Why are Pokémon Black and White set in New York?

The first four Pokémon regions are Japan in miniature: Kanto and Johto from the home islands' centre, Hoenn from Kyushu turned on its side, Sinnoh from Hokkaido. Pokémon Black and White broke the pattern as part of their reset. Unova is based on the New York City metropolitan area, the first Pokémon region drawn from outside Japan, and the games frame it as a land genuinely far from the others, which is how its all-new wildlife is justified.

The correspondences are worn openly. Castelia City, a forest of skyscrapers on a harbour, is Unova's Manhattan, entered across the Skyarrow Bridge, a great suspension span in the Brooklyn Bridge's image. The region compresses the metropolitan sprawl around it, piers, desert, mountains and suburbs, into one explorable landmass, the way earlier regions had compressed Japanese geography.

The choice was thematic as much as scenic. Black and White are games about opposing ideas, truth and ideals, old ways and new machines, and their version differences stage that argument in the landscape: Opelucid City is sleek and futuristic in Black, weathered and traditional in White. A city that contains multitudes, drawn from every country on earth, suited a generation whose story asks what Pokémon and people owe each other.

Later regions kept travelling, to France, Hawaii and beyond, but Unova was the first passport stamp. For collectors of the physical games, it is also why the Japanese title, Pocket Monsters Black and White, names a region, Isshu, that no Japanese player could mistake for home.