What was Pokémon Dream Radar?

Pokémon Dream Radar, Pokémon AR Searcher in Japan, is a small downloadable game Game Freak built for the Nintendo 3DS eShop as a companion to Black 2 and White 2. It launched the same day as the sequels in every region, June 23, 2012 in Japan and October 7, 2012 in North America, priced at ¥300 (about $3.75 at the time) in Japan and $2.99 in North America. Its oddity is structural: a Nintendo DS game pair, sold with a companion that only the newer hardware could run.

You play as the assistant of Professor Burnet, who studies the Interdream Zone, the space between dreams and reality. Aiming the 3DS by moving your own body, cameras and gyro sensors together, you shoot Dream Clouds that drift through your actual surroundings and gather the Dream Orbs inside them. Orbs pay for equipment and for Burnet's Eureka Extensions, the hunts that end the game's short story.

The extensions hold the prize. Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus appear in the Interdream Zone in their Therian Formes, animal shapes the sequels' cartridges could show but never let you catch; in Generation V, Dream Radar was the only way to own them. Everything caught here carries its Hidden Ability and arrives in a Dream Ball, and slotting a Generation IV cartridge into the 3DS unlocks further extensions for that game's mascot, Dialga from Diamond, Ho-Oh from HeartGold and their kin, Hidden Abilities included. Catches travel one way, into Black 2 and White 2, through the Unova Link.

Professor Burnet later walked into the core series herself, appearing in Sun and Moon, but her first game is stranded: Dream Radar left sale when the 3DS eShop stopped selling software on March 27, 2023, so the Therian Formes' original hunting ground now exists only on 3DS systems that bought it in time.