We were beginning to think the Wii U's 'near field communication' feature was going to become one of those that time forgot - utilising similar technology to London's Oyster Cards, by placing special real-life objects onto the Wii U GamePad, you were supposed to be able to effectively scan them into the game. Showcased in an early Rayman Legends trailer, the first glimpse we got of how the technology might work showed a couple placing models of a Rabbid, Assassin's Creed's Ezio and a heart onto the GamePad to have the characters appear in the game - but then nothing more on the feature was ever seen. Until now.
Making something of a comeback from gaming obscurity, Nintendo have recently announced that the fancy technology will be used in upcoming Wii U downloadable game Pokemon Rumble U, where you'll be able to buy, and then scan models of your favourite 'mons to bring them into your game. It all sounds a little bit Skylanders to us - but with the potential to drain our bank accounts even more.
The game itself is set to release in Japan on the 24th of April on the Wii U eShop for 1,800 yen, which works out at roughly £12.60 in real money, although we wouldn't be surprised to see it pop up at as much as £14.99, taking into account the premium we always seem to end up paying on the eShop. Much like the other games in the series, in Pokemon Rumble U, you'll get to take control of a number of little toy Pokemon, who've somehow managed to accidentally fall in the river and are on a quest to return to their toy shop home. In true Pokemon Rumble style, what this actually means is you'll be moving from level to level, beating up hoards of other toy Pokemon to persuade them to join you - and with some 649 Pokemon included, that's a fair amount of brawling if you want to catch them all.
Much like the WiiWare game, Pokemon Rumble U includes four player co-op.
Luckily, though, if you're particularly time constrained, or simply OCD about collecting things, it seems Nintendo will have a shortcut on hand, with plans to produce a range of the aforementioned figures, which you'll be able to scan into your game, in order to unlock them for use in the game, and save your levelling progress (which is odd, because the earlier games haven't featured levelling at all). Unfortunately for us, in Japan, these figures will only be available from Japanese Pokemon Centres (amazing shops that sell all manner of Pokemon merchandise and goodies that we could really do with over here), at the bargain price of 200 yen, which works out at only a couple of quid. Whether or not the figures will make their way over here remains to be seen, although if they do, we hope the low price point stays intact - giving us a nice, cheaper alternative to the pricey Skylanders figures and even more expensive Disney Infinity sets, we can see Pokemon Rumble U becoming quite the salary sink for us.
As for when the game itself will reach these shores, the short answer is that we don't know - although we're 99% certain it will at some point, given that the previous two games made it over here, mere months after they hit Japan. With that in mind, we'll be keeping our fingers crossed we hear something about a UK/European release sometime soon - hopefully with news about the models, too.
