Nintendo fans are no strangers to side characters getting their own games, such as Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland and Luigi’s Mansion, but it’s probably safe to say nobody ever expected to see a teaser for a game called “Splash! Magikarp”. That Pokemon that takes up the first slot in your party until it becomes Gyarados seems to be getting its own game, judging by a teaser page dropped by The Pokemon Company. The text of the teaser is all in Japanese, but seems to consist of a fictional newspaper article about fishermen in a small village stumbling across two Magikarp-shaped holes in the ground. How did they get there? What’s at the bottom of them? Where are the Magikarp that made them? Just what is this game actually going to be about? According to the teaser site, the answer is coming, in Japan at least, some time this year on Android and iOS.
The teaser images offers basically no hint as to the subject of the game or the gameplay, which means that all we have to go off of right now is speculation. Two humans are standing over the Magikarp-shaped pits, and the newspaper entry implies that those humans are fishermen. This could be a game about fishing for Magikarp, though that leaves more than a few questions. First off, how did those pits get there? Most Magikarp may be so weak that even the official Pokedex is fond of riffing on them, but some specimen are known to use their Splash move to jump over mountains. That move happens to be in the title of the game. Magikarp can also learn Tackle and Flail.
Going over to the side of the game possibly letting a player take the role of a Magikarp, the two holes imply that at least two Magikarp will be involved. The name of the game, meanwhile, implies that Magikarp’s Splash move will be involved. Perhaps the two Magikarp wound up in those pits somehow, hopefully with water beneath, and have to somehow Splash their way out? The possibilities here are just as endless as the questions left by the strange teaser. We’ll just have to wait for more information to come out in order to have some concrete idea of what this game is and how it works.
