During the Pokémon presents Airing this week, The Pokémon Company announced remakes of the Nintendo DS games, Pokémon Diamond and PearlWhile Game Freak normally handles games like this, it is currently busy with the open world prequel Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which will be released next year.
This leaves the release of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl in 2021 owned by a Japanese studio called ILCA. Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda will direct the project, alongside Yuichi Ueda from ILCA. If you’re not familiar with this studio, here’s a quick rundown:
Who is ILCA?
ILCA, Inc. is a Japanese studio with headquarters in Tokyo and other offices in Shinjuku, Nagoya and Kyoto. It was founded on October 1, 2010 as a CG-based video production company dedicated to animation, movies and television, eventually adding video game development to the list. As of December 1, 2020, it has 288 employees.
What does the ILCA logo look like?
Here it is in all its glory (without those pretty walls):
So who is in charge?
ILCA is headed by CEO Takuya Iwasaki and its director Satoshi Takamori.
What does ILCA stand for?
According to the company’s website, ILCA is named after the acronym “I Love Computer Art”.
“I LOVE COMPUTER ART”
Has the studio worked on Pokémon projects before?
Yes – before the Diamond and Pearl were remade it was responsible for the cloud-based storage app, Pokémon HOME
What other games has it worked on?
As we mentioned earlier, ILCA is a support studio. As a result, it has worked on all kinds of games including mainstream games, augmented reality titles, virtual reality games and several other things including a Domino’s pizza app with Hatsune Miku
Some more serious projects it is assisted with include Yakuza 0 Dragon Quest XI NieR: Automata Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 and more recently Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
Want to know more about ILCA?
Sure, go to the company’s official website – it’s even hiring! There are also official ones Twitter and Facebook pages.
So there’s your crash course in ILCA – the team behind Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Do you think they have what it takes to remake the Generation IV Pokémon games? Share your thoughts below.