Yo-Kai Watch is coming to the West in 2016 exclusively for 3DS. Will it challenge the Pokemon throne? Developed by JRPG powerhouses Level-5, Yo-Kai Watch is a Pokemon-style Monster-Catching Role-Playing Game that has become a media powerhouse in Japan with award-winning & box-office-record-breaking anime, manga, films & toys ever-growing the empire. Like Pokemon, the 3DS games are the genesis of the series, whose anime will air in America on Disney XD in holiday of 2015. In Japan the film is the highest box-office Japanese film since 2000. Wow.
Check out the debut English trailer for Yo-Kai Watch from Nintendo’s E3 2015 Press Conference.
YO-KAI WATCH SYNOPSIS
Find, Befriend and Battle Hundreds of Yo-kai
After selling millions and being a cultural phenomenon in Japan, YO-KAI WATCH is coming to the United States for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
Give a look at 25 straight minutes of gameplay for Yo-Kai Watch from Nintendo’s E3 2015 TreeHouse Live Day 1 Coverage!
The YO-KAI WATCH game is about hundreds of sometimes cute, sometimes spooky, and usually mischievous Yo-kai that inhabit our world. Yo-kai are not ghosts, monsters or creatures.
Yo-kai are, quite simply, Yo-kai.
They cannot be seen by the human eye, but they are everywhere. Whether born from the soul of a deceased human, or an everyday object discovering its higher purpose, their personalities are distinctly humanlike.
As you explore the world, use your Yo-kai Watch to find them, befriend them, and turn them into a team to battle other Yo-kai.
Befriending new Yo-kai may not be so easy, though – in many cases, you will need to battle with them and impress them during your battle.
Each Yo-kai has its own unique skills and strengths and you’ll use them to challenge the evil Yo-kai and help people in need of solving daily problems – like an argument with a friend or forgetting something important – which may be caused by mischievous Yo-kai hidden everywhere.
Key Yo-Kai Watch Features:
* With the power of the Yo-kai watch, find and befriend more than 200 hidden Yo-kai, found everywhere in the world, and call upon their powers when you need their help.
* Assemble a team of six Yo-kai in your watch to defeat evil and help people.
* Each Yo-kai has its own unique skills and strengths, so use strategy to assemble your team to address different problems and fight different evil Yo-kai.
* Make your Yo-kai Watch more powerful and upgrade your Yo-kai as you play through the story.
Skip to 11 minutes in this video to hear more about Yo-Kai Watch, this time straight from the developers themselves! In this Day 2 E3 2015 Treehouse Live video.
Okay I grew up during the Pokemon era’s birth.
Digimon & Yu-Gi-Oh were both pretty huge properties. They DID NOT truly give Pokemon a run for it’s money, and pretty much EVERYONE played/watched/devoured all things Pokemon. But both Yugioh & Digimon were liked by sizable margin of kids who considered both properties to be “cooler”.
With the Yo-Kai Watch anime launching on Disney XD, I can imagine this series taking off.
Nintendo has proven that Pokemon is unstoppable, but Yo-Kai Watch may turn out to be a surprise phenomenon on a lower level.
While it’s doubtful it will reach Pokemon proportions in the West the way Pokemon did when it launched here way back in 1998, I think that Yo-Kai Watch could become a huge property in it’s own right, the way that Digimon & Yu-Gi-Oh were for quite a while once they hit.
Also this is Nintendo.
Lets not forget that they are the ones who took an obscure Monster Collecting black & white JRPG (and I played Persona 1 when it first came out on PS1. It was NOT popular. Awesome, but not played by many) & made it into one of the biggest media franchises of all time. Within a year or so Pokemon had made more money than Star Wars & Star Trek, all merchandise + films, combined. It’s insane.
And that from an obscure JRPG that NO ONE thought would be successful in America & the West. Analysts advised Nintendo against trying to make it appeal to non-Japanese. They thought the idea of Pokemon making it outside Japan was, quite simply, an impossibility. Obviously those fools were DEAD WRONG.
So we’ll just have to wait & see regarding Yo-Kai Watch.
I’m excited honestly, I want to see what happens. The game looks fun. And I’m 30 years old haha. You can’t go wrong with Level-5. All of their games are of the highest pedigree, and it looks like they may have struck gold with Yo-Kai Watch!
Will you be buying Yo-Kai Watch when it launches early next year? Do you think you’ll check out the anime?