Tomorrow (February 27) at 2pm UK time, Nintendo and Game Freak will unveil the future of Pokemon via a dedicated Direct broadcast that will run for around seven minutes.
While it hasn’t been officially confirmed that this will be our first look at the eighth generation of Pokemon games, it seems highly unlikely to us (and everyone else) that it would be anything else.
I mean, the announcement Tweet has three Poke balls in the image – if that isn’t teasing the three new Starter Pokemon I’ll eat my Eevee plush toy.
I won’t actually do that (I love my Eevee), but you get my point.
Not only does tomorrow mark the anniversary of the original Pokemon games’ launching in Japan back in 1996, but a number of leakers have been saying for a few weeks now that February 27 is the day we find out what’s in store for Gen 8.
As if that wasn’t a strong enough argument for a Gen 8 reveal tomorrow, I should also point out there are no other Pokemon games on the horizon, so unless Nintendo has any huge surprise in store, I truly believe this Direct is for the next “core” games.
This next round of Pokemon games have been shrouded in mystery for some time now, but we do know that they’ll launch exclusively on Nintendo Switch sometime in 2019.
Another (much less believable) rumour suggests the new games will be will be known as Pokemon King and Queen, though I think those that came to this conclusion are stretching themselves to breaking point.
Whatever Pokemon Gen 8 ends up being called, we’re now less than 24 hours from finding out. Hopefully Nintendo and Game Freak have something magical to show us.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.