What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

I’ve recently been on a kick replaying my Nintendo 64 library—stepping back in time to relive a specific, hazy brand of late-90s nostalgia. Partly it’s escapism, partly curiosity: how do these games actually hold up when stripped of childhood reverence? That curiosity got an extra nudge thanks to the Pokémon Snap–inspired minigame in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, followed closely by my realization that there was, in fact, a new Pokémon Snap released on Switch. “New” being relative—it launched in 2021—but if I hadn’t seen it before, then damn it, it’s new to me.

So we’re hopping back into our rocket-boosted Jurassic Park tram, pelting Pokémon with gassy balls, and revisiting the charmingly polygonal world of Pokémon Snap.

Pokémon Snap’s premise is deceptively simple—and, at the time, kind of bizarre. You play as Todd Snap, a young photographer tasked with documenting Pokémon on the aptly named Pokémon Island, all in pursuit of capturing photographic evidence of the mythical Mew. Your handler and hype man is Professor Oak, who sends you out into the wild and then mercilessly critiques your work upon return.

Even by Nintendo standards, the naming here isn’t exactly their finest hour. Todd Snap. Pokémon Island. This isn’t the A-team of branding. But the concept itself was a radical departure. At a time when Pokémon was still largely a glorified rock-paper-scissors combat simulator, Nintendo was clearly testing how far the brand could stretch. Alongside experiments like Hey You, Pikachu!, Snap represented Nintendo asking an important question: What if Pokémon wasn’t about battling at all?

Instead of free exploration, Pokémon Snap locks you onto rails. You move through each environment automatically, armed only with your camera—at least at first. There’s an immediate tactile satisfaction to snapping photos: the sharp camera click, the ringing chime when you center your subject just right. Early areas like Beach are full of deliberate frustration. You spot Pokémon you can’t yet properly photograph. A Snorlax sleeps stubbornly in the bushes, unacknowledged despite clearly being a Snorlax. There’s rustling in the grass with no way to flush anything out. And a strange pink blob rolls past, unreadable in its low-poly glory.

This is Pokémon Snap quietly teaching you its core loop: you’ll be back. Replayability is baked into the design from the first ride.

Once your ride ends, you’re sucked back through a portal to Oak’s lab, where your photos are judged with cold, academic indifference. Each picture is scored based on size, pose, framing, number of Pokémon in the shot, and special bonuses for rare moments. The most important rule is centering—do it right and your score doubles. Do it wrong, and Oak will literally toss your photo in the trash right in front of you.

Cruelly, you’re only allowed to submit one photo per Pokémon per run. Two great Butterfree shots? Too bad. Pick one and pray. Miss the arbitrary score threshold and Oak treats your work like expired film. It’s harsh, but it’s also what makes improvement feel tangible.

After Beach, the island opens up. Tunnel introduces environmental theming and your first real tools, starting with Pokémon Food. Each new item meaningfully changes how levels function. Later unlocks—like the Pester Ball—don’t just improve photos, they alter the environment itself. Blow up an Electrode in Tunnel and suddenly you’ve unlocked a new path to Volcano. River is water-heavy. Volcano leans fire-type. The zones feel intuitive, cohesive, and cleverly interconnected.

Eventually, progression shifts from simple documentation to puzzle-solving. Hidden Pokémon monuments—rocks shaped like Kingler, projected images resembling Pinsir—must be photographed to unlock the final area. Completing these sends you into the Rainbow Cloud for one last encounter with Mew, showcasing the ZERO-ONE vehicle’s full range as it glides through lava, water, sand, and finally open sky.

I won’t spoil the finale here, but it’s a fitting, quietly magical conclusion.

Pokémon Snap is a reminder of Nintendo at its most confident and experimental. It’s weird. It’s specific. It shouldn’t have worked—and yet it did. Few games have made photography the core mechanic and achieved both critical and commercial success. In a modern landscape oversaturated with copy-paste farming sims and the inevitable Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Snap feels refreshingly singular.

Sometimes, taking a picture is enough.