10 Years After Pokemon X & Y, What Happened To Pokemon Z? (2024)

Pokemon X & Y turn ten this week, and it's time to look back. I'm not expecting a full critical reappraisal, but they weren't as bad as lots of people like to make out. You couldn’t call them unfinished, but there was plenty of room for improvement. The route design wasn’t great, the level curve was odd, and numerous loose ends were never explored. However, that’s nothing that’s stopped Pokemon games from achieving greatness before. Gold & Silver have a ridiculous level curve, and yet they’re the best Pokemon games ever made. Sue me.

A lot of this could have been fixed with a third entry. Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum are the definitive versions of their generations, adding new monsters and mechanics to curate the perfect experience for players. It helps that Game Freak can sell each game for a third time, too. Ten years after Gen 6 launched, we take a look at the problems Pokemon Z could have fixed, and the reasons why it was abandoned.

The most infuriating part of Pokemon X & Y are the loose ends. AZ’s Floette has a model and signature move in the files, which is never used. There are inaccessible doors in the Kalos Power Plant that you can never open. Zygarde only appears briefly in the post-game, and has no narrative. In fact, Zygarde Cores, Cells, and Forms are only introduced in the XYZ anime, and can only be obtained in-game in Sun & Moon. So why did we never get Pokemon Z?

See Also

What is Pokémon Z and Why Wasn’t it Released? | HackerNoon

“We never really planned to make a third version,” said developer Junichi Masuda in an interview with Spain’s official Nintendo magazine, translated by Did You Know Gaming. “We always want to do things that surprise fans. For example, after Black & White, people thought Pokemon Grey was going to come next, but instead we made Black 2 & White 2 [...] People thought Pokemon Z would come [after X & Y], but taking advantage of the fact it’s the 20th anniversary [of Pokemon], we decided to deliver another surprise with Sun & Moon.”

However, 2015 – the year that Pokemon Z should have come out if it was to be consistent with the third releases of every Generation for the decade that preceded it – was barren. It was the only year between 2013 and 2019 that didn’t get a new mainline Pokemon game, and also the year when the XYZ anime released.

However, a datamine of Pokemon Sun & Moon found references to all Pokemon games available at the time and a few slotted in for the future, including ‘Alola Reserve’ 1 and 2, which became Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon, the Gold & Silver Virtual Boy releases, and ‘Kalos Reserve’ 1 and 2, presumably a placeholder for Pokemon Z. Every other game in the data was eventually released. We have no idea whether they would have been called XZ and YZ, Z1 and Z2, or anything else, but there was an intention to release them.

Many sources blame the Gear Project for Game Freak’s abandonment of Pokemon Z. This is a system where Game Freak lets devs pitch their ideas for new IP, and brought us hits such as HarmoKnight, Pocket Card Jockey, and Tembo the Badass Elephant. They’re not bad games, but none sold well. These games all released in the time period that development for Pokemon Z would have been taking place, potentially taking developers away from a third (or third and fourth) Gen 6 game.

We do have a hint at what Pokemon Z may have entailed from a narrative perspective. Zygarde’s original Pokedex entry says, “When the Kalos system’s ecosystem falls into disarray, it appears and reveals its secret power.” I’ve long dreamed of a post-apocalyptic Pokemon game, and Pokemon Z looked like it could have been just that. A ruined Kalos region that required Zygarde’s 100 percent form to save, presumably with the help of AZ’s long-lost Floette. Maybe it was set in the past, in the war that AZ references, or history was repeating itself?

We’ll never know for sure what happened with Pokemon Z, but Pokemon fans missed out. Pokemon X & Y are better games than a lot of people give them credit for, but they leave a hell of a lot of loose ends that another entry could have tied up. Maybe we’ll return to Kalos in the future, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for any Zygarde closure.

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