If I had any artistic talent at all, there's a pretty good chance that I would do nothing all day but draw pictures of Bulbasaur and Snorlax and their best friend Chris Sims -- who teaches them as much as they teach him. It's basically my dream life, but given my inability to draw anything more complex than, say, Voltorb, I've long since given up on it.

But now, Nintendo is trying to rekindle my dreams -- or at least, they would be if I was in Japan -- with the new Pokémon Art Academy. Set to be released on June 19 in Japan, Art Academy is designed to give players step by step instructions on how to draw your favorite Pokémon, including what appears to be the single greatest portrait of Charizard ever.

The lessons in Art Academy are accompanied by templates for over 100 Pokémon which sounds like a pretty solid number until you remember that there are like 700 of those things now and so they probably won't be including a step-by-step how-to for drawing each form for Rotom, the ghost of a microwave that can possess a washing machine, but still. It's pretty intriguing, and if I had to guess, I'd say that DeviantArt might want to invest in a few new servers for all the kids who are going to have a love of drawing pocket monsters coming up in the next few years.

As of right now, there are no plans to give Art Academy a US release, but with the 3DS Eshop, stranger things have happened. Like, say, that one Phoenix Wright game where a town plagued by Japanese Demons was localized to be set in California and be full of immigrants who just happened to bring actual demons imprisoned in mountains with them.

Video games are weird.

 

 

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