UPDATED 17:30 EDT / JANUARY 25 2016

NEWS

You can now watch Pokemon’s 20th anniversary Super Bowl commercial

The Pokemon franchise will be turning 20 years old this year, and to celebrate that milestone, The Pokemon Company will be airing a commercial during the Super Bowl in two weeks, and it will also be releasing a number of nostalgia-inducing products at the end of February.

Super Bowl commercials are notoriously expensive, and Pokemon’s 1 minute 10 second ad is estimated to have cost roughly $10 million, which suggests that The Pokemon Company is getting serious about reinvigorating the franchise in the West.

For those of you who are nostalgic for the good old days of the original 150 Pokemon (plus Mew), Nintendo will be re-releasing Pokemon Red and Blue and Pokemon Yellow on the Nintendo 3DS virtual store, so you can have the chance to see how not-well the games have aged.

If you were more a fan of the cartoon, then there is good news for you too. Twelve of the show’s 18 feature films are coming to Google Play and iTunes, and the first two movies (Pokemon: The Movie and Pokemon 2000) are being digitally remastered. The new Super Bowl commercial even gives a subtle nod to the English dub of the animated series by briefly showing the phrase “Like no one ever was,” a line from the show’s English theme song.

And before you even ask, yes, the trading card game is also making a comeback with a new expansion called Generations, which is aimed at recreating the “trainer’s journey” from the original video games, from choosing your starter Pokemon to battling the elite trainers.

Aside from all of the anniversary releases, this year will also see the release of two new Pokemon games: Pokemon GO, an augmented reality mobile game for smartphones, and Pokken Tournament, a Tekken-style Pokemon fighting game.

Sadly, there is no news about a return of Hey You Pikachu.

You can watch the full Pokemon 20th anniversary Super Bowl commercial below:

Image courtesy of The Pokemon Company and Nintendo Co Ltd

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