It was surprising to hear Pokémon mentioned during Geoff Keighley’s Opening Night Live at Gamescom 2022, considering Nintendo usually holds its own livestream events for that series. But this wasn’t news about Scarlet and Violet — it was a showcase of an electric concept car.
A few weeks before Gamescom, BMW revealed the Concept Aceman, its first all-electric Mini Cooper. BMW and Gamescom are both located in Germany, so they combined forces during Opening Night Live. Get those sponsorship dollars, Geoff. This specific edition of the Aceman was modeled after Pikachu, with a charging meter that shows the electric mouse Pokémon getting juiced up with energy.
Product placement aside, there is an actual video game link here. The Mini Concept Aceman is an electric vehicle, and in the same way that you can connect a smartphone to a car via Bluetooth, this car will let you hook up your gaming console. While that sounds distracting for the driver, it might be nice to pull over for a pit stop and fire up some Super Smash Bros during a road trip. Seeing as this is a concept car, there is no street date or pricing information available at this time.
We do know when the next Pokémon game arrives, though. Scarlet and Violet will release the ninth generation of Pokémon on Friday, November 18. New features for this generation include a different kind of Gym Leader and story progression, the Union Circle online hub, and a Terastallize mechanic that can change a Pokémon’s type midway through a match.
As for the rest of Opening Night Live, the show was packed with new game announcements and information. New Tales from the Borderlands was officially revealed, we saw a new Sonic Frontiers trailer, and a whole host of release dates were made known. One of the closest ones is Return to Monkey Island, which arrives in mid-September.
