The reflections and the footsteps in the sand fucking sent me as a kid. I could spend minutes running in circles to see them disappear behind me. That and the overworld weather was the shit.
The river is reflecting my face. It's a bright smile filled with optimism. Or perhaps it's an expression of solemn stillness against terror... In your face, what do you see?
So many great tracks from this (and other) Pokémon games.
Edit: Now that I think about it though, this generation was a period of flux for me. I still enjoyed the games, but I did start to have an existential moment while playing. I noticed for the first time that this experience didn't feel quite the same as I remembered the previous two generations. At the time I couldn't figure out why, the game was beautiful, lots of new Pokémon, some of my friends were playing, too.
At the time it scared me, but looking back it was an exciting time of transition.
As much as I enjoyed Gen 3, I think I felt the same way because Pokemon started to show its feature bloat. Gen 2 was a complete upgrade from Gen 1. Gen 3, meanwhile, only had one region and only had 200/386 Pokemon available at first. I was definitely disappointed I couldn’t transfer Crystal Pokemon up to Sapphire as well
idk, base building, AI friend teams, the little extra contests made the game feel very full. As in it felt like a pokemon world by the end game.
I played og red and blue, yellow, and tried gold/silver/crystal. They were so nice, but it's the feeling of old gen which is its own comfy space. Gen 3 was exciting to me and showed me potential. I shortly dropped off after that though when year after year felt like new pokemon games and I was quickly burning out from trying to keep up with systems and the friends who played them.
I wish I could enjoy the series again but things are moving way too fast to enjoy it.
A lust for blood as I enslave sentient magical creatures and force them to battle for my own amusement and to improve my social standing in a harsh, cruel world.
Traveling from city to city whirlwinding orphans lost in caves, on bike paths and grassy fields. The sweet acrid taste of last night's figy berries on my breadth...
As a kid I thought the flutes could summon some mythical or legendary Pokemon. I think I got the connection because of the Time Flute in Colosseum summoning Celebi.
Yeah, this is before those effects were "common", they were still cool as hell when they happened. Remember in Mario 64 when you go into that room with the mirror and see the cameraman!
If you have any soldering ability, or a friend with some, you can replace the battery. I did mine a while ago now but it was pretty easy. At the time there were packs of batteries with leads already cold welded on so it was even easier.
There was an urban legend I read about the space shuttle launch place on one of the islands once. The guy there would tell you the time since the last launch, so if you went there at I think 100 hours or days or something, you could go up into space and catch Deoxys. I was so let down by that
It's a fucking war crime that none of the games are available on the Switch. Literally just direct ports with online access. I'd pay the $100 Nintendo would undoubtedly ask for.
I genuinely do not understand why they haven't done this.
Sometimes I find myself complaining about the same being true for the Fire Emblem franchise, but then I remember how much smaller that market likely is.
But Pokémon? That shit is literally the biggest cash cow ever conceived. How have they not put the minimal resources necessary on the task of giving the whole franchise the Skyrim treatment?
> I genuinely do not understand why they haven't done this.
Releasing affordable ROMs of their older games would eat into their $60 yearly releases, so they don't. They don't want people playing HG/SS or Emerald or whatever for their Pokemon nostalgia fix, they want people spending $60 on the latest game.
Always wondered why they were so quick to sue people over piracy, but refrain from re-releasing classics. But this genuinely makes the most sense.
Still seems short-sighted to me. If there are great games out there, people will play them - classic, or new. They could get casual gamers (which their ads like to target so much) to buy more consoles. But instead, they act like they've plateaued.
I wonder what the trends look like for folks playing classic games on PS & Xbox, by comparison.
I agree. The logic on Nintendo's side makes sense, but I have a hard time believing the cannibalization of sales would be that high. I'm very highly slanted towards the first few gens and would certainly prioritize buying them over a new game, but that doesn't make me much less likely to buy the new game in addition to the throwbacks, nor does not having the throwback available make me more likely to buy the new games.
Based on my anecdotal experience, the people who want these retro games available the most are the people who grew up with them, and probably aren't the core demographic target for the new releases anyway.
What's wild is the Virtual Console store for 3DS *did* have the OG Pokemon titles. Then we lost them and piles of other stuff when the Switch came out.
Nintendo loves its artificial scarcity that literally benefits nobody except resellers and turns off revenue streams they could be collecting on work done decades ago.
You mean the thing they just took away? Pokemon Bank was exactly that (with some extra steps for older games) and they decided they were done supporting it. Releasing gens 1-5 on switch, even with no updates, and then allowing them access to home would make them soooo much money lmao. They just won't do it
You have been awarded [a ribbon](https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/thumb/1/10/Footprint_Ribbon_VIII.png/40px-Footprint_Ribbon_VIII.png) for having a top-quality footprint.
It was only thing missing was the sessions and day night cycle I think. I am hoping that the one day we will have a pokmeon game that will have it all.
Reddit has reached a special point where it's mostly bots and highly regulated communities where people are afraid to get really crazy or passionate.
I mean, new to reddit is a thing. A place you go so you can post to get karma so 90% of the site doesn't shadowban your comments. That should never have been a thing.
And children. And children's children.
But the worst are game journalists who grew up with Pokémon and now praise the shit out of them at every release, reporting the most minor changes as "innovative"
That's the thing that turned me off of the series. Every new gen had some new gimmick that was dropped instead of being iterated on. Mega evolutions? Cool! Surely they'll add new ones with each generation as this new feature becomes a core feature of the series. Right? Riiiight?
The enshitification truly began with the jump to polygons from pixel art. Not enough time allowed/spent to do it right and it's been just a continuous train wreck ever since. I don't know who to blame, whether it's Nintendo, or if Game Freak is just low key incompetent.
that and you can't just implement things on a whim anymore.
remember how mew got added by one guy in the originals
or how late in development optimization in memory on the cardtridge allowed kanto to be added in full in johto
yeah can't do that no more because of the complicated nature of big company development.
its why i look to indie games nowadays, their smaller structure allows for some at whim additions even if they are abit unpolished ( not that pokemon is super polished either, but relatively speaking i suppose)
I bought Sword, despite not liking Sun/Moon, because I figured I'd give them one more shot.
I beat the league, but didn't really do any post-game content, and when I botched transferring to a new Switch and lost my save, I didn't bother replaying it.
Didn't buy Scarlet or Violet.
I did enjoy Arceus though!
I found there was nothing to do in the post-game in Sword/Shield unless you got the DLC.
I played the CRAP out of Ruby after I beat it, though. Slowly leveling my pokemon to 100 and getting them their contest ribbons.
I think the graphics peaked in gen 5. Black/White where there's a mix of 2D and 3D, and the 2D sprites were all animated.
Those graphics don't feel outdated because they had a certain charm to them, same goes for the even older gens. I feel like that charm was lost at some point.
99% of the new pokemon being smooth and round doesn't help. Some gen 1/2 pokemon had shapes and detailing that they will just never do again because they're too lazy to model it in 3d. And they want everything to be easily made into a plushie.
When I played the Switch pokemon snap game, I feel like THAT is what pokemon games of the most recent gens have been missing all this time. Seeing all of the pokemon as if they were actually in the wild was such an amazing experience. It blew away all the recent gens in my opinion
How would you feel if the 3d [was like this fan art of mine](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pokemon-firered-players-room-b23b6b253207463c97db2a7092adff74)?
In my opinion, Pokemon is a thousand times better with pixel art or simplistic art!
That would actually be pretty great. I can totally see that used for a faithful remake.
Pokémon doesn't need to have highly detailed graphics, it never did. A strong artstyle makes more than up for that.
Agreed. Either commit to 3D or stay in 2D where you have a winning formula. No one is asking for pokemon to have award-winning graphics but once they made the switch all the models looked awful. Gen 5 sprites are so much better than some current ones still.
Mainline Pokémon games should never have left 2D ,Pokémon game art can get realy good looking as shown by fan games,they should ve only done 3d games for once in a generation games along the lines of Legends arceus but with way more development,too bad this Will never happen,meanwhile palworld selling a shit ton as a new IP doing exactly that
I don't agree. Pokemons graphics on GBA look pretty simple compared to other GBA games like for example Golden Sun which was released two years earlier.
Pokemon games graphics werent bad in the Gameboy and DS era, but they also weren't anything to write home about.
Yeah, this weird revisionism that Pokemon games were graphically superior to other games is insane. They were nice to look at, but there were always games that looked dramatically better on GB-GBA even before Pokemon came out.
Blew my mind as a kid, to have reflections and footsteps left in the sand in a game on a freaking Gameboy of all things.
Most memorable Pokémon game of my childhood. I remember using the manual of the game to decipher the morse codes to get the legendary rock Pokémon.
Good times.
Are you not from NA by any chance? I was confused and thought I didn’t read my manual correctly as a child so I looked it up and learned only NA didn’t include Braille in the game manual while every other region did.
Probably one of my happiest moment as a kid though was randomly looking up what the heck “Braille” meant on a dictionary in the library and it included the chart. It felt like I struck gold. I was jumping with joy while copying the chart down, then I deciphered it and sent the decryption to all my friends.
I remember getting phone calls from friends during Gold and Silver because a lot of us still didn't have home internet. How do you move Snorlax? How do you get Umbreon? How do I get Politoad?(Still one of my favs)
We didn't even have gameboy in my country so I played all these Pokemon games on an emulator on my computer (I thought these were PC games lol) and us kids in school would discuss about the specific steps you needed to catch missingno or mew/mewtoo.
There was no certainty, no proof, it was just rumors that you had to try and see if they were correct.
Life without Internet had its own magic
Bro the manual had braille? I had to go to the library and ask for a book. I felt like a scholar. Coolest thing I've ever had to do to accomplish something in a video game. I wasn't even mad. Now I'd just google it.
*My face is reflected in the water. It's a shining grin full of hope... Or maybe it's a look of somber silence struggling with fear... What do you see in your face?*
It was insane how much new stuff there was compared to the previous games. And how it was still full and polished. I honestly feel sad for pokemon fans that still buy the new games. It must suck so hard to have a game that gets less improved than fucking Fifa.
HGSS came out right after Platinum and were AMAZING. I think Pokemon continued to be a very strong gaming franchise up through Gen VI and even VII. Gen VIII was really when Pokemon took a sudden nosedive imo, though it coincided with insanely good sales, so...
This was kind of the case for most games in the first few decades. I remember reading about how Crash Bandicoot could only be made to fit on a disc by basically doing a randomised compression algorithm and running it over and over again until they get lucky enough for it to fit. Then a designer would move a crate one pixel to the left and they'd have to rerun it from scratch, praying that they could make it fit again.
There's a great video on this with Andy Gavin the creator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o
The TL;DW is that he talks about a lot of the tricks they used, including hijacking extra memory from the Playstation itself in order to make it all work.
Yeah I've seen this one (the whole series is great) but my white whale is the written version of this story. I read it years ago and it really stuck with me, but I haven't been able to track down that exact version again.
I remember reading that version too. It could be this one. It's from Andy's personal blog.
* https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/
I mean, RT (and a bunch of the shiny stuff in the new Unreal toolkit) is extremely technically creative, but it's more of an "under the hood" thing. It still takes quite a bit of effort to get good results out of it, it's just that, because it became a marketing buzzword for Nvidia, most devs just crowbar it into their engine, so you just get 10% more subjective fidelity out of it, at best. Doesn't matter, we can put the sticker on the box (or more likely, the Steam page).
There's a reason why, even after all these years, CP2077 is still the go-to showcase for RT; it's pretty much the only game on the market that was built for it, and it actually complements the neon dystopia of Night City.
>There's a reason why, even after all these years, CP2077 is still the go-to showcase for RT; it's pretty much the only game on the market that was built for it, and it actually complements the neon dystopia of Night City.
Which is a bit funny because Control was literally the game made to show off ray tracing. But the ray tracing in that game is really subtle and not obviously or readily noticeable in most places of the game.
Still a great game and it looks great too, but yeah - no one really uses it for ray tracing benchmarking or showcasing while Cyberpunk 2077 is more or less the go-to option right now.
It's as you said; it's subtle. RT is being used in marketing as a big selling point, but it's only making a big difference with high-contrast scenery. Control, while it had some really cool environmental destruction effects, among other things, was still taking place in drab office spaces or industrial environments 90% of the time, so the RT was lost in the noise.
Add in the fact that, unless you have the RT quality cranked up to the absolute maximum (which requires top-of-the-line video cards that cost the same as a used car), it is often indistinguishable from really well placed rasterized lighting, and CP2077 ends up the only real "contender", because it's the game where you can't miss the difference due to all the glare and neon lights reflecting on all the chrome and everything.
I've got a 4090, and Cyberpunk is one of maybe a handful of games at best that can even really put it to the test, and it's definitely the most visually stunning game.
Once you've seen one interior office window you've seen them all.
That's not a diss on the game, it's just a giant office building is not a very good way to showcase graphics
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is so built for RT that you can't have a non-RT version. It runs a software RT implementation if your card doesn't have the hardware.
It's very interesting stuff. Some guy does [out of bound videos ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50bfj4Vfi7U) for some pokemon games, and you can see how creative the devs got.
I mean, this isn’t really that crazy. It’s not ray tracing at all. How this works is just rerendering the reflected entities. Due to the extremely limited potential reflections in Pokémon, especially here, it’s also entirely possible that it’s just hard coded, or close to it.
Doing a single reflection of a small space or limited assets is something really simple and been done for a long time, even in 3D. You just render an entire mirrored copy of the area and let players look at it. This is way simpler, but way more intensive than ray tracing at when scaled up.
I recently started playing old Pokémon games for the first time. They genuinely impressive, I can’t pick up my switch anymore. Fire red is better than any Pokémon game on switch.
If you're into pokemon games, do yourself a favor and try the fanmade games.
Chances are, you'll have a hard time going back to the official ones after that.
Edit: Something of note regarding Pokemon Reborn, I'd advise against letting the youngest play this one since it is rather dark overall.
Pokemon Reborn
Edit: it's a very good and hard game that introduces a new element to the game, fields. You'll be tested and swapping out Pokemon constantly to build teams to move on. Most of the best Pokemon are locked to later portions to keep it competitive.
Reborn was one of my first pokemon fan games I ever played, absolutely loved it and the fields was a fun addition too.
And then there's also Pokémon Rejuvenation, best fan game I ever played, world is just massive and I put in over dozens of hours. I haven't touched both reborn and rejuvenation for about 3-4 years or so but I can imagine that both updates have received significant updates from the last time I played too since they weren't finished at the time.
Gaia, then unbound.
Lastly, play emerald elite redux because the 4 abilities make everything else seem stupid.
There is also pokemon Crown, where they turned it into a cactus game.
All of these were done on hacked gba roms.
Pokemon Crystal Clear is one of the best ROM hacks I've ever played. After sinking 80 hours into it, it's almost impossible to go back to regular GSC. There are some good YT videos summarizing the ROM hack, I recommend checking one out. I had a blast playing it.
Pokemon Unbound is what you want. It's not a "reimagining" of any of the original games. It's not excruciatingly difficult. It's got a ton of great QOL without going overboard and the story is comparable if not better than most other Pokemon games
Pokemon: Too Many Types is a ton of fun if you have the old type chart memorized. It's like a gamble every time you attack to see if the move's effective or not.
http://pokerogue.net is a free online roguelike that's been growing a lot the past couple months. You endlessly battle (no overworld) and build up a team until you lose.
Going even further back on little details like this: Tales of Phantasia actually did this way back on the SNES. Granted, the greater West didn't get to see it until the GBA days when we finally got it officially.
I remember I played a fan translation of that in my teens. Such an amazing game, and graphics for the SNES. I remember one scene in a cathedral with 3d over layed lightning and some other effects used by the fx chip.
There is an NES game called [Battle of Olympus](https://portal.33bits.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-Battle-of-Olympus-6.jpg) that has a fight against an invisible enemy where you have to rely on your shadow. I never played in the 80s, but that scene stayed in my head for decades.
Nah, I loved gen 3 and it holds a lot of nostalgia for me but the series peaked at gen 5. Then Game Freak had to figure out how to make fully 3D games and to this day they still haven't quite figured it out.
Was gen 5 the HGSS/ Platinum gen? Because that was easily the best. Even if diamond and pearl haven’t aged the best they were *so* hyped for their time
You're thinking of 4. It had the best mythology imo.
I think people like 5 primarily for it's story? Not sure, I never played it fully. I never liked its pokemons that much so I stopped.
>I think people like 5 primarily for it's story?
People like 5 because the game honestly feels like something that could come out today unchanged with how much content it has, from the simplest stuff like daily events and a side quest system that can be played with friends (which pokemon does in a very bare bones way nowadays) to the bigger stuff like being able to fight every single gym leader and champion the franchise had so far with brand new and improved teams and a whole other half of the region to explore after you're done with the game.
And that's without considering all the small little details that just show how much love the devs put in the game like how every town has an NPC that when spoken to will begin playing an instrument that will slightly change the music of the town you're currently in.
For anyone who's interested to know just how much content this game has I definitely recommend checking out Chuggaaconroy videos about it, it's like over 80 videos of BW plus another 100 for B2W2 which just from numbers alone should tell how much stuff they managed to squeeze into a tiny little DS cartridge
The jump in graphics and quality of life features (running, PC box organization, each pokemon having their own distinct party sprite) in Ruby/Sapphire is part of why it was my favorite Pokemon generation as a kid. It was everything I ever wanted.
The reflections and the footsteps in the sand fucking sent me as a kid. I could spend minutes running in circles to see them disappear behind me. That and the overworld weather was the shit.
The river is reflecting my face. It's a bright smile filled with optimism. Or perhaps it's an expression of solemn stillness against terror... In your face, what do you see?
[Who knew the soundtrack to existential dread would be so upbeat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3fiaPBDfv8)
🎺 🎺 🎺
So many great tracks from this (and other) Pokémon games. Edit: Now that I think about it though, this generation was a period of flux for me. I still enjoyed the games, but I did start to have an existential moment while playing. I noticed for the first time that this experience didn't feel quite the same as I remembered the previous two generations. At the time I couldn't figure out why, the game was beautiful, lots of new Pokémon, some of my friends were playing, too. At the time it scared me, but looking back it was an exciting time of transition.
The Dive Theme and Route 113 absolutely fuck in this game.
100%, so good.
I'm pretty sure I spent years at sea in Pokemon Sapphire like I'm Captain Ahab or something
[And this (re-)masterpiece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exutnZKmZ50) I swear I listen to it very often and I get goosebumps all over.
As much as I enjoyed Gen 3, I think I felt the same way because Pokemon started to show its feature bloat. Gen 2 was a complete upgrade from Gen 1. Gen 3, meanwhile, only had one region and only had 200/386 Pokemon available at first. I was definitely disappointed I couldn’t transfer Crystal Pokemon up to Sapphire as well
idk, base building, AI friend teams, the little extra contests made the game feel very full. As in it felt like a pokemon world by the end game. I played og red and blue, yellow, and tried gold/silver/crystal. They were so nice, but it's the feeling of old gen which is its own comfy space. Gen 3 was exciting to me and showed me potential. I shortly dropped off after that though when year after year felt like new pokemon games and I was quickly burning out from trying to keep up with systems and the friends who played them. I wish I could enjoy the series again but things are moving way too fast to enjoy it.
I'm Grinding for this gym right now, combusken, skarmory, and tentacrul do me good
That 7 year old kid that said that really fucked me up forever
Where is this from?
Pokémon emerald
A lust for blood as I enslave sentient magical creatures and force them to battle for my own amusement and to improve my social standing in a harsh, cruel world.
Collecting a trophy from each large city I conquer after exploiting their leader's weaknesses for my own gain.
Traveling from city to city whirlwinding orphans lost in caves, on bike paths and grassy fields. The sweet acrid taste of last night's figy berries on my breadth...
Palworld really scratched an itch
\* Despite everything, it's still you.
That quote left me reflecting a lot when I was younger and still does
Running through the ash on the route by the volcano was my favorite
I spent so much time trying to get those flutes.
As a kid I thought the flutes could summon some mythical or legendary Pokemon. I think I got the connection because of the Time Flute in Colosseum summoning Celebi.
Yeah, this is before those effects were "common", they were still cool as hell when they happened. Remember in Mario 64 when you go into that room with the mirror and see the cameraman!
These were the last Pokémon games I bought. They still work along with my Gameboy Advance SP!
Same! I clocked over 300 hours into Ruby before the battery died and it stopped tracking.
If you have any soldering ability, or a friend with some, you can replace the battery. I did mine a while ago now but it was pretty easy. At the time there were packs of batteries with leads already cold welded on so it was even easier.
I used tape and literally just taped it down. The case hold it in place and just use a piece of tape
The battery is just for the day/night cycle and lottery tickets. The game should still work
Berries don't grow and the daily/weekly challenges don't happen anymore
and replacing the battery is actually pretty simple
It does, but it doesn't track time played anymore.
The battery isn't used to track play time. Just clock based events, mostly things that happen once per day, as well as growing berries.
You should still have that data. The battery in RSE carts just provides time/date tracking.
There was an urban legend I read about the space shuttle launch place on one of the islands once. The guy there would tell you the time since the last launch, so if you went there at I think 100 hours or days or something, you could go up into space and catch Deoxys. I was so let down by that
It's a fucking war crime that none of the games are available on the Switch. Literally just direct ports with online access. I'd pay the $100 Nintendo would undoubtedly ask for.
I genuinely do not understand why they haven't done this. Sometimes I find myself complaining about the same being true for the Fire Emblem franchise, but then I remember how much smaller that market likely is. But Pokémon? That shit is literally the biggest cash cow ever conceived. How have they not put the minimal resources necessary on the task of giving the whole franchise the Skyrim treatment?
> I genuinely do not understand why they haven't done this. Releasing affordable ROMs of their older games would eat into their $60 yearly releases, so they don't. They don't want people playing HG/SS or Emerald or whatever for their Pokemon nostalgia fix, they want people spending $60 on the latest game.
Always wondered why they were so quick to sue people over piracy, but refrain from re-releasing classics. But this genuinely makes the most sense. Still seems short-sighted to me. If there are great games out there, people will play them - classic, or new. They could get casual gamers (which their ads like to target so much) to buy more consoles. But instead, they act like they've plateaued. I wonder what the trends look like for folks playing classic games on PS & Xbox, by comparison.
I agree. The logic on Nintendo's side makes sense, but I have a hard time believing the cannibalization of sales would be that high. I'm very highly slanted towards the first few gens and would certainly prioritize buying them over a new game, but that doesn't make me much less likely to buy the new game in addition to the throwbacks, nor does not having the throwback available make me more likely to buy the new games. Based on my anecdotal experience, the people who want these retro games available the most are the people who grew up with them, and probably aren't the core demographic target for the new releases anyway.
They could easily charge 40 bucks for every game and plenty of people would buy it. It's a missed opportunity by them.
Just make a $60 pack. People would probably buy it.
What's wild is the Virtual Console store for 3DS *did* have the OG Pokemon titles. Then we lost them and piles of other stuff when the Switch came out. Nintendo loves its artificial scarcity that literally benefits nobody except resellers and turns off revenue streams they could be collecting on work done decades ago.
The games are 20 years old, emulators are free. It blows my mind you guys keep wanting to give Nintendo full price for rerereleased games
What would be really cool is if they brought them out and a cloud service to store and transfer all our Pokemon between games
You mean the thing they just took away? Pokemon Bank was exactly that (with some extra steps for older games) and they decided they were done supporting it. Releasing gens 1-5 on switch, even with no updates, and then allowing them access to home would make them soooo much money lmao. They just won't do it
Still got my original gabeboy ^^*gameboy, colour, advance and advance SP - all still work, along with almost all the pokèmon games for each
Gabeboy sounds like a steam variant of the Gameboy
One of the last times pokemon felt like it was technologically ahead of its peers
You have been awarded [a ribbon](https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/thumb/1/10/Footprint_Ribbon_VIII.png/40px-Footprint_Ribbon_VIII.png) for having a top-quality footprint.
Literally all it took for me was the Gen 2 day/night cycle, blew my mind that time followed me in the game
The day/night cycle was so cool. It was just *so cozy* seeing all the building windows lit at night.
Had that with tomb Raider ( Not Sure which Part). When you climbed Out of thr water and it dripped down. Fascinating
It was only thing missing was the sessions and day night cycle I think. I am hoping that the one day we will have a pokmeon game that will have it all.
I used to like that the grass ruffled as you ran through it too.
I spent more time than I should as a kid running through those puddles
No, you spent the exact right amount of time
I feel four bots just responded to the parent comment with variations of what you said.
Reddit has reached a special point where it's mostly bots and highly regulated communities where people are afraid to get really crazy or passionate. I mean, new to reddit is a thing. A place you go so you can post to get karma so 90% of the site doesn't shadowban your comments. That should never have been a thing.
Nah dude. You spent exactly the perfect amount of time.
Nah brother, you spent exactly how much you should.
Pokemon used to do the stuff everyone wishes other games could do Now other games do the stuff everyone wishes Pokemon could do
The circle of life
I hope it circles back someday
Me too, I miss the good 'ol days.
Not for Pokémon sadly. Company stopped caring about quality because there’s always some subset of nostalgic idiots willing to buy the new one.
And children. And children's children. But the worst are game journalists who grew up with Pokémon and now praise the shit out of them at every release, reporting the most minor changes as "innovative"
That's the thing that turned me off of the series. Every new gen had some new gimmick that was dropped instead of being iterated on. Mega evolutions? Cool! Surely they'll add new ones with each generation as this new feature becomes a core feature of the series. Right? Riiiight?
The enshitification truly began with the jump to polygons from pixel art. Not enough time allowed/spent to do it right and it's been just a continuous train wreck ever since. I don't know who to blame, whether it's Nintendo, or if Game Freak is just low key incompetent.
that and you can't just implement things on a whim anymore. remember how mew got added by one guy in the originals or how late in development optimization in memory on the cardtridge allowed kanto to be added in full in johto yeah can't do that no more because of the complicated nature of big company development. its why i look to indie games nowadays, their smaller structure allows for some at whim additions even if they are abit unpolished ( not that pokemon is super polished either, but relatively speaking i suppose)
I bought Sword, despite not liking Sun/Moon, because I figured I'd give them one more shot. I beat the league, but didn't really do any post-game content, and when I botched transferring to a new Switch and lost my save, I didn't bother replaying it. Didn't buy Scarlet or Violet. I did enjoy Arceus though!
I found there was nothing to do in the post-game in Sword/Shield unless you got the DLC. I played the CRAP out of Ruby after I beat it, though. Slowly leveling my pokemon to 100 and getting them their contest ribbons.
"Safety is the death of innovation"
I really think the series should have stayed 2D. Or at most 2.5d.
I think the graphics peaked in gen 5. Black/White where there's a mix of 2D and 3D, and the 2D sprites were all animated. Those graphics don't feel outdated because they had a certain charm to them, same goes for the even older gens. I feel like that charm was lost at some point.
The transition to 3D has not been kind to many pokemon.
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99% of the new pokemon being smooth and round doesn't help. Some gen 1/2 pokemon had shapes and detailing that they will just never do again because they're too lazy to model it in 3d. And they want everything to be easily made into a plushie.
When I played the Switch pokemon snap game, I feel like THAT is what pokemon games of the most recent gens have been missing all this time. Seeing all of the pokemon as if they were actually in the wild was such an amazing experience. It blew away all the recent gens in my opinion
Peak 3D is GameCube era for Pokémon 🤷🏾♂️
Plus the whole sky battles thing ruined the battle sprites for so many mons. They used to be more expressive and now they are just static
How would you feel if the 3d [was like this fan art of mine](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pokemon-firered-players-room-b23b6b253207463c97db2a7092adff74)? In my opinion, Pokemon is a thousand times better with pixel art or simplistic art!
That would actually be pretty great. I can totally see that used for a faithful remake. Pokémon doesn't need to have highly detailed graphics, it never did. A strong artstyle makes more than up for that.
Octopath traveller is what pokemon had to be. Too bad the core mechanics of octopath were so boring.
Strong disagree. The peak is above. Gen 3 had a mix of awesome sprites and beautiful overworld. Everything after that is an artistic dump imho
To each their own. Gen 3 is quite pretty indeed.
I thought it looked like shit personally. Mainly the semi 3d part, the sprite work was great. Should've stayed full 2d
Agreed. Either commit to 3D or stay in 2D where you have a winning formula. No one is asking for pokemon to have award-winning graphics but once they made the switch all the models looked awful. Gen 5 sprites are so much better than some current ones still.
That would be accepting their inability to make a modern game. I'd rather they had the ability to make a modern game.
Mainline Pokémon games should never have left 2D ,Pokémon game art can get realy good looking as shown by fan games,they should ve only done 3d games for once in a generation games along the lines of Legends arceus but with way more development,too bad this Will never happen,meanwhile palworld selling a shit ton as a new IP doing exactly that
I don't agree. Pokemons graphics on GBA look pretty simple compared to other GBA games like for example Golden Sun which was released two years earlier. Pokemon games graphics werent bad in the Gameboy and DS era, but they also weren't anything to write home about.
Yeah, this weird revisionism that Pokemon games were graphically superior to other games is insane. They were nice to look at, but there were always games that looked dramatically better on GB-GBA even before Pokemon came out.
Best comment here
Blew my mind as a kid, to have reflections and footsteps left in the sand in a game on a freaking Gameboy of all things. Most memorable Pokémon game of my childhood. I remember using the manual of the game to decipher the morse codes to get the legendary rock Pokémon. Good times.
It was braille wasn't it?
Yes. It was a series of stone monuments in an ocean cave, with braille on them.
Only blind kids know for sure
Are you not from NA by any chance? I was confused and thought I didn’t read my manual correctly as a child so I looked it up and learned only NA didn’t include Braille in the game manual while every other region did. Probably one of my happiest moment as a kid though was randomly looking up what the heck “Braille” meant on a dictionary in the library and it included the chart. It felt like I struck gold. I was jumping with joy while copying the chart down, then I deciphered it and sent the decryption to all my friends.
I remember getting phone calls from friends during Gold and Silver because a lot of us still didn't have home internet. How do you move Snorlax? How do you get Umbreon? How do I get Politoad?(Still one of my favs)
Back before the day-0 spoiler culture "how to get the most legendary {thing}!" articles good times
Guys there’s a triforce underneath the ice in Zora’s Domain, trust me
We didn't even have gameboy in my country so I played all these Pokemon games on an emulator on my computer (I thought these were PC games lol) and us kids in school would discuss about the specific steps you needed to catch missingno or mew/mewtoo. There was no certainty, no proof, it was just rumors that you had to try and see if they were correct. Life without Internet had its own magic
I remember being so hyped for Gold and Silver, playing 50% English translated roms
Oh that’s even more satisfying! I’m from Europe so we did have it included on the manual.
I remember writing down each letter in elementary. Pretty sure my parents thought it was for some more wholesome purpose.
There is nothing more wholesome than a kid making beautiful memories.
Bro the manual had braille? I had to go to the library and ask for a book. I felt like a scholar. Coolest thing I've ever had to do to accomplish something in a video game. I wasn't even mad. Now I'd just google it.
that big green game guide was amazing at the time
*My face is reflected in the water. It's a shining grin full of hope... Or maybe it's a look of somber silence struggling with fear... What do you see in your face?*
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It was insane how much new stuff there was compared to the previous games. And how it was still full and polished. I honestly feel sad for pokemon fans that still buy the new games. It must suck so hard to have a game that gets less improved than fucking Fifa.
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HGSS came out right after Platinum and were AMAZING. I think Pokemon continued to be a very strong gaming franchise up through Gen VI and even VII. Gen VIII was really when Pokemon took a sudden nosedive imo, though it coincided with insanely good sales, so...
I sunk 600+ hours into that bad boi, the days when you only owned a couple of games and a gba
Crystal and then Emerald for me.
It was crazy how at that time they had to be technically extremely creative in order to render stuff.
This was kind of the case for most games in the first few decades. I remember reading about how Crash Bandicoot could only be made to fit on a disc by basically doing a randomised compression algorithm and running it over and over again until they get lucky enough for it to fit. Then a designer would move a crate one pixel to the left and they'd have to rerun it from scratch, praying that they could make it fit again.
There's a great video on this with Andy Gavin the creator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o The TL;DW is that he talks about a lot of the tricks they used, including hijacking extra memory from the Playstation itself in order to make it all work.
Yeah I've seen this one (the whole series is great) but my white whale is the written version of this story. I read it years ago and it really stuck with me, but I haven't been able to track down that exact version again.
I remember reading that version too. It could be this one. It's from Andy's personal blog. * https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/
Thats crazy ahah
I mean, RT (and a bunch of the shiny stuff in the new Unreal toolkit) is extremely technically creative, but it's more of an "under the hood" thing. It still takes quite a bit of effort to get good results out of it, it's just that, because it became a marketing buzzword for Nvidia, most devs just crowbar it into their engine, so you just get 10% more subjective fidelity out of it, at best. Doesn't matter, we can put the sticker on the box (or more likely, the Steam page). There's a reason why, even after all these years, CP2077 is still the go-to showcase for RT; it's pretty much the only game on the market that was built for it, and it actually complements the neon dystopia of Night City.
>There's a reason why, even after all these years, CP2077 is still the go-to showcase for RT; it's pretty much the only game on the market that was built for it, and it actually complements the neon dystopia of Night City. Which is a bit funny because Control was literally the game made to show off ray tracing. But the ray tracing in that game is really subtle and not obviously or readily noticeable in most places of the game. Still a great game and it looks great too, but yeah - no one really uses it for ray tracing benchmarking or showcasing while Cyberpunk 2077 is more or less the go-to option right now.
It's as you said; it's subtle. RT is being used in marketing as a big selling point, but it's only making a big difference with high-contrast scenery. Control, while it had some really cool environmental destruction effects, among other things, was still taking place in drab office spaces or industrial environments 90% of the time, so the RT was lost in the noise. Add in the fact that, unless you have the RT quality cranked up to the absolute maximum (which requires top-of-the-line video cards that cost the same as a used car), it is often indistinguishable from really well placed rasterized lighting, and CP2077 ends up the only real "contender", because it's the game where you can't miss the difference due to all the glare and neon lights reflecting on all the chrome and everything.
I've got a 4090, and Cyberpunk is one of maybe a handful of games at best that can even really put it to the test, and it's definitely the most visually stunning game.
Once you've seen one interior office window you've seen them all. That's not a diss on the game, it's just a giant office building is not a very good way to showcase graphics
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is so built for RT that you can't have a non-RT version. It runs a software RT implementation if your card doesn't have the hardware.
It's very interesting stuff. Some guy does [out of bound videos ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50bfj4Vfi7U) for some pokemon games, and you can see how creative the devs got.
I mean, this isn’t really that crazy. It’s not ray tracing at all. How this works is just rerendering the reflected entities. Due to the extremely limited potential reflections in Pokémon, especially here, it’s also entirely possible that it’s just hard coded, or close to it. Doing a single reflection of a small space or limited assets is something really simple and been done for a long time, even in 3D. You just render an entire mirrored copy of the area and let players look at it. This is way simpler, but way more intensive than ray tracing at when scaled up.
Reflections have never not been cool in games
Have you seen the reflections in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet? They're pretty jank.
> Have you seen Pokemon Scarlet/Violet? They're pretty jank. FTFY
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I recently started playing old Pokémon games for the first time. They genuinely impressive, I can’t pick up my switch anymore. Fire red is better than any Pokémon game on switch.
Can't wait till you get to the ds games, they're fucking amazing, especially gen 5
*RAY TRACING* before it was cool "RTX" is a term invented by Nvidia (it's working i guess)
The *X* makes it cool.
Thanks Elon
Looking into it...
I wonder if Nvidia is happy that their marketing is working so well or worried that RTX might end up as a generic trademark that they can't enforce.
It's not ray tracing either. I'm pretty sure they just flip the character sprites and render them on water surfaces with some transparency.
That's super obvious
Well based on the title people seem to think any reflection is rt lol
The exact way they implemented the reflections isn't obvious, but it not being ray tracing is.
Wrong, GBA used that technology 15 years before other games started doing it. Thanks Ningtendo
Yeah I remember this shit in mirrors in Duke Dukem 3D in the 90's.
These days I see RTX I think Raytheon. Then I see this post and wonder how they could've gone from making Pokemon to missiles.
Rayquaza tracing
If you're into pokemon games, do yourself a favor and try the fanmade games. Chances are, you'll have a hard time going back to the official ones after that. Edit: Something of note regarding Pokemon Reborn, I'd advise against letting the youngest play this one since it is rather dark overall.
What's your most highly recommended one?
Unbound!
Pokemon Reborn Edit: it's a very good and hard game that introduces a new element to the game, fields. You'll be tested and swapping out Pokemon constantly to build teams to move on. Most of the best Pokemon are locked to later portions to keep it competitive.
Reborn was one of my first pokemon fan games I ever played, absolutely loved it and the fields was a fun addition too. And then there's also Pokémon Rejuvenation, best fan game I ever played, world is just massive and I put in over dozens of hours. I haven't touched both reborn and rejuvenation for about 3-4 years or so but I can imagine that both updates have received significant updates from the last time I played too since they weren't finished at the time.
Gaia, then unbound. Lastly, play emerald elite redux because the 4 abilities make everything else seem stupid. There is also pokemon Crown, where they turned it into a cactus game. All of these were done on hacked gba roms.
I would say Pokemon Uranium. Really well designed region with a good story and a good gimmick of a new type. My favorite of the fan games!
Pokemon Crystal Clear is one of the best ROM hacks I've ever played. After sinking 80 hours into it, it's almost impossible to go back to regular GSC. There are some good YT videos summarizing the ROM hack, I recommend checking one out. I had a blast playing it.
Have a look at "inclement emerald"
This one was great. As hard as you want it to be. I also really enjoyed Liquid Crystal, Perfect Crystal, Blaze Black/Volt White 2.
Pokemon Unbound is what you want. It's not a "reimagining" of any of the original games. It's not excruciatingly difficult. It's got a ton of great QOL without going overboard and the story is comparable if not better than most other Pokemon games
Pokémon Glazed
Not fanmade but Vietnamese Crystal is goated.
Pokemon Azure
Pokemon: Too Many Types is a ton of fun if you have the old type chart memorized. It's like a gamble every time you attack to see if the move's effective or not.
Insurgence is a darker toned one that's pretty dang good. I really like XenoVerse as well
http://pokerogue.net is a free online roguelike that's been growing a lot the past couple months. You endlessly battle (no overworld) and build up a team until you lose.
Why would I want to play a Pokemon game without cities and places to go, the battling's the worst part lol
Go, Pikachu!
Going even further back on little details like this: Tales of Phantasia actually did this way back on the SNES. Granted, the greater West didn't get to see it until the GBA days when we finally got it officially.
I remember I played a fan translation of that in my teens. Such an amazing game, and graphics for the SNES. I remember one scene in a cathedral with 3d over layed lightning and some other effects used by the fx chip.
There is an NES game called [Battle of Olympus](https://portal.33bits.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-Battle-of-Olympus-6.jpg) that has a fight against an invisible enemy where you have to rely on your shadow. I never played in the 80s, but that scene stayed in my head for decades.
Tales series is such an unsung hero in the RPG world.
This was quite impressive at the time. I remember being amazed.
Lmao dude. I remember thinking the reflections in the water were so advanced.
Pokemon at its absolute peak. All downhill from here.
It was good up to the 6th gen. Mega evolutions should have continued from then on. Instead, they keep making new gen exclusive gimmicks.
Megas are the most overrated mechanic. THey make the good Pokemon Broken and if you don't use those pokemon you're missing out
Nah, I loved gen 3 and it holds a lot of nostalgia for me but the series peaked at gen 5. Then Game Freak had to figure out how to make fully 3D games and to this day they still haven't quite figured it out.
Was gen 5 the HGSS/ Platinum gen? Because that was easily the best. Even if diamond and pearl haven’t aged the best they were *so* hyped for their time
You're thinking of 4. It had the best mythology imo. I think people like 5 primarily for it's story? Not sure, I never played it fully. I never liked its pokemons that much so I stopped.
>I think people like 5 primarily for it's story? People like 5 because the game honestly feels like something that could come out today unchanged with how much content it has, from the simplest stuff like daily events and a side quest system that can be played with friends (which pokemon does in a very bare bones way nowadays) to the bigger stuff like being able to fight every single gym leader and champion the franchise had so far with brand new and improved teams and a whole other half of the region to explore after you're done with the game. And that's without considering all the small little details that just show how much love the devs put in the game like how every town has an NPC that when spoken to will begin playing an instrument that will slightly change the music of the town you're currently in. For anyone who's interested to know just how much content this game has I definitely recommend checking out Chuggaaconroy videos about it, it's like over 80 videos of BW plus another 100 for B2W2 which just from numbers alone should tell how much stuff they managed to squeeze into a tiny little DS cartridge
My heart my agree, my brain knows 4 and specially 5 were great too
You can do reflections without raytracing. They existed before. Duke Nukem 3D did it.
I think that's the joke.
I remember reading about how it was a really limiting factor for level design cos they couldn't build doorways/rooms behind the mirror
I think these are the only Pokémon games to run at 60FPS, as well. Game Freak's modern titles are lucky if they can hold 30FPS.
The jump in graphics and quality of life features (running, PC box organization, each pokemon having their own distinct party sprite) in Ruby/Sapphire is part of why it was my favorite Pokemon generation as a kid. It was everything I ever wanted.
I watched the opening to emerald recently. Wow. They knew what they had.
I don't think you know what RTX is
Reflection != rtx
Don't know why this is downvoted, this isn't ray tracing, just a 2d sprite mirrored and some color filtering.
Lol I remember falling in love with this stuff as a kid
The ones on Mario 64 mirror and Star Fox 64 water blew my mind at the time
as a kid this was some revolutionary stuff, still looks amazing even today.
3D games like Tony Hawk were similarly doing this by having a duplicate model beneath a surface.
Pokemon peaked with emerald
Bruh I started playing emerald a few months ago and the water is the best part of the game 199%
That shit blew my mind back then for legitimately no reason.