Pokémon fans nearly got another game for the Nintendo DS. YouTuber DidYouKnowGaming recently unearthed the secrets of what would have likely been Pokémon Pinball: Diamond & Pearl after more than 15 years of being nothing more than a rumor.
While the project never truly got off the ground—going so far as not ever having a working title—the story behind its near-development status is now public knowledge thanks to the DYKG team.
Initially pulled from the huge Nintendo leak that was dumped online in July 2021, mention of an “in-development” Pokémon Pinball title was among the listed projects being worked on as of 2005. The information included was scarce, but it was enough for DYKG to put together a few details.
The unnamed Pokémon Pinball title would have been developed by Fuse Games, the team behind Metroid Prime Pinball and Mario Pinball Land, with a listed target release date of September 2006 to keep within the timeframe of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl’s launch. And unlike in the previous entries on Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, players would have been able to battle with the Pokémon they captured too.
DYKG interviewed former Fuse artist Matthew Nightingale about the team’s involvement with the ill-fated DS title, revealing that the game would have followed a similar structure to Metroid Prime Pinball in that it would have been more of an adventure game than just a pinball title and add elements of core Pokémon gameplay into the traditional pinball formula.
According to Nightingale, the high quality of the Metroid title likely led to representatives from The Pokémon Company and Nintendo visiting the team’s office in Buford, England following Metroid Prime Pinball’s release in October 2005. That meeting led to Nintendo paying them to create a demo for a new Pokémon Pinball title in a similar vein to the team’s original demo for Metroid Prime Pinball.
This demo included three pinball tables, themed around the Sinnoh countryside, a cityscape, and a Gym Leader battle.
“The Pokémon Company were really impressed with the demo we had made (even going as far as to say the graphics were the best they’d seen outside of Japan!) and looked keen to work with Fuse to develop the game,” Nightingale said.
The country table would have been used as a replacement for traveling between locations and a way for players to build up their collection of Pokémon to create teams for battles, while battles would have players select their Pokémon teams and enter double-sided tables to face off with a Gym Leader. Your chosen active Pokémon would appear between your own flippers while on the opposite side of the table you would see the Gym Leader’s Pokémon between their flippers.
Type advantages would provide bonuses during battles and you would need to power up your Pokémon’s attacks with ramp shots before unleashing an attack that will span the entire table. But if you lost control of the ball, the Gym Leader gained control of it and could counterattack.
The game also would have featured Wi-Fi connectivity that would have allowed players to connect and play in matches similar to that of the described Gym Leader battles.
Despite that apparent interest, the project was never greenlit and Fuse, as it was then, ceased operations in March 2009—with DYKG speculating that this was partially due to a contract for the new Pokémon Pinball project falling through. Based on the September 2006 target release date, it can be inferred that Nintendo and TPC approached Fuse about the demo in early to mid-2005 depending on when development wrapped on Metroid Prime Pinball and, should the project have continued, it would have been worked on throughout 2005 and into 2006 in hopes of meeting that projection.
You can hear the full story, along with additional insight into what features the game may have had, in the DYKG video on the subject.
