The Tuesday October 15th, 2013 airing of the NHK World show imagine-nation showcased Pokémon X and Y. The show aired from 15:30 to 16:00 UTC and was hosted by MC's Chiaki Horan and Nicholas Pettas. The episode began explaining what Pokémon was and showed off clips from the new games. They then talked about the history of the Pokémon games on the handheld systems. The then talked about how the series has progressed so far now that they have tournaments all around the world.

GAME FREAK Director Junichi Masuda was interviewed by the show and it was his idea to do simultaneous releases of the games worldwide. "I've been waiting to do a simultaneous worldwide release for 7 years. Up until now Japan was always the first to get it and people outside of Japan would just hear or read about it. So I wanted everyone to enjoy the game right from the start to the point that even tried to look something up on the Internet it wouldn't be there yet."


At the Pokémon Game Show held in Japan in August of 2013, over 48000 people came to play the pre-release demos of Pokémon X and Y. The show interviewed a few of the guests that visited the Pokémon Game Show and they all had positive experiences.

The show then talked about the new features of Pokémon X and Y. Hoard battles and Sky Battles were featured as was Mega Evolutions. Masuda also stated that: "After seeing international tournaments and other competitions, the Dragon type seemed rather dominate and everyone was using it which isn't interesting. So I wanted to create a setting where each type is strong in its own way which would enable people to use whatever type they want to try and outsmart their opponents."

Takao Unno, the Art Director was also interviewed. He explained that it took about 3 years for them to finalize the art style programming in the game to get the look they wanted and the highlights on the Pokémon that focused on each of their individual styles.

Game Designer Kenji Matsushima was also asked about some of the origins of the names. "We came up with Pokémon names using Japanese or English that the average elementary school student would be able to understand. But when we localize the game, we need to be sure that the roots of the name are properly conveyed in that particular language and that's something we check very carefully."

According to the imagine-nation narrator, in the case of Gogoat, in English, its name is a combination of the words "Go" and "Go-kart". But in German, its literal translation turns it into a combination of "Goat" and the sound of an engine.


Kenji Matsushima continued by saying: "There is a new Pokémon called Maaiika (マーイーカ) in the Japanese version and its name is a combination of the Japanese words for squid, "ika" (イカ) and the half-hearted expression of acceptance "maa, ii ka" (まあ、いいか), or "yeah, all right". Some Pokémon names are born out of these sorts of puns but I hear that they're really tough to crack for our overseas staff. I mean we ask them things like whether there's a word that reflects the nuance of passive acceptance while also letting people know that its a squid. So the staff really put in a lot of work thinking up different names like that."