Pokemon Snap

LOS ANGELES, May 12, 1999 - Take a walk on the wild side with a safari adventure to Pokémon Island. Observe the world-famous Pokémon in their natural habitat. Capture your favorite Pokémon on camera in full 3-D. In its latest addition to the Pokémon phenomenon, Nintendo brings Pokémon to the N64 for the first time ever in Pokémon Snap, available July 26 for a suggested retail price of $59.95. Poké-fans will travel through a number of environments in a special vehicle developed to navigate in water, on land and through air in search of Pokémon. Supplied with a virtual camera and film, players need to be creative in order to convince the wild Pokémon to pose for the perfect picture for their Pokémon Album. In this game, only the best pictures win. As an added bonus, Nintendo is teaming up with Blockbuster® video stores to bring these Pokémon pictures to life. Kicking off with the game's launch, Pokémon Snap players can visit local Blockbuster video stores to print out stickers of their favorite Pokémon snapshots. For $3.00, players can plug their Pokémon Snap game into a specially designed station and print out a sheet featuring 16 stickers of their four favorite Pokémon. This exclusive promotion runs through Thanksgiving 1999 at participating Blockbuster video stores nationwide. "Pokémon Snap moves Pokémon to N64, expanding the reach of this cultural and retail phenomenon even further," says Peter Main, Nintendo's executive vice president, sales and marketing. "Pokémon Snap brings players extra fun by letting them capture their favorite Pokémon on camera, and then trade stickers of the photos."

Pokémon Snap is a one-of-a-kind game that allows players to collect pictures of the different Pokémon as they exist in the wild. The goal is to take the best possible picture of every Pokémon on the island, but the player will have to be creative. The often-shy Pokémon may not readily pose for the camera unless teased with special items. The number of potential Pokémon is "monstrous" as each safari zone is packed with secret activities and hidden passages which need to be discovered to get the Pokémon on "candid camera." After saving photographs in the Album, players can choose only one photo of each Pokémon collected to submit to Professor Oak to judge. His criteria will be based on size, pose, technique and number of Pokémon captured in one photo. The picture with the highest rated score will be kept on file in the Pokémon Report, along with the number of Pokémon photographed. Players can examine and enlarge their photographs in the Pokémon Album at any time, plus add comments and arrange them in any order. The Pokémon phenomenon began with the release of the original Blue and Red Game Boy games in September 1998, which have now sold more than 2.6 million units in the U.S. alone, topping industry sales charts. Pokémon has entertained millions of fans all over the world with a top rated kids television show, a best-selling toy line, a hugely popular card game and a multitude of licensed products.

Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, is the acknowledged worldwide leader in the creation of interactive entertainment. To date, Nintendo has sold more than one billion video games worldwide, has created such industry icons as Mario and Donkey Kong and launched franchises like The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon. Nintendo manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home video game systems, including the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy - the world's best-selling video game system. As a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in North America. The independent Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rates Pokémon Snap "RP" for "Rating Pending." For more information about the ESRB visit www.esrb.org. For more information about Pokémon Snap or any other Nintendo product visit the company's web site, www.nintendo.com or the official Pokémon web site, www.pokemon.com.