"Pokemon Rumble U" is coming to the Japanese eShop this spring, but at a far reduced price from any of the retail games at 1200 yen (about $12.50), but players won't just be spending on the game. They'll be spending on the NFC Pokemon figurines in the vein of Activion's "Skyanders" or Disney's upcoming "Infinite," which will plop matching Pokemon into the game as players utilize the Wii U's NFC-integrated gamepad. They'll go for 200 yen ($2) a piece and there are over 600 Pokemon featured in the game. Yikes.
The news comes from two sources. First, NIntendo's Japanese website has a listing for the game, according to Polygon, which lists its Near-Field communication features explicitly. Second, Japanese gaming magazine CoroCoro leaks the intial details, as transcribed over at Serebii.net, Players will be able to purchase the figures at Pokemon Center stores in Japan when the game comes out on April 24.
Serebii also posted up the premise for the Wii U game. Unsurprisingly, it's ridiculous:
"Story wise, the toy Pokémon have been lost from the shop after falling in the river. The task is to get back to the Toy Shop, while facing various bosses such as Chandelure."
The only known figure we know about right now is, of course, our yellow little Pikachu, but Serebii claims seven are currently in production. Check out a trailer for the game below.
No details are known about a potential North American launch, though our craze for the "Skylanders" games indicates that Nintendo is at least considering it. Well, that is assuming Nintendo is always the most business savy company, which they aren't. Most of the time. In the department of positive indicators, the similarly styled "Pokemon Rumble Blast" released on the 3DS in North America back in 2011. Of course, there were't NFC characters for that game.