To date, Sun and Moon have sold over 16 million copies worldwide, making them the third-best-selling Nintendo 3DS titles, after Mario Kart 7 and their predecessors, Pokémon X and Y. Pokémon Sun and Moon are role-playing video games with adventure elements, set in the fictional Alola region (loosely based on Hawaii),[1] presented in a third-person, overhead perspective.

Players can capture wild Pokémon, found during random encounters, by weakening them in battle and catching them with Poké Balls, allowing them to be added to their party.

[3][4] Pokémon Sun and Moon are presented in fully three dimensional (3D) polygonal graphics, like their predecessors, allowing for more interactivity with the overworld and more dynamic action during battles.

[6][7] Pokémon Sun and Moon are the first entries in the series to be available in Chinese, both Simplified and Traditional, along with English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese and Korean, for a total of nine available languages.

[9][10] Throughout the game, players utilize a Rotom-possessed Pokédex on the bottom touchscreen, which displays a mini-map containing markers for story objectives.

[20] From a location called the Festival Plaza, players can participate in "Global Missions", where people from across the world work towards a set target — such as catching 100 million Pokémon collectively.

[26] During an interview at E3 2016, Shigeru Ohmori noted that Game Freak staff took trips to Hawaii to conduct research for Sun and Moon.

Throughout this, the player encounters Team Skull, a gang of people who quit the island trials whose members include their leader Guzma, and enforcer Gladion.

The player assists the two with handling the wild Ultra Beasts that Lusamine let loose into Alola in a series of quests.

Game director Shigeru Ohmori stated that the choice of Sun and Moon as title was inspired by the two celestial bodies’ metaphorical representation of human relationships.

[32] Hawaii was chosen as the basis for the game's region following the title's determination, due to its clear nights and plentiful sunshine.

[33] Development started immediately after Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire was completed and Ohmori kept his game director position.

Since the games were to be released on the franchise's 20th anniversary, Sun and Moon were developed comparatively from scratch with the application of more radical changes than its predecessor.

[36] Following the trend between newer generations of the main series, the designers of Sun and Moon focused on the motions on the full 3D models from X and Y in order to create livelier creatures.

[36] Ohmori added that during the development of Sun and Moon they "completely redesigned the system, and actually ended up pushing the 3DS even further to what [they] thought was the most [they] could draw out of it.

[39] According to composer Junichi Masuda, who co-produced the game, the soundtracks used in Sun and Moon were based on traditional Hawaiian music styles.

However, while it utilizes their core rhythms, Alola's music employs "completely different" melodies while still invoking a tropical island feel.

[32] On 30 November 2016 the Nintendo 3DS Pokémon Sun and Moon Super Music Complete[e], a four-disk soundtrack containing 169 songs, 160 from the games and 9 special tracks, was released in Japan.

[40][41] On 25 February 2016, the existence of the two games was leaked when Nintendo's trademarks for them were found on the website of the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

[43] The games were officially announced the following day in a Nintendo Direct presentation that also commemorated the franchise's 20th anniversary.

[55] They feature an alternate storyline set in Sun and Moon's world, and include Pokémon and locations not available in the original games.

[69][70] The move from the gym system received widespread praise from critics, some of whom saw the change as a major step towards future developments of the franchise.

[72] Jeremy Parish of USGamer assessed that "Z-Moves feel underwhelming" taking "way too long" despite being the most engaging campaign the series has offered in a long time,[68] while Polygon's Allegra Frank criticized their linear gameplay and lack of content beyond the primary storyline although the games had "the most memorable Pokémon journey in years".

[73] As of 31 March 2023[update], Sun and Moon have sold 16.30 million copies, ranking them as the third-best-selling Nintendo 3DS titles behind both Mario Kart 7 and Pokémon X and Y.

[74] During a GameStop Q3 earnings conference call, Pokémon Sun and Moon were said to have had the most pre-orders for any video game in the last five years.