Pokémon Moon and Pokémon Sun were the third set of games in the series to be released on the Nintendo 3DS. The games were developed by Game Freak and published by The Pokémon Company. The games were released worldwide (except Europe) on November 18, 2016 and in Europe on November 23, 2016. The games commemorated Pokémon's 20th anniversary.

     The games introduced Z-Moves while Mega Evolutions returned. Tomy introduced the Z-Ring and Z-Crystals that interacted with the games. The games were set in the tropical region of Alola. Alola is based on Hawaii in appearance. Team Skull was introduced as the criminal organization and the player had to stop their evil plans. The game included 81 new Pokémon while older Pokémon had new appearances like Meowth and Exeggutor.

     Players took on the role of a young Pokémon trainer. Players would choose Rowlet, Litten, or Popplio as their starter Pokémon. The legendary Pokémon in the games were Solgaleo (Sun) and Lunala (Moon).

     It was announced that Moon and Sun would be compatible with Pokémon Bank. Pokémon Bank was finally updated on January 24, 2017. This Nintendo 3DS app allows players to import Pokémon from Red, Blue, and Yellow from the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console and Pokémon X/Y/Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire versions.

     Pokémon Moon and Sun became the fastest selling and most pre-ordered games in Nintendo's history. GameStop said the games were the most pre-ordered games in the past five years for their company. The games received mostly outstanding reviews. Total worldwide sales for the game were nearly 15 million by the end of 2017.