When did Detective Pikachu come out?

Detective Pikachu was released on 22 March 2018 for Nintendo 3DS.

Detective Pikachu (2018) — Release Date, Cheats, Price & Requirements

Detective Pikachu

Detective Pikachu is an adventure game developed by Creatures Inc., published by The Pokémon Company, and distributed by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. The game is a spin-off of the Pokémon franchise, in which…

69 22 March 2018

What Detective Pikachu is

Detective Pikachu is an adventure game developed by Creatures Inc. and released in 2018. It was published by Nintendo. It is available on Nintendo 3DS only.

The premise, in the publisher's words

Detective Pikachu is an adventure game developed by Creatures Inc., published by The Pokémon Company, and distributed by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. The game is a spin-off of the Pokémon franchise, in which players work with a talking Pikachu to solve mysteries. A shorter, downloadable version of the game called Great Detective Pikachu: Birth of a New Duo was released in Japan in February 2016, while the full version was released worldwide in March 2018.

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

Its themes are mystery. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

Where it sits in the Pokémon series

Detective Pikachu is the 234th of 306 entries we hold in the Pokémon series. The next entry was Pokémon Quest in 2018. Its critic score of 69 is 5 points below the series average of 74. The highest-rated entry is Super Smash Bros. Melee at 100.

See all 306 Pokémon games in release order →

How it was received

Detective Pikachu holds a critic score of 69 out of 100. That places it above 32% of the 7,525 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2018 averaged 69, so it scored about average for its year.

What it launched against

Detective Pikachu launched on 22 March 2018, within three weeks of Far Cry 5, Sea of Thieves, A Way Out and Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. It reviewed better than 1 of the 4.

Released around the same time: Far Cry 5, Sea of Thieves, A Way Out, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Detective Pikachu yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

Know one? Send it in and we will test it →

Key facts