The game is afoot once more as Detective Pikachu and Tim continue their quest to find Harry, Pikachu’s long-lost partner and Tim’s dad. Unless you played the original game in 2016 or caught the live-action adaptation in theaters three years after, you might be out of the loop as to why exactly a talking Pikachu and a 21-year-old man are running amuck playing Sherlock Holmes.
Detective Pikachu is a spin-off of the Pokémon franchise with storytelling mechanics reminiscent of the long-running Pokémon anime. But maybe you missed the memo on Detective Pikachu all those years ago and joined the fray after hearing of a sequel. If that’s the case, Nintendo has released a handy “previously on” video to either jog your memory or fill you in from scratch for first-time exposure to the franchise.
Let’s recap everything we know from Detective Pikachu, as narrated by the great sleuth himself.
- Pikachu and his partner Harry ran into some trouble on a case, resulting in Harry’s disappearance and the loss of Pikachu’s memories.
- Pikachu was wandering the city when he ran into Tim, who was the only human capable of understanding Pikachu’s speech outside of “Pika-Pika!”
- Pikachu and Tim teamed up to tackle a common goal: Finding Harry, who just so happened to be Tim’s dad as well as Pikachu’s partner.
- While searching for Harry, Pikachu and Tim uncovered a series of mysteries involving the chemical known as R, which was proven to make Pokémon go berserk.
- Pikachu and Tim solved the case and saved Ryme City, but Harry was still missing.
Detective Pikachu ends with the titular character and his human associate setting out to resume their initial objective of finding Harry after saving Ryme City from the pandemic of the R chemical.
Although 2019’s feature film does presumably spoil the twist ending for Detective Pikachu Returns, it didn’t allow us to experience the thrill first-hand of solving crimes with a personified Pikachu, so it doesn’t count.
See the conclusion of Pikachu and Tim’s adventures in Detective Pikachu Returns, coming to the Nintendo Switch on Oct. 6, 2023.
