Rayquaza is one of the coolest Pokemon designs ever, and he has acquired near mythical status among Pokemon fans. Not because of his rarity: he was fairly easy to find in the games he first appeared in, if hidden behind a frustrating set of puzzles. Nor because of his stats, which, while good, are not the best. No, it’s just because of how cool he looks and was, and because of his instrumental role in the story of Pokemon Emerald.
So those fans will definitely be happy to know that Rayquaza will be appearing in the remakes, Pokemon OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire too. And as a bonus, he will also be getting a new Mega-Evolution. No, he doesn’t get a ‘Primal Reversion,’ even though Groudon and Kyogre do. Don’t ask me why.
Anyway, this announcement raises some important questions- just which specific game are Pokemon OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire based on? Remakes for Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire were always going to be problematic, simply because of how divergent from each other the original pair was, unlike all other games in the series; in spite of this, other remakes in the franchise have simply based themselves on the ‘third game’ for their respective generation. But for Ruby and Sapphire remakes, that would be problematic, as that would change the story substantially, and also effectively mean Ruby and Sapphire aren’t getting remakes, Emerald is.
So it’ll be interesting to see how Nintendo plans on tackling this. Pokemon OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire release on the Nintendo 3DS on November 21.