Possibility of Pokédogs (+ Cats)?

Those who played the previous "era" of Nintendo consoles - that is, the Nintendo DS and its derivatives - will likely have recognized a series of virtual pet games called Nintendogs. These allow a player to become close with a furry friend of their choice (dogs, of course - cats came later on), taking care of them and doing things with them. That sounds suspiciously like something that one could do - or in fact also does - with Pokémon, of which some are known to be like dogs. Therefore, some have proposed that a spinoff could be made for Pokémon, in which case it could be called "Pokédogs" as in the title of this post. Naturally, I'm inclined to talk about it and flesh out the idea further.

Now, I haven't played the game proper, but according to its descriptions, the pet care element is there along with the activity element. Adapting these to a blend of real-life and Pokémon influences would be the key factor for this game; the pet care element would have to be as robust as the original game while incorporating some Pokémon twists, and the activity element doesn't have to be too realistic but still sensible for a real pet as well as a Pokémon pet. The results would seem to indicate a mixture of pet simulation and the PokéPark games, but that should be satisfactory for fans of both.

Even so, there are still a few other considerations. One of them is that "pet care" had already been implemented in different forms in the main series games, and an implementation for the purpose of "Pokédogs" may want to differentiate itself in comparison to that. It also goes without saying that the activity implementation might as well want or need to differentiate itself from something like PokéPark as the example game mentioned above. Long story short, Pokémon has already had shares of both elements in other games, and besides conforming with Nintendogs, differing becomes another related matter.

Implementing Nintendogs for Pokémon might still not be a ridiculous idea, however, since there are people on both involved sides who are familiar with both realms, and one of them might be a certain "steering" and "nearing" person. They'll have to make sense of the demand for it as put forth by the same people I mentioned above - perhaps including me - and may consider it a developmental possibility. Whether that would play out in due time is another matter entirely, though not a constrained one.

Having been around for almost three decades now, many Pokémon species have been found to resemble the familiar furry friends people also keep as pets rather than put into combat as some of the games would have people believe. Putting Nintendo's own virtual pet games to the task of caring and having fun with these Pokémon species seems like a natural choice and a plausible one - at least once all the hurdles have been overcome. That might just be an instance of "barking up the right tree".

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