During Nintendo's Pokemon Direct today, the company revealed Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX, a remake of a pair of games that originally launched in 2006 for the DS and Game Boy Advance. The now singular game will be coming to Switch very soon, with Nintendo revealing a release date of March 6, 2020.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team are a pair of 2006 releases which launched on Game Boy Advance and DS respectively. The games are nearly identical, but the DS version took advantage of the exclusive features to the DS, such as the dual screen UI.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX seems to apply a similar face lift to the 14-year-old games as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening recently did when its remake hit Switch in 2019. Several scenes from the original games can be seen in the reveal trailer below, leading us to believe these remakes will be modernized but faithful, as that tends to be Nintendo's preference for such projects.
In Mystery Dungeon, players control not a trainer, but a human who has turned into a Pokemon. In the original games, players could become one of 16 Pokemon to host their transformation, though you'd not choose it directly. Instead, you're assigned a Pokemon after a brief personality quiz. Players then choose a companion Pokemon and perform missions from different town bulletin boards, usually leading them to randomized dungeons. Turn-based battles play out like they typically do in the long-running series, though players also had to manage their hunger levels in the dungeons. It's not yet clear how much of this format will return for the game, but as mentioned, the debut trailer looks very faithful.
The original pair of cross-gen games earned middling scores from most outlets, though it was beloved from some publications in 2006, evidenced by its 35 out of 40 from Famitsu and an A- rating from 1UP.com.
