During the Pokemon Gifts aired this week, The Pokémon Company announced reissues of the Nintendo DS games, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. While Game Freak usually handles games like this, it’s currently working on the open-world prequel Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which will appear next year.
This allows the release of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl in 2021 in the hands of a Japanese studio called ILCA. Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda will oversee the project as director, along with ILCA’s Yuichi Ueda. If you do not know this studio, here is a brief overview:
Who is ILCA?
ILCA, Inc. is a Japanese studio headquartered in Tokyo, with other offices in Shinjuku, Nagoya and Kyoto. It was founded on October 1, 2010 as a CG-based video production company focused on animation, film and television, and eventually added the development of video games 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 lovely walls):
So who’s in charge?
ILCA is led by CEO Takuya Iwasaki and 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 like computer art”
Has the studio worked on any Pokémon projects before?
Yes – before the Diamond and Pearl re-created, it was responsible for the cloud-based salvage program, Pokémon HOUSE.
What other games has it worked on?
As already mentioned, ILCA is a support studio. As a result, we are working on all kinds of games, including regular 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 helps with include Yakuza 0, Dragon Quest XI, NieR: automatically, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 and more recently Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.
Want to know more about ILCA?
Of course, go to the official website of the company – it’s even rent! There are also official Twitter and Facebook pages.
So there’s your crash course in ILCA – the team behind Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Do you think they need to rebuild the Generation IV Pokémon games? Share your thoughts below.