Jan 16, 2021 7:00 AM

The Bygone Glory of Blockbuster's Pokémon Snap Station

Nintendo is releasing a new version of the game in April. But nothing can replace the magic of the rental store's printed-out pocket monsters.

In 1999, one thing united millions of children across the world: They would do anything to make Pokémon real. For a brief window, the video rental store Blockbuster held that power.

It was a year after Nintendo released the Pokémon Red and Blue video games for the Game Boy in the US, introducing a wild, strange world where kids could befriend and battle the mysterious creatures. In 1999, Nintendo took the premise further. For the Nintendo 64 console, it released Pokémon Snap, in which pocket monsters wandered the wild—their first 3D incarnation—and players took pictures of them, luring them out with apples. Professor Oak judged the photos’ quality by Pokémon rarity and stylistic sophistication.

Going on a Pokémon safari piqued the imagination. Suddenly, Pokémon had their own lives off-camera. As a visitor, you could briefly appreciate them at their most authentic, not in captivity. Scrolling through digital Pokémon Snap photos was like browsing a collection of signed baseballs, caught after a moment of greatness. But they were digital; at the time, widely considered less real than collectables you could hold. This was the magic of Blockbuster’s Pokémon Snap Station.

Nintendo teamed up with Blockbuster in the ’90s to design a kiosk that fully capitalized on kids’ ardent and impossible wish to make Pokémon real. It was a royal-blue arcade cabinet trimmed in electric yellow, with a matching yellow N64 controller popping out the front. A happy image of Pikachu sprung from the bottom. A Samsung CRT television was connected to an N64 hidden inside. It also contained a small printer. Kids who had Pokémon Snap at home, or rented it from Blockbuster, could slot in their cartridge and print their digital photographs of Pokémon onto the Pokémon Snap Station’s sticker sheets.

Courtesy of RealBreakingNate

“That was an eye-opening experience, to actually take a game from home and convert it into something real,” says Nintendo Wire publisher Jason Ganos, 35. In 1999, Ganos was about the same age as Ash Ketchum, the protagonist of the Pokémon anime, when he started his Pokémon trainer journey. He’d beg his mom and dad to go to the local Blockbuster and march up to the front counter, where the cashier had boxes of pastel, Pokémon-covered “smart cards” on sale for $3. They worked like international phone cards, loaded up with credits. He’d insert the card into the machine, pop in his N64 cartridge from home, and scroll through his photos. Each printed sheet contained 16 photo stickers.

Courtesy of RealBreakingNate

If you didn’t own Pokémon Snap, you could play a short demo of it on the Pokémon Snap Station and print out photos of some minor Pokémon celebrities. Once Pokémon Stadium came out in February 2000, the Pokémon Snap Stations received new stickers advertising the strategy-battle game. Players could print out images from that game, too.

Ganos’ obsession with the Pokémon Snap Station sprung from his obsession with Pokémon Snap’s immersiveness. He could interact with his favorite pocket monsters, learning their habits and getting them to pose, and capture those moments on camera. And it fit in so snugly with the whole Pokémon world: The game had Professor Oak’s original voice actor from the Pokémon anime. In Pokémon Snap, Ganos played a character from the anime, professional Pokémon photographer Todd Snap. The Pokémon even sounded like they did on TV. “That’s the first time those two worlds collided,” he says.

Collectors today fall over themselves searching for Pokémon Snap Stations, which Blockbuster abandoned after a couple short years. One in Bellingham, Washington, is being offered for $12,345, although collectors say they typically see them going for about $2,000 to 4,000. Matthew Gerry, 31, once dedicated himself to finding a Pokémon Snap Station for a solid six months. He built an application that searched the internet every few minutes for new listings. None emerged, and he gave up. But eight years ago, the owner of a dilapidated arcade shutting down in Missouri told him that he had a “Nintendo thing” that had been sitting in his closet for a decade. Gerry bought the Pokémon Snap Station for $120, repairing just a light and a couple of decorative touches.

More recently, a Pokémon YouTuber who goes by RealBreakingNate bought one off Facebook Marketplace in the summer of 2019 for what he calls a “crazy good deal”: $1,400. He drove four hours each way between Indiana and Ohio to pick it up. It came from a closed Blockbuster in Philadelphia.

Now that the Nintendo Switch is getting New Pokémon Snap game on April 30, Ganos has engineered a way to connect his Pokémon Snap Station to his Switch. “It’s just using a micro SD card, so it’s kind of cheating,” he says. He’s curious about how the new, younger generation of people brought into the world of Pokémon photography will feel about its lost physical component. When his daughter comes into the room where his Pokémon Snap Station lives, she gleefully watches the printer move as the stickers come out hot. It’s worlds away from the slick pocket printers displayed at Best Buy or Target.

Today, the ability to physically manifest digital things is a given. Maybe New Pokémon Snap players will be able to print their creations off the Switch’s SD cards; but without the pilgrimage to Blockbuster, the altar to Pokémon, or the theater of the thing, will it be the same?

“A device like this doesn't belong in a modern society,” he says. “It’s a relic from an age that’s gone.”