Pokémon Champions’ director tells us how he’s bringing Pokémon’s best-kept secret to the masses

With Pokémon Champions, director Masaaki Hoshino has a clear goal: to share his passion for competitive Pokémon battles with the world.

“I really want to take this element of the series, Pokémon battles, something that sticks around forever,” he told VGC during an interview at February’s Pokémon European International Championships. “Many people have played Pokémon games, they’ve played Pokémon battles, but haven’t really gotten into the PVP side, playing against other players. With this game, I hope to expand that accessibility to make it something that anyone can jump in and enjoy.”

The Championships are an appropriate venue for our conversation and world-first hands-on with the upcoming Pokémon battle simulator. The EUIC was the largest Pokémon tournament in history by attendance, and concluded with a convention hall full of people shouting and screaming at the climactic final video game battle of the weekend.

Pokémon Champions (the game, that is, not the event) will be released for the Nintendo Switch next month, with a mobile port to follow. Nintendo Switch 2 players will see improved performance, but The Pokémon Company has stopped short of releasing a Nintendo Switch 2-dedicated version of the game, yet.

Visually, Champions lags behind mainline entries like Pokémon Legends Z-A, or the recent Pokémon Pokopia, when it comes to the quality of the Pokémon models themselves. However, the surrounding wrapper is bright, clear, and clean, even if it does have a slight whiff of a mobile title.

Pokémon Champions is essentially a way for players to bring their Pokémon from Pokémon Home into one unified battle interface. Instead of swapping games every couple of years, Pokémon Champions is supposed to be the home of Pokémon VGC (that’s video game championships, not us).

“Previously, we’ve changed titles, as time went on, but going forward, we’re going to be using Pokémon Champions as the game that we carry into the future for the VGC,” Hoshino said. “It’s not going to be a game we put out, and it doesn’t change. It’s going to continue to evolve, and it’s going to be able to support new Pokémon that come out.”

Hoshino is a veteran of competitive video games. Beginning his career at Namco in the mid-1990s, he worked on the Soulcalibur series for almost two decades. But even while at Namco, he had a passion for Pokémon. In his early days, he became enamoured with Pokémon Yellow, his first Pokémon title, and even formed a Pokémon Club within Namco, which held tournaments each year.

It wasn’t until a meeting with The Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara in the early 2010s that he finally got to work on the franchise he loved, serving as one of the senior developers on Pokken Tournament. Following Pokken, Hoshino joined The Pokémon Company and went on to direct Pokémon Unite, Pokémon’s first MOBA, which, to this day, makes up one of the core pillars of the Pokémon competitive scene.

He told VGC his reverence for that original Pokémon battle system hasn’t faltered, not least since one of its original architects is now a colleague. “The Pokémon battle system has been, at the core, unchanged since it was first developed at Game Freak. Actually, Mr. Morimoto from Game Freak, one of the original developers, is working on this game as well,” Hoshino said.

“Previously, we’ve changed titles, as time went on, but going forward, we’re going to be using Pokémon Champions as the game that we carry into the future for the VGC”

Series veteran Shigeki Morimoto has been the steward of the Pokémon battle system since its inception, working on every title featuring the traditional turn-based gameplay. He also created the 151st Pokémon, Mew.

I am about as big a Pokémon fan as one can be, but even I have often found the VGC side of the franchise obtuse to approach. I can sit in the stadium at the Pokémon World Championships and understand what’s going on, I’ve sat watching multiple-hour-long videos about competitive team makeup, and I understand the eccentricities of the battle mechanics more than someone who just plays through the story every couple of years and moves on.

Pokémon Champions is looking to give players of all skill levels that next step. It wants dedicated players like me to be able to build teams and hold my own in ranked games, but equally, it wants players who’ve never thought about the battle system beyond what is mandatory in the games to explore this other side of the franchise.

“From the outset, we didn’t want to go and change that core battle system,” Hoshino explained. “We thought that was very important, especially to current players. At the same time, until now, in order to participate in those battles at a high level, you have to do a lot of work. All this training takes quite a bit of time and can feel like a bit of a hurdle for certain players. So, with this game, we’ve made it a lot easier. It’s a lot easier for anyone to get into that higher-level gameplay.”

Pokémon Champions allows you to battle using your pre-trained Pokémon from the core series, or, in the biggest move for the competitive scene in some time, it allows players to adjust their Pokémon’s stats, movesets, natures, competitive items, and more, via a menu. In this way, the game aims to eliminate the grind of the main series by introducing these obtuse mechanics to a wider audience.

“In terms of platforms, we’re going to release on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, but there’s also going to be a mobile version,” Hoshino said. “Being a free-to-play game, it’s something that more people will be able to jump in and check out.”

“Until now, in order to participate in those battles at a high level, you have to do a lot of work… so, with this game, we’ve made it a lot easier.”

Before I sat down to battle Serebii webmaster Joe Merrick (presumably for internet Pokémon supremacy), we each recruited a team of Pokémon from the in-game ranch. This is the option for players who don’t have Pokémon saved from across the series. Personally, I’m not sure how many players won’t have at least one other Nintendo Switch Pokémon game with which to import a team, but this mechanic makes more sense in a mobile context, as does its monetization.

Once at the ranch, players can recruit one of ten Pokémon, a process that comes with its own gacha-style opening animation. This feature can also, reportedly, feature Shiny Pokémon, though no one in our demo was able to find one. This process can be paid for via in-game currency or real money. The specific prices of recruiting a Pokémon weren’t shared with us at the time of the preview.

Players will also be offered a membership, paid monthly or yearly, that will expand the number of Pokémon that can be held in the in-game box (separate from Pokémon Home), increase the number of battle teams, unlock exclusive missions, and more.

When the battle began between myself and Joe, the tension was high. Not only in the friendly competition sense, but also because I’d been thrown into a battle with six Pokémon I hadn’t familiarised myself with. Best-of-three, here we go.

Pokémon VGC is all about mind games. It’s about predicting what your opponent could do, reacting to that, and praying that they’ve not also guessed you were going to make your move, and preemptively countered it. It’s a massive game of who’s going to blink first.

For long-time fans that haven’t kept up with the scene, think of Pokémon Champions like a modern version of N64 fan-favourite Pokémon Stadium. When asked about Stadium, Hoshino laughed fondly.

“I really enjoyed those games as a player, and I took that experience and used it as a reference with this game. The idea with Champions is that we’re taking elements from all these past Pokémon games, the different battle elements, and putting them all into this product.”

“The idea with Champions is that we’re taking elements from all these past Pokémon games, the different battle elements, and putting them all into this product”

After a fierce battle, including a moment wherein I successfully hit Sheer Cold, a move that instantly knocks out your opponent, but is only accurate 30% of the time, I could clearly see the vision. Competitive Pokémon is thrilling. The main series, thus far, has done a poor job of showing that off. Champions could be the answer.

In many ways, Hoshino is the perfect person to direct this title. Not only is his love of Pokémon clear, but his experience working on fighting games, and later MOBAs, is mirrored in Champions. Anyone can pick up a fighting game, but it might take them a lifetime to master it. Even the very best Pokémon VGC players lose, fall away from the spotlight, only for them to return and become world champions again.

I asked Hoshino if he’d considered these parallels between the genres he’s spent a lifetime developing.

“I think as a mindset, having worked on Pokken Tournament, as you say, there’s a very high skill ceiling,” he replied. “I think generally, at the time, the feeling about fighting games was that at a high level it was mostly played by these scary, intimidating dudes (laughs), so in making Pokken Tournament, the idea was to take that fun experience, but turn it into something that even young kids can feel like they can jump into.”

While Pokémon Champions offers a long list of tutorials and explainers for the game’s massive list of mechanics, it feels like a dedicated single-player mode would go a long way in helping players get to grips with the battle systems.

In theory, a player would get their single-player fix from a main series title, and then when they are ready, they’d move those Pokémon into Champions and pick up from there, but for players who only plan to play Champions (which, again, feels like more of a mobile concern), more single-player content would be welcomed.

Hoshino also acknowledges that with over 1000 Pokémon, offering all of them to players right out of the gate would not only be overwhelming, but a balancing nightmare.

“Our current plan is to have these different [sets of available Pokémon] and have that change over time. So the metagame of the Pokémon that are available at any given time may change as time goes on,” he said.

“In making Pokken Tournament, the idea was to take that fun experience, but turn it into something that even young kids can feel like they can jump into”

“We’re planning to keep Pokémon Champions going far into the future, basically forever, as long as the Pokémon series is continuing. Who knows? Far in the future, we’ll have two thousand, maybe ten thousand, and if we had all of those, it would become a complicated situation,” Hoshino laughs. Somewhere in Japan, teams of plush makers are rubbing their hands at the idea of 10,000 different Pokémon on the world’s biggest shelf.

At launch, Pokémon Champions will support Mega Evolutions, the popular mechanic that made a return in Pokémon Legends Z-A, is the current focus of the anime series Pokémon Horizons, and is the main theme for the current trading card sets.

Players will wear an Omni Ring, which Hoshino freely admits is a slick way to incorporate the various potential battle mechanics from across the generations. It’s been standard practice for a battle mechanic to disappear when a generation ends, such as Dynamaxing going away at the end of Sword and Shield, and the presumed end of Terastallization as we move away from Scarlet and Violet.

In Hoshino’s perfect version of Champions, all of these mechanics will be available to the player. However, for now, he’s starting with Mega Evolution and building from there.

“We don’t have a clear answer at the moment. So it’s really going to come down to, once we do combine these things in one environment, seeing how that plays out,” he said. “For example, we’ve had Z moves and Mega Evolutions existing in the same environment before; we’ve seen that already, but for the rest of it, all these combinations, we’ll have to experiment and see how we can make it work in a balanced way.”

VGC fell to Serebii in the second of our best-of-three, setting up a dramatic final match. As we came down to our final few Pokémon, and Joe swept two of my team at once with a devastating Expanding Force from his Alakazam, he relaxed his grip, waiting to see the victory screen appear. He’d miscounted. I had one more Pokémon.

When all seemed lost, my final Pokémon, Kingambit, who I’d given the ability Supreme Overlord (which boosts its attack and special attack for every defeated teammate), appeared, sending his Alakazam packing. 2-1 to VGC. We were both shouting at the screen.

The excitement of a stadium full of Pokémon fans watching the best in the world battle for thousands of pounds, distilled down into two mates duking it out. I have reminded Joe of that moment virtually every day since. If Pokémon Champions can lead players to moments that were 1% as thrilling as that afternoon was, it’s done its job. So, it seems, has Masaaki Hoshino.

Pokémon Champions will be released on April 8.