wanted to do with this game.

IGN: What were some of the things you did with the new hardware in that development time?

Yasunori Yanagisawa: One of the obvious main differences between the hardware is that the 3DS was two screens, and now with the Switch we have one screen. There was kind of this overhaul in the UI and the interface. The appearance of that has really changed a lot.

As for hardware specs, since it is… There’s more things we can do with it. We can show a lot more Pokémon appearing on the screen at the same time. We’re hoping that is making the world of Ryme City a lot more lively and also really expanding on the world where humans and Pokémon co-exist.

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