Pokemon Mini - the tiny system just for Pokemon games - may be coming back

Pokemon Mini
(Image credit: Future)

It looks like Pokemon Mini may be coming back, nearly 20 years after it first arrived.

The handheld game system was Tamagotchi-sized but could play a selection of Pokemon-themed games, thanks to its Game Boy-style swappable cartridges. As spotted by Nintendo Life, the official Nintendo UK website recently added Pokemon Mini to the list of "Originally for" filters, which let you sort games by which console they were originally released on as well as where you can play them now.

While Pokemon Mini had a total of 10 games, only 5 were released outside of Japan, and those are the ones that currently appear on Nintendo UK site. The Nintendo UK site could just be catching up on less high-profile Nintendo consoles here, but the fact that this category appears to have been added during Pokemon's 25th anniversary year makes it seem more significant.

Plus, it's not like the list was already almost complete and this is just Nintendo covering its bases, or else there would be a Virtual Boy category too. We will never forget you, Virtual Boy.

As one of Nintendo's most obscure video game consoles, Pokemon Mini is prime material for a re-release of some kind. Maybe one of the upcoming Pokemon 25th anniversary announcements will be a new Pokemon Mini collection for Nintendo Switch, or maybe The Pokemon Company will bring them all to mobile devices for the first time?

If Pokemon Mini comes back, hopefully we'll see the return of Pokemon Pikachu too, for the complete Pokemon-meets-Tamagotchi experience.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.