Over the past few days, copies of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have been leaking online, with dataminers quickly uncovering all sorts of interesting information about the games before official release.

One of the more interesting discoveries relates to the games’ development. As the first mainline Pokemon games being made by a studio other than Gamefreak (ILCA), Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are also notable for being developed in Unity as opposed to the usual engine.

This discovery was first shared by Pokemon dataminer Kaphotics in the Tweet below. Be warned however, as the dataminer’s account contains posts that could be considered spoilers for the remakes:

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are made with the Unity game engine! This has resulted in a lot of structural changes with how data is stored compared to Sword & Shield's data storage.

— Kurt (@Kaphotics) November 9, 2021

For the general public, this news might not necessarily mean anything, but it does have some interesting implications for the extensive Pokemon romhacking scene:

@Kaphotics: What does the games being made with Unity give us? Full code symbols. Unlike Unite which had some obfuscation, Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl have no obfuscation and minimal sanity checks… allowing for fun tweaks and edits for ROM hacking enthusiasts.

Another interesting tidbit shared by @Eclipse on Twitter is the discovery that Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl both share the exact same ROM, and can be switched back and forth by altering a flag in the code.

Once again, this is unlikely to affect the general public, but is an interesting choice on the part of ICLA and The Pokemon Company that could have implications for how dual versions may be handled in the future.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.