EA was working on its own Pokemon competitor during the DS era

It never came out

According to Australian developer Nic Watt, who once worked at Electronic Arts, there was a “Pokemon killer” in the works from the publisher during the Nintendo DS era. The revelation comes by way of his appearance on the “GameHugs” podcast, and he had this to say about the experience:

“Working with EA was a completely different experience [to working with a small studio] as we had the longest prototyping period I’ve had for any game I’ve worked on: it was amazing. EA wanted this game where the idea [was] it was going to be their Pokemon game. They didn’t have an RPG in the handheld space and they really wanted one. We did a lot of paper-based prototyping for the battle mechanics and even made a whole card game. Then we got the people from Criterion – who worked on Burnout and with the studio – in [to test it]. That’s the good thing when you have a company of 300 people, you can just ask ‘do you guys want to come in and play our game for the afternoon.’ The team did find it hard because the prototyping was so long, and a lot of things got reset from time to time. But by the time I left, it still had not hit full production and I know that was really tough for a lot of people.”

In my search for an EA mascot I came across this monster…thing in the header, showcasing an EA mobile sale. I’m going to assume he’s concept art for an EA Pokemon.

Then again what am I thinking? EA definitely did have a Pokemon killer — Spore! Ba dum, chhh.

Episode 36 [GameHugs via Nintendo Life]