Unpopular opinions

[Sonikku A]

Stadium Nick name colors need to come back

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

This created quite a discussion. Guess I should have expected that. Time for replies! If I don't reply to a specific part of someone's post, it means I have nothing to say or mostly agree.

WOW WHO COULDVE GUESSED
(also much of the "hate" is good as criticism and directing anger towards someting at all. its such a general term and so easy to fit, like how you use it)

Spreading love instead of hate should be an easy thing to do, but it becomes hard when you are surrounded by negativity, or when you really like something but only see negativity towards it everywhere. At least that's how it is for me.

And it can be hard to draw the line between hate and criticism, good point there. I tried to be constructive in my last post (and I'm trying the same here), but it isn’t always easy.

the difference is (i think) that Plat just better, while USM either had flaws the originals didn't have, or maintained them. namely the story and tutorials. Also usm being part of 'new' pokemon while plat being old and being in 2 versions instead of one, and how close they are to the present.
(i actually dont know much about sm vs usm)

This is also a good point. While US/UM improves upon S/M, I agree they could have done even more and even better improvements. They are also a step down in difference from the first pair compared to how different B2/W2 were to B/W. But for me, the things they do are enough. I think they are an improvement on the whole, which is why I consider them better than S/M.

From my experience, Gen 5 seems to be on an upturn in terms of who likes it. Maybe it's just the friend circles I've found myself in, but especially with that Poke Classic Network thing from 2018, people have been flocking back and enjoying it much more. I believe the competitive scene also has a lot of devout players. Not saying this to deny your experience, because it's clearly happened and is very unfortunate, but I encourage you to look around! In these cases, I recommend trying to find dedicated communities for the games!

You’re right, it has definitely gained an upturn in recent times, which is of course something I appreciate! But as said, it seems like the haters has become more vocal because of that too, which is sad to see. I guess I should try to find more dedicated communities, but I usually have a hard time getting into new forums and communities so I don’t know. Then I don't have as much interest in forums as I used to, and I have less time as well. So it will probably not happen.

As an old fan, I draw a lot of parallels between "the nostalgia-fueled hatred of newer games" with the newer players having extreme distaste for the old games. There's very little difference between them, both are extremely toxic and tend to just drive the community division further. I often hear the same recycled ideas about why the old games are the devilspawn of man and are "objectively bad" messes that should have never been made. The idea of something being "objectively" bad is already a preposterous idea considering human individuality, but anyway, not the thread for that. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if someone enjoys it, there's no need to ambush them on their way home and drag them to bad opinion jail.

Good point. I also think it is stupid to say a game or a generation is "objectively bad" (I once got angry at another user for saying that regarding a game earlier in this thread, it is on the first post, be sure to look it up if you want to see a really bad post from me lol). If anything, this discussion proves that R/B/Y are not objectively bad because you like some things that I dislike about them, making things subjective in the end.

The idea of RBY being obsolete doesn't make that much sense to me. The games have some of the most connectivity of any Pokemon game in the series, only rivalled by the Game Boy Advance titles. Pokemon Stadium, for example, gives you incredible reward for playing around with the Game Boy titles, and a lot more bang for your buck. While the Game Boy Advance games have connectivity with the GameCube, it can hardly be compared in terms of how much mileage you get for it. And this is just one of the games you can connect with; there's inter-generation connectivity with GSC and Stad2. Not to mention the completely different battle mechanics providing some of the most unique experiences of any Pokemon generation.

Connectivity does nothing to me if I can’t connect the games to anything. I never owned the Stadium games or even an N64, so that does not affect my opinion of the games. Besides, if you need an extra side-game to get the most out of the main game, it just shows that the main games are lacking in content and features on their own. I don’t care much for the different battle mechanics either, but that’s because I prefer the newer mechanics.

But this is beside the point. The main reason I consider R/B/Y obsolete (for me personally) is because of FR/LG. They do everything that I expect from Kanto but they are better than R/B/Y in every way that matters for me, so I have no reason to play R/B/Y nowadays.

It's hard to understand just how much ground Pokemon broke in the 90s, especially for fans who weren't heavily into it back then. At the time, the internet was in its infancy, and there were very few games of a scale akin to what Pokemon had. You can look around, the only comparable titles would be The Legend of Zelda on the NES or something like that. This resulted in the game blowing up in popularity in a way only really replicated by Minecraft. It spawned merchandise in almost every way you could possibly imagine, and the events...oh man, the events. The competitive scene was even televised in Japan, as I said in my OP. The level of influence Pokemon had during the 90s cannot be overstated. The way it bounced back after the Pokemon Shock event of 1997 is also something to behold. Of course, this is an abbreviated history, and I don't think it'd satisfy you at all, but I thought I'd give some input. Did the games age well? Probably not, but compared to other Game Boy games, it's definitely stood the test of time. I'd argue many are borderline unplayable. Super Mario Land 2 could probably fit on a GBA though, man that game looks pretty.

I remember when Pokémon was super popular back in the late 90s. At least the TCG, and the anime to an extent, not so much the actual games (at least at first) even if they also did get their fair share of attention. It was to the point that it needed no advertising because it practically advertised itself. I remember that basically everyone at my school was into it. The ironic thing is that I was personally not very interested in Pokemon at first, it seemed overrated and I distanced myself from it. Then I gradually got more and more interested and now I’m still a fan, 20 years later! It is crazy. The same thing happened with Go when it first was released, it became so popular that it basically advertised itself.

I do personally not think the games have aged well, but as you say, that can probably be said for a lot of other GBC games too. Haven’t played many other GBC games than Pokémon, just a few old Lego games I think, so I can’t really say.

I mean, if you want characters from other gens to get more attention, well, you can always do it yourself. If you find it annoying, I believe that to be a personal problem. Liking something is very subjective, and what someone likes isn't to your taste, that's ok! There's nothing wrong with that, and nobody should fault you for it.

This is a good point, and something I have thought about as well. I think I have done some posts where I give praise to Pokémon and characters from the newer generations, I should continue with that. Right now I have an idea for a post about a Pokémon/family that I really want to give praise to for a certain unique trait it has, I suppose I should focus on completing that post. Obviously, it is not a Pokémon from Gen 1.

I can agree that the baseline story for Kanto is pretty bland. Pokemon has never necessarily been about the story, I believe Gen 4 was when they actually started to try on that note, before Gen 5 came in with that showstopper. FRLG hardly even worked on improving the story either, let alone Blue. It's the weakest part of Gen 1 as a whole. You can link it to how games were made at the time, storytelling wasn't really a central focus back then. I wish FRLG modernized it, really. This is partly why I say RBY isn't ageing the greatest.

I agree that FR/LG should have improved the story more. While I like them and most of their improvements over R/B/Y, the story and the rival were two very notable things they didn't improve upon in any significant way.

I personally like most of the designs, but that's my familiarity speaking. Rhydon, Dodrio, Venusaur, Chansey and Vaporeon are my personal favourites!

As said, I like several too, some of my favorites are Alakazam, Starmie, Dodrio, Primeape, Hitmonlee, Gengar, Snorlax, Dragonite, Moltres and Mewtwo… and many others!

But at the same time, there are many that just feel boring and uninteresting to me. Some examples are Arcanine, Golbat, Machamp, Fearow, Pidgeot, Kingler, Poliwrath, Raticate, Seaking, Mew... and others. So on the whole, I think Gen 1 has the worst designs, not because every single design is bad, but because I think it has more bad designs on the whole compared to every other generation.

I highly doubt Gen 1 Pokemon are "immune to criticism". Whenever a "Pokemon has bad designs these days" argument spouts up, the first thing I see people go to is Gen 1 designs. Exeggcute, Diglett -> Dugtrio, Magneton, etc are consistently bought up there and torn to shreds. I rarely, if ever, see any other Pokemon designs bought up in those debates.

You are partly correct, but whenever someone criticizes a Gen 1 design, it seems that someone else will then immediately defend the gen 1 designs, often by saying “they were the original” or something similar. This does not happen to new designs; they get criticized without anyone really defending them in the same way. The Gen 1 Pokémon also never seem to get any hate when they are brought up, everyone is okay with them but every new Pokémon gets hate.

The bit about only seeing Kanto in Kanto games is kind of what you'd expect in the games, really. RSE, DP and BW all did the same thing, and it's just a series formula. In BW specifically, they made it extremely hard to find any old Pokemon, which is where a lot of the animosity towards it came from on the initial release.

My point (which I suppose I should have explained better) was that you only see Kanto Pokémon even in the remakes when they should have had Pokédex expansions. Granted, this is an aspect I think all the remakes could have been better at, so this isn’t only an issue with FR/LG and LGP/E. Plus the more personal reason in that I have gotten tired of the Kanto Pokémon so playing a game where I can only see them during the main story doesn’t really appeal to me anymore.

I personally like Yellow's sprites, though RG and RB's designs were definitely not the finest. For what Game Freak was at the time though, I give em props. In the grand scheme of things though, you can see why they never imported RG's sprites.

Same here, even though I don’t think Yellow are that good compared to the newer generations. But hey, better than nothing.

The open nature is more wasted potential than something unnecessary imo. Pokemon Crystal Clear, a ROM Hack, shows exactly what could be done to RBY. I think there is a hack that opens up the region more and adds level scaling, but I can't remember the name if it does exist. I don't think modern Game Freak not knowing how to make an open region is a relevant point though, given this is a game from 1996...

Pretty much this. I once saw a post here where someone said that open regions in Pokémon is pointless at best and harmful at worst, which I agree with. I don’t play romhacks and have no real interest in them so can’t speak for that.

My point about modern Game Freak was more directed to the wild area in S/S It has potential but there’s a lot of improvements that they need to do in order to make it function better. I think the Isle of Armor improved upon it but there's still room for a lot more improvements to make it even better. That’s for another discussion though.

Regarding the "third version" bit, this is a common misconception. In Japan, Yellow was released alongside an "official" release of Japanese Blue, after the latter was put on a special mail order in Corocoro 2 years prior. You could take them as sequel games in this case, though it's mostly semantics and puts em more with BW2 and USUM.

I had no idea about this. Thanks for letting me know.

Even then, though...I'm not sure what you're really expecting from Yellow. It improves the sprites, fixes many of the bugs (Old Man Glitch, for example), and makes many learnset improvements. It even added moves to multiple Pokemon, such as Kinesis Kadabra and Low Kick Mankey. For the first shot at a new version, they did a damn good job. I personally find Yellow to be among the best Game Boy titles out there, it's graphically stellar and gameplay-wise it's definitely among the best RPGs of the system.

I guess I shouldn’t expect too much, it just doesn’t do much for me compared to the newer follow-up games, and as said, I find it worse than R/B on the whole. Gen 1 is the only generation from which I prefer the first pair over the third/alternate version.

This feels a bit like gatekeeping; you don't need a reason to play a game, let alone a "good" one. That's all I'll say here.

I was thinking about how some people play the gen 1 games specifically to play around with glitches without caring much for the actual games themselves. I also remember some people being angry at the possible idea of the VC releases of the Gen 1 games fixing glitches and that they wouldn’t get the games if the glitches were fixed. But now that the VC releases kept all the glitches, I guess they are happy. I just personally find the glitches overrated. But if people want to play the games for them, I guess there's nothing stopping them. So while I personally find playing a game only for the glitches is stupid, I guess others can play which games they want for whatever reason they want.

And I agree, no game is immune to criticism, and lord knows I wish the x/256 accuracy issue didn't exist.

It’s funny how you mention it because I remember encountering this issue while playing R/B/Y at times. One specific instance I remember is when a friend of mine was playing Yellow, and then suddenly he says: “What? Thunderbolt missed?” meaning he encountered the issue.

Gen 1 gets the most attention, to absolutely no one's surprise or shock, because it's the easiest way to advertise. Familiarity is very important in the advertising field, as it ensures the brand remains commonplace and "too big to fail". It's like how Disney has always been Mickey Mouse, and not the new characters, see? Who would be receptive to Sudowoodo and Aurorus on a poster advertising Pokemon? Likely only fans who exist already. Once we leave Game Freak's advertising department, I see more love for literally anything else, and I think that's a good thing. Look at when Wooloo was revealed and the internet exploded, that's great! But, I don't see why Game Freak's advertising should justify it? It's nothing to do with the games, after all.

Is that really so? To me, it feels like showcasing gen 1 over and over again is just trying to bring back former Pokémon fans (those who played only Gen 1 and nothing else). If they show Pokemon from gen 2-8, that will probably only attract current fans, sure. But what about the potential fans? As in, those who aren't Pokémon fans but has the potential to become fans. What appeals the most to them? I wish I had the answer but in theory it shouldn’t matter to a kid nowadays if they see an advertisement featuring a Gen 1 Pokemon or one from any other generation if they know nothing about Pokémon before. Don’t know if that’s how it actually is though.

I also wonder if they really advertise the gen 1 Pokémon because they are the most popular. I think it might actually be the other way around. The gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular because they get advertised all the time. It is a sort of self-fulfilling cycle I guess. The Gen 1 Pokémon are popular, they get advertised, they get more popular, they get advertised again, they get even more popular, they get advertised once more... and so on.

And I don’t see love for everything else apart from Game Freak, it still feels like gen 1 gets a fair share of attention here and there. But I guess it isn't quite as bad as it was in the past, so that's good. But still, even if showing Gen 1 and only Gen 1 is good from an advertising standpoint, that doesn’t change the fact that me and other fans are getting tired of seeing Gen 1 getting advertised everywhere, with everything from Gen 2 to the generation before the current not getting any focus at all.

I think LGPE was important since Kanto wasn't on the DS-3DS family prior. As of ORAS, it was the only region not playable on that family of systems, until the Virtual Console versions came out. It was a pretty big nightmare to get hold of Kanto until that happened. I think it's a bit of a goalpost-moving thing to say Meltan and Melmetal don't count since they were there to advertise GO, which isn't Kanto at all. Hell, LGPE's entire concept was bringing Pokemon GO into a "mainline" setting. It's definitely a Kanto game, but to say it's specifically only about Yellow is a misunderstanding at best.

IMO, Kanto does not need to be on every single system. It would be nice if they could take a break from it for once. Re-releasing the gen 1 and 2 games on the 3DS VC was okay though, especially in comparison to creating LGP/E. And just to remind you, GO was Kanto and only Kanto back when it was first released. And you can still only bring Kanto Pokemon from GO to Let’s Go. As for Meltan and Melmetal, I did not count them because they are only 2 out of 153 Pokémon. And now that I look at it, the only way to get them is from Pokémon Go, which means you can't get them in LGP/E alone, which is another reason as for why they shouldn't be counted.

A minor correction on the note of Gen 6 beginning the "Kanto fever"; Gen 1 has always been the thing getting attention. It's a staple of the brand, here's some examples generation-wise;

Gen 2 was designed as a sequel to Gen 1, and it's partly why there's a lot of Kanto in the early-game.
Gen 3 had FRLG
Gen 4 Evolved many Kanto Pokemon
Gen 5 used Gen 1 Pokemon as a focal point of their designs, there are interviews about this. Take Bouffalant to Tauros, for example. I personally think it was an amazing idea, and the execution was super cool.

I think Merritt more or less answered this, but I'll chime in as well. The thing is that in Gen 3-5, Kanto was not quite as present in every main series game as it is now. Hoenn, Sinnoh and Unova could stand on their own without major references, only minor ones at best. You never saw anyone getting annoyed at how Kanto was present everywhere in these three regions, compared to how it is with Kalos and Alola, and Galar to an extent. From Gen 6 and on, Kanto has been given a major presence not only in the remakes but in the new main series games as well, to extents that could not be seen in Gen 3-5. That's why people are annoyed, and why fan pandering has became a big term (though I do agree that it has been getting overused as of late). And even if you or other people aren't bothered by the Gen 1 fan pandering or you may even like it, that doesn't change the fact that it has happened and that it keeps happening.

Also, if we go by your perspective and say that Kanto has had a big presence in Gen 3-5 as well, that’s all the more reason me and other fans are tired of seeing it everywhere. Can we ever get a generation without Kanto? Probably not. The closest was Gen 5 if you ask me.

Pokemon Origins, I mean, ok? Chronicles existed too, it's not a new thing to go back to old stuff during a generation. It happened to be Kanto at the time, and personally I'd love to see the concept re-imagined for Gens 2-3. As for merchandise, that goes way beyond Kanto and you absolutely know that. Take, for example, the plushes, they have them for every region.

I have to admit I never watched Origins (one reason being that it was Gen 1 only and it was released at a time when I had a big distaste for Gen 1) but I would have been okay with if they had did the same to more generations. Which they of course didn’t they dropped it right after Gen 1 and only Gen 1 for the first but not last time. Could have been because Origins got a bit of a lukewarm reception though, I don’t know.

I looked up Pokemon Chronicles and it seems like there hasn’t been anything new about it since 2006 (Gen 3). So I don't really know about it.

That said, the animation specials have been getting better at showcasing other generations lately. Pokémon Generations focused on all the first 6 generations, while the recent Twilight Wings was about Galar (it could still be argued that some Gen 1 Pokémon got a bit too much spotlight in it though, but I disgress). I think both of these animation series were really great too.

It seems I was wrong regarding merchandise though, so I’ll give you that. I saw a post here a while ago saying that merchandise was always gen 1, the current gen or Eeveelutions. I should have researched it a bit more, I guess. But it seems like things have changed regarding the merchandise and that all generations get a bit of focus, so that's good! Now it could still be so that there's more merchandise for Gen 1 than any other generation, but I don't know.

I also remembered two more games with 100% focus on Gen 1. Pokémon Quest and the recently released Pokémon Smile. Those are other examples of where Gen 1 and only Gen 1 gets the full focus and attention.

The Pokemon anime dedicates almost everything to the current generation at hand, I really don't know what you're on about here. They had Iris and Dawn get featured a ton in later seasons, and that's the least of it. Brock and Misty had been anime staples until what, Gen 6? I don't see why them coming back would even be related to the whole "pandering", it's basic familiarity and a return to the normal material. This feels like a massive reach. Are you sure you're not just looking for something to hate at that point?

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said something here. I was trying to find more examples, not looking for something to hate. I don’t watch the anime so I was just bringing up things I have heard and seen from it, guess I shouldn't have done so. But from what I can find, Iris never really reappeared after B/W? And my point was that Brock and Misty were the only ones that got back in S/M, none of the other travelling companions from the other regions/generations/seasons.

As someone who plays competitive RBY and got badged solely for my contributions to the sim, I will say you're definitely very wrong. Compared to newer generations, I would say this is a myth. The worst part of the RNG is a 10% chance to freeze which is death, but outside of this, I would argue it's among the more skill-based games. I mean, you could throw the x/256 uncertainty in, but that's a universal accuracy decrease of .2-.4%, which is hardly anything. There's a ton of interesting mechanics outside of this, such as the type-based secondary effect immunity I talked about in my post. It adds tons of dimensions to strategy that I find extremely enjoyable. You can ask any competitive RBY player and they will all tell you that the "RBY is luck-based" trope is an extremely false claim to make. Shellnuts in the RoA room on PS smashes the argument day-in-day-out. If you wanted to criticise the meta, you could easily bring up The Big 4, Reflect, or WrapSwitching, but even then, a lot of the time people would tell you to check out UU, which mostly diminishes this.

I'll take your word for it then. I have to admit that this has gotten me a bit interested in how the Gen 1 metagame works but I guess that's for another time.

It feels like you're more disillusioned by the advertising Game Freak does, and I think it's perfectly justified. Though at the same time, it comes off as slight confirmation bias. It's not a bad thing, and I can tell you've been through the wars of the BW era, and I can't fault you for it. I'm happy to debate further if you're up for it, I enjoy long posts like these.

Maybe. Am I really "disillusioned" though? It feels weird, but maybe that's how it is. Or are you the one who is "disillusioned"? Maybe we both are! Actually, I don't know.

I enjoy discussions like this too but writing all this takes a very long time and I somewhat regret making that post yesterday, but at the same time I felt that I had to say something so here we are. I feel that my post of today won't be as good because I am tired and have spent too much time on this, but I felt that it had to be done so yeah.

And I'm not done yet, there's more to say.

Before I go into replying to posts related to Gen 1 and being Overrated, I'd like to say that I started with Gen 4, so does that make me a new fan or an old fan?

I guess you are technically a middle fan (if such a term even exists), but on the whole I'd also say you're an older fan at this point since it has been 13/14 years since Gen 4 was first released.

That's really not a Pokemon problem though. Its a fandom problem. If you go to pretty much any video game forums, you encounter people who think the new games are awful and prefer the old ones. If you go to the Fire Emblem Forums you'll find people complaining about how 3 Houses is the worst because you have to dedicate time to do tea parties in order to get stat buffs or how the series has become so "anime", or how the Persona Forums complains how Persona 5 is too easy.

This is sad to hear, but now that I think about it, you are right. I don't interact with many fandoms and communities outside of Pokémon but I have seen a bit of this behavior in the few ones I have visited, so I guess that's true. Maybe I just thought it was worse for Pokémon since I spend so much time on Pokémon forums and sites.

Disagree that USM completely outclass SM. The original pair has a much better story, which USM butchered. If you prefer story driven games, then SM might be worth choosing over USM in that regard. Gameplay wise though, USM are the winners here.

I had a feeling someone would mention the story. I agree that the story is better in S/M, but for me, that's not enough of a reason to replay S/M over US/UM, story isn't that important to me while I think all the improvements in US/UM are way more important. That's just why I think S/M are obsolete though, if you or anyone else still wants to play S/M for the story or any other reason, that's fine.

My main issue with the whole "Kanto pandering" crew is they tend to try to gatekeep anyone who plays the original games. I have never seen a community that actively tries to tell people not to. Hell, even in the SMT fandom I've seen people say "Hey if you ever wanna see how the franchise evolved, play the original! It's got hilarious balancing and is an interesting experience!". Same for Fire Emblem, Metroid, but the only one I've seen where people will actively try to reason you to go somewhere else is so weird. At the end of the day, you don't need a reason to play a game. Video games aren't a political field, they're leisure time. It's all about just playing what you want and having fun with it. You can beat Gen 1 in around 6 hours if you know what you're doing, it doesn't hurt anyone!

This is a bit sad to hear. While I would personally probably not recommend the Gen 1 games to anyone, downright saying to people to not play them feels like the wrong thing to do. And in reverse, I don't think this happens from older fans to the newer games, if anything people might boycott or choose to not play them games on their own, or maybe just suggest that people not play them, but downright trying to make other people not play them is not something I have seen from older fans other than maybe extreme former Pokémon fans, which are rare.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Suspicious Derivative
On the note of connectivity with games like Stadium and GSC, I don't think this shows the content of the game is lacking. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite, you can get so much more playtime off of it. Training Pokemon with Stadium in mind is pretty fun and provides you with the opportunity to get out there and try to "get good" to win in the cups. Tradebacking with GSC for unique moves (eg. Amnesia Hypno) completely changes the meta as well, RBY 2k20 has been exploring it in detail. These games add content in a way that's not been seen since Gen 4, and it's kind of sad to see, in my opinion! I also believe this is why FRLG cannot outclass RBY on its own, there's numerous unique parts of the originals that just haven't been replicated at all. The mechanics, connectivity and many other parts of the generations are very different. They provide extremely different experiences overall.

If I really wanted to reach for a niche, I could say RBY and GSC are the only Pokemon games compatible with a printer

If you're interested in RBY's competitive scene, I actually made an entire resource hub! It compiles stuff off of various competitive websites dedicated to the games. It's in my signature!

 

[DreamPrince]

Since we're debating whether or not Gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular or not, I looked at two polls: Pokemon's 2020 Poll Results as well as Favorite Pokemons responses that was released prior to Gen 8. For the former, the top 30 Pokemon featured 25 Pokemon that were not Gen 1, and the #1 Pokemon wasn't even Charizard. It was Greninja. In fact, Charizard and Gengar were the only two that were in the top 10 that were from Gen 1. Its worth noting that the majority of these have had received some fan service in the past, like Mega, Z-Move, or Gigantamax. I also understand that this poll did it have its structure problems, but since Greninja did place #1 is another poll, there is definitely some truth to it.

Before I go into the second poll, I would love to give credit to how well organized this information is. There are separate polls for each Gen, prior for 8, so you can see which Pokemon have been voted the most popular per gen. There's even a chart that shows percentage of Pokemon per percentage of votes. So very big thanks to the organizers!

Anyway, back onto the Pokemon data themselves, the top 4 Pokemon are from Gen 1: Charizard, Gengar, Arcanine, Bulbasaur. As for the top 30 Pokemon, 13 out of 30 Pokemon are from Gen 1. So there's more Gen 1 compared to TPC's official poll, however, the majority of Pokemon are from other generations, 17 out of 30 for other generations.

So the representation of Gen 1 in the two polls for the top 30 is roughly 30% for both polls added together. For TPC's poll separately, its 17%, while for the Favorite responses, its roughly 43%. More noticeably in the latter, the number higher.

BTW, if I did the math incorrectly, please forgive me, I'm not good at math.

Saying that Gen 1 Pokemon are more popular over the other generation's Pokemon is simply not true, as the other generations have had dominated the other two polls in both cases. I understand there's definitely more research needed, but saying that the new Pokemon can't be as popular as Gen 1 is untrue, as a Dragapult was #11 for TPC's poll one shot above Gengar.


I also agree that I feel that its a less of that the Gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular, but more like they are a favorites of the original GF staff. Charizard is the favorite of Atsuko Nishida, the character designer for the Chamander line, Pikachu, and the Eeveelutions. Vensaur and Gengar are the favorites of Ken Sugimori, another Character Designer. Satoshi Tajiri's favorite Pokemon is Poliwag. Junuchi Masuda's favorite Pokemon is Psyduck, in addition to Psyduck, Sylveon, Exeggcutor-Alola to name a few. Speaking Exeggutor, is Mr. Ishihara's favorite since RB, the first and only TPC president. These are heads of the GF since the days of RB, so its not surprising they want to create that same adventure akin to RB every time. It also points why Charizard snd friends keep getting attention. There favorites of GF, so of course they want them in the game getting super mechanics and represented- they want to relive the glory of RB.

So yeah, I strongly believe that group of Kanto mons not only because they are recognizable, but they are favorites of the original staff, despite the staff having other options for favorite Pokemon.

 

[Tmi489]

re: spinoffs
often times gen 1 is the big thing in spinoffs (go, smile, etc.) bc its just easier and more cohesive to implement
gen 1 is a "full" collection and easily recognizable, while its harder to implement other generations simply bc more dev time or game space
ofc marketability is influencing it but

Spreading love instead of hate should be an easy thing to do, but it becomes hard when you are surrounded by negativity, or when you really like something but only see negativity towards it everywhere. At least that's how it is for me.

And it can be hard to draw the line between hate and criticism, good point there. I tried to be constructive in my last post (and I'm trying the same here), but it isn’t always easy.

kinda got into 2 differing points here but hate is such an easy term to describe anything. i dont like seeing it

Saying that Gen 1 Pokemon are more popular over the other generation's Pokemon is simply not true, as the other generations have had dominated the other two polls in both cases. I understand there's definitely more research needed, but saying that the new Pokemon can't be as popular as Gen 1 is untrue, as a Dragapult was #11 for TPC's poll one shot above Gengar.

gen 1 mons had competition with each other (you could vote 1/generation). gengar was competing against pika who was competiting against charizard...

though the staff explanation def is a good one

 

[Samtendo09]

Since we're debating whether or not Gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular or not, I looked at two polls: Pokemon's 2020 Poll Results as well as Favorite Pokemons responses that was released prior to Gen 8. For the former, the top 30 Pokemon featured 25 Pokemon that were not Gen 1, and the #1 Pokemon wasn't even Charizard. It was Greninja. In fact, Charizard and Gengar were the only two that were in the top 10 that were from Gen 1. Its worth noting that the majority of these have had received some fan service in the past, like Mega, Z-Move, or Gigantamax. I also understand that this poll did it have its structure problems, but since Greninja did place #1 is another poll, there is definitely some truth to it.

Before I go into the second poll, I would love to give credit to how well organized this information is. There are separate polls for each Gen, prior for 8, so you can see which Pokemon have been voted the most popular per gen. There's even a chart that shows percentage of Pokemon per percentage of votes. So very big thanks to the organizers!

Anyway, back onto the Pokemon data themselves, the top 4 Pokemon are from Gen 1: Charizard, Gengar, Arcanine, Bulbasaur. As for the top 30 Pokemon, 13 out of 30 Pokemon are from Gen 1. So there's more Gen 1 compared to TPC's official poll, however, the majority of Pokemon are from other generations, 17 out of 30 for other generations.

So the representation of Gen 1 in the two polls for the top 30 is roughly 30% for both polls added together. For TPC's poll separately, its 17%, while for the Favorite responses, its roughly 43%. More noticeably in the latter, the number higher.

BTW, if I did the math incorrectly, please forgive me, I'm not good at math.

Saying that Gen 1 Pokemon are more popular over the other generation's Pokemon is simply not true, as the other generations have had dominated the other two polls in both cases. I understand there's definitely more research needed, but saying that the new Pokemon can't be as popular as Gen 1 is untrue, as a Dragapult was #11 for TPC's poll one shot above Gengar.


I also agree that I feel that its a less of that the Gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular, but more like they are a favorites of the original GF staff. Charizard is the favorite of Atsuko Nishida, the character designer for the Chamander line, Pikachu, and the Eeveelutions. Vensaur and Gengar are the favorites of Ken Sugimori, another Character Designer. Satoshi Tajiri's favorite Pokemon is Poliwag. Junuchi Masuda's favorite Pokemon is Psyduck, in addition to Psyduck, Sylveon, Exeggcutor-Alola to name a few. Speaking Exeggutor, is Mr. Ishihara's favorite since RB, the first and only TPC presidentaking . These are heads of the GF since the days of RB, so its not surprising they want to create that same adventure akin to RB every time. It also points why Charizard snd friends keep getting attention. There favorites of GF, so of course they want them in the game getting super mechanics and represented- they want to relive the glory of RB.

So yeah, I strongly believe that group of Kanto mons not only because they are recognizable, but they are favorites of the original staff, despite the staff having other options for favorite Pokemon.

That actually make sense come to think of it. Creator favoritism is something that happens after or even during working on a fiction or franchise, but there's definitely a line where trying to relive the glory of the first installment more than once can ends up putting a wrench on the creativity process, resulting staleness.

And Pokémon is definitely guilty of letting this happening, but keep in mind that's not a problem exclusive to it when it comes to video game franchises becoming guilty of overdoing glory reliving of first or widely popular installments. While it's fair to represent Gen 1 a bit in Spin-off does to their "accessibility", there's a difference of making it so and make the game bloated with Gen 1 Pokémon.

To make it follow the Unpopular Opinion thread... Personally, Black and White having only Gen 5 Pokémon until post-game had really done more damage than good those games and should be even more criticized for. I know what you're thinking, it's also a popular opinion that fans didn't liked that there's only Gen 5 Pokémon in Black and White until the post-game, but it's much more damaging than you think, and not just sales-wise.

You gotta consider bringing back multiple Pokémon in the main game during B2W2 as an Arceus-send regardless of your opinion on those pair of games, because these three reasons are why Black + White's main game having only Gen 5 Pokémon poses a great damage to it in the long run, no matter what fans say about those first pair of games.

• Taking the "Self-Contained" aspect too far. Not having any returning Pokémon at all until the post-game did give a legitimate reason haters give flacks to the first pair of Gen 5 games. Wanting the players to try out the new Pokémon is perfectly fine, if actually good, but doing so by having no Pokémon from previous generations at all can prove alienating. This also make a cause for the three sub-aspects below:
  • Strained Diversity. Like back in Gen 1, there's not really all that many option with only 156 options (-12 being Legends + Mythical, making 144 options overall), not helping that some were a lot rarer than they should be (like Maractus). Although it did a somewhat better job at Type diversity than previous Generations, some comes off as too similar to previous Generation Pokémon (i.e. there are comparison between the Gothitelle line and the Gardevoir line). Previous Pokémon from previous generations can be transferred, but only in post-game if I recall correctly.
    • This resulted repeated Pokémon among NPCs, which is forgivable in Gen 1 and 2, but become less and less excusable in later Generations when it comes to the region's new Pokémon.
• Lack of Cross-Generational Additions. Now, we know that Gen 4 adds a lot of evolution + pre-evolution for Pokémon from previous generations, a few of which are certainly aren't fan favorites, but after make a complete "fresh slate" Gen 5 did, this also means no new evolution or pre-evolution at all. Gen 5 was the Generation that ends up completely dropping the concept of expanding the previous lines, and as much as I don't really think Alomomola should be an evolution of Luvdisc, the similarities is certainly striking and a missed opportunity for many fans.
  • Now Gen 6 (almost) and Gen 7 repeated that too, but at this point, fans gave up of wanting new cross-generation evolutions until Gen 8, which introduced Regional Evolutions that are generally very well received.
• Overall Bad First Impression to Generation 5 Pokémon. Although every generation have their own suckers, some fans have a tendency to criticize or hate the likes of Garbodor and Vanilluxe to death, which is actually a result of a lack of returning Pokémon. One may say "quantity over quality" but that is difficult to say that's the opposite in Gen 6, 7 and 8 for various reasons, and it's really subjective for those cases. In Gen 5, there are so many new Pokémon that there are bound of some that ends up being too similar to previous Pokémon in the eyes of some fans, not helping that the above mentioned Garbodor and Vanilluxe, as well as the Simi Monkeys and a few other Gen 5 mons with mediocre reception, sticks out like sore thumbs in comparison to even previous generations' "Badmons" at this point.

If Gen 6, 7 or 8 repeated that mistake (while including Regional Variants), that might be even worse, as there are fewer options available. Which is definitely ridiculous to think about, since stuff like Mega Evolution or Gigantamax means of course some past Pokémon will return to get either of special treatment, but who knows if the opposite ends up happening; a new Generation with little to no new Pokémon at all.

 

[Magcargo]

• Overall Bad First Impression to Generation 5 Pokémon. Although every generation have their own suckers, some fans have a tendency to criticize or hate the likes of Garbodor and Vanilluxe to death, which is actually a result of a lack of returning Pokémon. One may say "quantity over quality" but that is difficult to say that's the opposite in Gen 6, 7 and 8 for various reasons, and it's really subjective for those cases. In Gen 5, there are so many new Pokémon that there are bound of some that ends up being too similar to previous Pokémon in the eyes of some fans, not helping that the above mentioned Garbodor and Vanilluxe, as well as the Simi Monkeys and a few other Gen 5 mons with mediocre reception, sticks out like sore thumbs in comparison to even previous generations' "Badmons" at this point.

I can relate to this. When I first played Black and White back in 2010 (played the Japanese version ROM) I hated a lot of the new Pokemon because it seemed like they were replacing the older Pokemon. On there own, a lot of the Pokemon the region introduced like Simisear and Sawk are decent Pokemon, but all I could think about was how much better something like Infernape was. Combined with the much darker color pallet & atmosphere that Black and White exuded & I felt alienated at the time. BW2 fixed a lot of the issues that made BW1 feel alienating while respecting the ideas & character it introduced.

 

[Samtendo09]

I can relate to this. When I first played Black and White back in 2010 (played the Japanese version ROM) I hated a lot of the new Pokemon because it seemed like they were replacing the older Pokemon. On there own, a lot of the Pokemon the region introduced like Simisear and Sawk are decent Pokemon, but all I could think about was how much better something like Infernape was. Combined with the much darker color pallet & atmosphere that Black and White exuded & I felt alienated at the time. BW2 fixed a lot of the issues that made BW1 feel alienating while respecting the ideas & character it introduced.

And you're right. While initial alienation was not really an unpopular opinion as I said, I feel like the damage Gen 5 had done is severely downplayed by fans as time passes, while personally, I feel like if Gen 5 avoided completely excluding previous generation Pokémon for the main game, the reception wouldn't be so bad. If B2W2 didn't solved that issue, the reception towards Gen 5 Pokémon would certainly not soften up a lot as time passes.

 

[Yung Dramps]

One other big thing to note concerning BW1's soft-reboot nature of only new Pokemon crippling it is that in addition to the generally mixed reception to the Pokedex as a whole most of the actually really good and well-liked Gen 5 cast members often came far too late in the game for most players to bear with. Golurk, Haxorus, Chandelure, Bisharp, Volcarona, Hydreigon and more are all relegated to late midgame at earliest with many of them being straight up endgame-only mons. There's also the matter of the latter 3's abysmal evolution levels alongside stuff like Braviary that far exceeds the pretty low level curve for reasons that evade myself and many others. The cool pre-release Pokemon Zoroark wasn't even obtainable without an event for god's sake! This meant that until at least 2-3 badges in where you got some neato things like Scolipede and Krookodile you're forced to see and work with the mediocre early-game fluff which unlike later generations they put no effort into trying to make unique (see the massive downgrade from the still-beloved Staraptor to god damn Unfezant) or even just overused and pushed way too hard for no good reason (the monkeys and even Lillipup to an extent). All this along with the stuff others mentioned and you got a recipe for a roster of Pokemon which is the only gen aside from the extremely recent 8 to not have anyone make the Top 10 on the recent Pokemon of the Year poll.

 

[Siggu]

• Strained Diversity. Like back in Gen 1, there's not really all that many option with only 156 options (-12 being Legends + Mythical, making 144 options overall), not helping that some were a lot rarer than they should be (like Maractus). Although it did a somewhat better job at Type diversity than previous Generations, some comes off as too similar to previous Generation Pokémon (i.e. there are comparison between the Gothitelle line and the Gardevoir line). Previous Pokémon from previous generations can be transferred, but only in post-game if I recall correctly.

I'd gladly take only 156 options, all of them being completely new additions to the series, over 400 options of which the new ones don't even make a quarter of it (Sword and Shield).

It's the new generation, with new characters. It's the games that introduced them. It didn't work well, I've got to admit it, but giving the new characters exclusive focus was the right idea. Something Hoenn in Gen III also did, though not as well (as there were still some old Pokémon before the post-game). It's what makes Gen V much more memorable than other generations... I even remember evolutionary lines I'd rather forget (the Lillipup and Zorua lines), when in other cases I tend to forget even those I like.

If you want to make a third version or a second pair of games where both new and old get equal billing, go for it, but you can't shove the new characters into a mostly secondary role in their introductory game... it doesn't have to be AS extreme as Black and White did, but they need top billing in their first game.

 

[Sonikku A]

Hey!
I like Unfezent
But yeah, the attempt of a soft reboot didn't do well for Gen 5. And honestly...the anime had a loooot of issues too for Gen 5

 

[Samtendo09]

I'd gladly take only 156 options, all of them being completely new additions to the series, over 400 options of which the new ones don't even make a quarter of it (Sword and Shield).

It's the new generation, with new characters. It's the games that introduced them. It didn't work well, I've got to admit it, but giving the new characters exclusive focus was the right idea. Something Hoenn in Gen III also did, though not as well (as there were still some old Pokémon before the post-game). It's what makes Gen V much more memorable than other generations... I even remember evolutionary lines I'd rather forget (the Lillipup and Zorua lines), when in other cases I tend to forget even those I like.

If you want to make a third version or a second pair of games where both new and old get equal billing, go for it, but you can't shove the new characters into a mostly secondary role in their introductory game... it doesn't have to be AS extreme as Black and White did, but they need top billing in their first game.

I do agree that putting focus on the new characters and Pokémon was the right idea. But it's the execution that leaves it to be desired concerning Pokémon, even if their exposure helped them stand out. As Yung Dramps pointed out, several of fan favorites ends up being relegated at early lategame at best, and the dumb level curve for several of them (not Volcarona since that's one powerful) also make them not giving sensitive for players to catch them in generations beyond Generation 5.

That, and how extreme Black and White did it, is what caused some fans to not have an opinion as high as other do, especially those who started in a Generation later than 5.

I definitely agree to give new Pokémon the main spotlight, though I definitely won't agree to completely exclude Pokémon from previous Generations for the main game; more or less make them much rarer and more sparsely used than the current Generation, encouraging the player to play with the new toys but also without completely excluding past Pokémon until postgame. Bloated Pokédex during main game can do the opposite problem of course; I'd rather do about 200 Pokémon (about 120 new ones, plus some additions to existing evolutionary lines as bonuses) for the main game and then another 200 for the post-game (all returning) regarding the Pokédex. "Third version" is more fair game for both sides of course.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

On the note of connectivity with games like Stadium and GSC, I don't think this shows the content of the game is lacking. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite, you can get so much more playtime off of it. Training Pokemon with Stadium in mind is pretty fun and provides you with the opportunity to get out there and try to "get good" to win in the cups. Tradebacking with GSC for unique moves (eg. Amnesia Hypno) completely changes the meta as well, RBY 2k20 has been exploring it in detail. These games add content in a way that's not been seen since Gen 4, and it's kind of sad to see, in my opinion! I also believe this is why FRLG cannot outclass RBY on its own, there's numerous unique parts of the originals that just haven't been replicated at all. The mechanics, connectivity and many other parts of the generations are very different. They provide extremely different experiences overall.

If I really wanted to reach for a niche, I could say RBY and GSC are the only Pokemon games compatible with a printer

I disagree about the side-games making the main games better on their own, but I do agree with you that the older generations did side-games with connections to the main games better than the newer generations. As said, I never owned the Stadium games but I did play Colosseum and XD for Gen 3 and PBR for Gen 4, those games were a ton of fun! I kinda miss these types of games for the newer generations, it seems like the concept was more or less dropped after Gen 4. Might have been because PBR got a rather negative reception in general (I liked it though).

And the printer too! That's another unique thing for Gen 1 and 2. And another thing I never got to try out since I never owned a Game Boy printer, but it seemed really cool.

If you're interested in RBY's competitive scene, I actually made an entire resource hub! It compiles stuff off of various competitive websites dedicated to the games. It's in my signature!

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm going to check it out because I am really interested in how skill plays a part in the Gen 1 metagame.

Since we're debating whether or not Gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular or not, I looked at two polls: Pokemon's 2020 Poll Results as well as Favorite Pokemons responses that was released prior to Gen 8. For the former, the top 30 Pokemon featured 25 Pokemon that were not Gen 1, and the #1 Pokemon wasn't even Charizard. It was Greninja. In fact, Charizard and Gengar were the only two that were in the top 10 that were from Gen 1. Its worth noting that the majority of these have had received some fan service in the past, like Mega, Z-Move, or Gigantamax. I also understand that this poll did it have its structure problems, but since Greninja did place #1 is another poll, there is definitely some truth to it.

Anyway, back onto the Pokemon data themselves, the top 4 Pokemon are from Gen 1: Charizard, Gengar, Arcanine, Bulbasaur. As for the top 30 Pokemon, 13 out of 30 Pokemon are from Gen 1. So there's more Gen 1 compared to TPC's official poll, however, the majority of Pokemon are from other generations, 17 out of 30 for other generations.

So the representation of Gen 1 in the two polls for the top 30 is roughly 30% for both polls added together. For TPC's poll separately, its 17%, while for the Favorite responses, its roughly 43%. More noticeably in the latter, the number higher.

Saying that Gen 1 Pokemon are more popular over the other generation's Pokemon is simply not true, as the other generations have had dominated the other two polls in both cases. I understand there's definitely more research needed, but saying that the new Pokemon can't be as popular as Gen 1 is untrue, as a Dragapult was #11 for TPC's poll one shot above Gengar.

I also agree that I feel that its a less of that the Gen 1 Pokemon are the most popular, but more like they are a favorites of the original GF staff. Charizard is the favorite of Atsuko Nishida, the character designer for the Chamander line, Pikachu, and the Eeveelutions. Vensaur and Gengar are the favorites of Ken Sugimori, another Character Designer. Satoshi Tajiri's favorite Pokemon is Poliwag. Junuchi Masuda's favorite Pokemon is Psyduck, in addition to Psyduck, Sylveon, Exeggcutor-Alola to name a few. Speaking Exeggutor, is Mr. Ishihara's favorite since RB, the first and only TPC president. These are heads of the GF since the days of RB, so its not surprising they want to create that same adventure akin to RB every time. It also points why Charizard snd friends keep getting attention. There favorites of GF, so of course they want them in the game getting super mechanics and represented- they want to relive the glory of RB.

So yeah, I strongly believe that group of Kanto mons not only because they are recognizable, but they are favorites of the original staff, despite the staff having other options for favorite Pokemon.

This is a great point. I had forgotten about polls, but yeah, they show that the Gen 1 Pokémon are not the only popular ones. But I also agree that more reasearch is needed and that the official poll was flawed in structure. I also think you may be onto something when it comes to the fact that it seems that the favorites of the Game Freak staff are the ones getting the more attention. It does not surprise me that it seems to be the case now that we look closer at it. But I guess I would have done the same. If I were in charge, I would totally favorise my favorites and insta-dexit my least favorites.

Slightly unrelated to this entire thread and this discussion, but there is one Gen 1 Pokémon which I wonder about when it comes to popularity. It feels to me that it seems more popular than it is, for the lack of a better phrase. The one I am talking about is Jigglypuff. I only thought of this because of how it has been included in the Smash Bros series since the beginning. Going from the polls, Jigglypuff doesn't seem to be all that popular. It isn't even in the top 30 from Kanto in the official poll, meaning it got less than 9955 votes on the whole. It is notably less popular than Porygon, Dragonair and Magnemite if we go by the poll, which surprises me as those three doesn't seem like very popular Pokémon to me. If we look at the other poll, Jigglypuff is at 82nd place overall, with 162 votes. It made it to the top 100 at least but it stills feels rather low for a Pokémon that "feels" popular. I'm not sure about Jigglypuff really, maybe it is just still living on it's popularity from the Gen 1 days (I know that it had quite a role in the anime, and in Pokémon Adventures, Green (the girl) has one as her main Pokémon). Maybe it is super popular in Japan or something? I don't know.

Now, since the topic of B/W and the Gen 5 Pokémon came up, and I feel like I need to say something about it as well.

First of all, my unpopular opinion is that I liked how B/W had a 100% focus on their new Pokémon during the main game. I consider it to be something positive and not an issue. In comparison to the other first pairs, I think B/W is one of the few ones that actually does a good job at showcasing the new Pokémon. The only others that succeded reasonably well were R/S and R/B (since they had only new Pokémon by default). But the others have issues. Let's take a look.

G/S: Tried as hard as they could to make the Johto Pokémon overshadowed by the Kanto Pokémon in every instance
D/P: Did not even feature all the Sinnoh Pokémon in the regional dex
X/Y: Decent, but the combination of having the lowest amount of new Pokémon to date and the largest regional dex to date meant that the Kalos Pokémon more or less drowned in the masses of old Pokémon
S/M: Did their best to make a vast majority of the new Pokémon as uncommon, rare or elusive as possible
S/S: Did an excellent job at showcasing the new Pokémon early in the game, then they more or less went into the same trap as X/Y once you get to the wild area and beyond. Still decent though

Overall, I'd rank the first pairs like this when it comes to how well they managed to showcase their new Pokémon:
B/W = R/B (by default) > R/S > X/Y = S/S > D/P > S/M > G/S

So I think B/W did way better than most if not all other first pairs when it came to showcasing their new Pokémon.

To make it follow the Unpopular Opinion thread... Personally, Black and White having only Gen 5 Pokémon until post-game had really done more damage than good those games and should be even more criticized for. I know what you're thinking, it's also a popular opinion that fans didn't liked that there's only Gen 5 Pokémon in Black and White until the post-game, but it's much more damaging than you think, and not just sales-wise.

I can't disagree more. Saying that they deserve more criticism for that is ridiculous considering how much they recieved in the past, and still do in the present to an extent. If anything, I think they did not deserve even half of the criticism they have gotten, I think they deserve a lot more praise instead. Also, how in the world is it "much more damaging than you think"? Even if we ignore the sales, I don't see it. If we do include the sales, I don't really see it either. B/W sold 15.64 million copies according to the official site, they are the 6th best-selling DS games overall. While that is less than D/P, the difference is only 2 million copies. And B2/W2 sold more than Platinum, Emerald and Crystal, they sold less than Yellow and US/UM though.

Taking the "Self-Contained" aspect too far. Not having any returning Pokémon at all until the post-game did give a legitimate reason haters give flacks to the first pair of Gen 5 games. Wanting the players to try out the new Pokémon is perfectly fine, if actually good, but doing so by having no Pokémon from previous generations at all can prove alienating. This also make a cause for the three sub-aspects below:

Hardly a legitimate reason to hate them if you ask me. I think dexit is a far more legitimate reason to hate criticise a game for. B/W still allowed you to get all old Pokémon, you just had to beat the game first.

Strained Diversity. Like back in Gen 1, there's not really all that many option with only 156 options (-12 being Legends + Mythical, making 144 options overall), not helping that some were a lot rarer than they should be (like Maractus). Although it did a somewhat better job at Type diversity than previous Generations, some comes off as too similar to previous Generation Pokémon (i.e. there are comparison between the Gothitelle line and the Gardevoir line). Previous Pokémon from previous generations can be transferred, but only in post-game if I recall correctly.

This resulted repeated Pokémon among NPCs, which is forgivable in Gen 1 and 2, but become less and less excusable in later Generations when it comes to the region's new Pokémon.

Before B2/W2 came around, the games generally didn't have very large regional dexes. The only ones that are larger than B/W and were released before them are R/S/E, Platinum and the Johto games. Out of them, I think Platinum is fine. The Hoenn games have serious issues with the water routes but the land routes are fine. The Johto games had the largest pre-B/W dexes, but they have issues with diversity for some types (notably Ghost and Dragon) while they also have more serious issues with the overall Pokémon distribution. R/B/Y, FR/LG and D/P have more serious issues. That said, you could still argue that this is an issue with B/W, but only if you compare them to the games that were released after them. And even so, a large chunk of older games have the same issue as well, so then they deserve to be criticised for it as well.

If anything, I think most other first pairs deserve more criticism for their regional dexes than what B/W do. To me, the most notable are D/P which locks out a large chunk of the new Pokémon to the post-game, as well as G/S and S/M which do a terrible job at showcasing their new Pokémon.

Lack of Cross-Generational Additions. Now, we know that Gen 4 adds a lot of evolution + pre-evolution for Pokémon from previous generations, a few of which are certainly aren't fan favorites, but after make a complete "fresh slate" Gen 5 did, this also means no new evolution or pre-evolution at all. Gen 5 was the Generation that ends up completely dropping the concept of expanding the previous lines, and as much as I don't really think Alomomola should be an evolution of Luvdisc, the similarities is certainly striking and a missed opportunity for many fans.

Now Gen 6 (almost) and Gen 7 repeated that too, but at this point, fans gave up of wanting new cross-generation evolutions until Gen 8, which introduced Regional Evolutions that are generally very well received.

It is no surprise that they more or less dropped the concept of cross-generational new evolutions after the reception they got for them in Gen 4. Did you know that prior to Gen 5, Gen 4 also recieved a lot of criticism for its new Pokémon? Most notably the majority of the new evolutions for old Pokémon, which many fans claimed "ruined" the old Pokémon, and it proved that Game Freak were "running out of ideas". After that, I am not surprised that they dropped them after that. If anything, I am more surprised that they actually did a few more in more recent generations, with Sylveon and the Galarian evolutions.

Overall Bad First Impression to Generation 5 Pokémon. Although every generation have their own suckers, some fans have a tendency to criticize or hate the likes of Garbodor and Vanilluxe to death, which is actually a result of a lack of returning Pokémon. One may say "quantity over quality" but that is difficult to say that's the opposite in Gen 6, 7 and 8 for various reasons, and it's really subjective for those cases. In Gen 5, there are so many new Pokémon that there are bound of some that ends up being too similar to previous Pokémon in the eyes of some fans, not helping that the above mentioned Garbodor and Vanilluxe, as well as the Simi Monkeys and a few other Gen 5 mons with mediocre reception, sticks out like sore thumbs in comparison to even previous generations' "Badmons" at this point.

Other generations have recieved similar criticism, so I don't see your point here. Maybe it was more extreme for Gen 5 than others, but even so, I don't see why we should single out Gen 5. Gen 4 got criticised for other reasons as I stated above and did you know what? Gen 3 got criticised for similar reasons to Gen 5 when it was new, but it seems like everyone has forgotten about that nowadays. I found some old threads on Serebii (from when Gen 3 was the newest) a few years ago where people made similar statements to what the Gen 5 Pokémon got, and it surprised me.

If Gen 6, 7 or 8 repeated that mistake (while including Regional Variants), that might be even worse, as there are fewer options available. Which is definitely ridiculous to think about, since stuff like Mega Evolution or Gigantamax means of course some past Pokémon will return to get either of special treatment, but who knows if the opposite ends up happening; a new Generation with little to no new Pokémon at all.

They couldn't have done the same for Gen 6/7/8 since they have smaller numbers of new Pokémon, meaning their regional dexes would be extremely small compared to previous generations.

If anything, I think the extreme negative fan reception to the new Pokémon in Gen 5 is the reason they never did something like B/W again. Game Freak sometimes listens to their fans. While this might give us good results at some points, that's not always the case. After only focusing on new Pokémon in B/W, it seems obvious that they never wanted to do something like that again because the fans generally didn't like it. A shame for us that did like it though. Afterwards, we have gotten new generations with smaller numbers of new Pokémon that never have the full focus on them, which feels like a step backwards from B/W if you ask me.

Personally, I'd say the only way that B/W and Gen 5 "damaged the franchise" was because of the bad fan-reception they got, which caused Game Freak to completely change their approach to future games. This might be why all games after Gen 5 have been declining in content/features and even gameplay as of late. It may also be why the franchise is currently in such a sad state and why we see garbage like Let's Go, dexit and "free-to-start" Unite (lol) instead of the games and spin-offs with higher quality that we got in the past. I think the fandom in general needs to be less whiny and greedy. We might not agree with everything Game Freak does, but from what I have seen, complaining and whining about everything tends to make things worse in the next generation, not better.

While we're at it, more unpopular opinions from me that is related to this. First of all, I dislike when people talk about some Gen 5 Pokémon as "rip-offs" (or similar terms) of older Pokémon. And this is for several reasons. First of all, why can't there be two Pokémon of the same or a similar concept? Is the Simisear not allowed to exist because Infernape was first? Is the Poliwag line the only frog line allowed to exist, meaning that the Tympole line (and the Froakie line for that matter) are not allowed to exist? Personally, I don't mind there being two or more Pokémon based on the same concept. In fact, I even like it. For instance, if we look at Politoed, Seismitoad and Greninja, they are all Water-type frogs but they are very different in many different ways and I like all three of them.

Second, and this is definitely unpopular. I never really noticed that many of the Gen 5 Pokémon resembled older Pokémon when I first played B/W. If people hadn't whined so much about it on Pokémon sites, I would probably never have noticed it either. All of the Gen 5 Pokémon always felt completely new to me. And if we do look at them in comparison to older Pokémon, I personally much rather prefer to see them as homages and not "rip-offs", because homages are what they really are. And if we compare the Gen 5 Pokémon to similar older Pokémon, I prefer the Gen 5 Pokémon over the older ones in a vast majority of the cases.

Third, if we now are going to look at Pokémon as "rip-offs" of older Pokémon, why just focus on Gen 5? All other generations except maybe Gen 2 have plenty of examples that can be seem as "rip-offs" of older Pokémon as well. Some examples below.
Gen 3 had the Poochyena line which can be seen as similar to the Houndour line, the Wurmple line which is similar to the Caterpie and Weedle lines, and the Feebas line which is similar to the Magikarp line.
Gen 4 had the Glameow line which is similar to the Meowth line and the Shinx line which is similar to the Electrike line.
Gen 6 had the Fennekin and Froakie lines which are similar to the Vulpix and Poliwag/Tympole lines, and the Bunnelby line which is similar to the Buneary line.
Gen 7 had Passimian which is similar to the Mankey line, and the Bounsweet line which is similar to the Petilil line.
Gen 8 had Wooloo which is similar to Mareep, the Grookey line which is similar to the Pansage line, and the Nickit line which is similar to the Zorua line.
And there's many others too, I just listed some simple examples here. My unpopular opinions here is that Gen 5 gets too much criticism for this while all other generations basically go uncriticized for this. I also dislike only seeing new Pokémon as similar to old ones, I prefer to see all new Pokémon as their own instead of just references/homages/"rip-offs" to old ones.

Lastly, what was more said about B/W? Late evolution levels and how some Pokémon are only available during the post-game. The really late evolution levels are not that much of an issue, I think there's only a handful of Pokémon that are downright impossible to evolve before the E4. That said, I am a person who tends to grind a lot so I am probably not the best person to ask here. I think my teams in B/W were at level 50 or above when I first beat the games. That said, I do agree that they handled Zoroark poorly, it shouldn't have been event-only.

But even so, B/W aren't the only games with this issue. Good luck getting several Johto Pokémon before beating the game in the Johto games, like Larvitar or Sneasel. Many new Pokémon in D/P suffers from the same issue, then you couldn't get the Beldum line before beating the game in R/S, and I think the Dreepy line in S/S too? Not sure about it though. So again, why complain about B/W when other games have the same issue?

Lastly, I also love the graphics and color palette of Gen 5. Thanks to Magcargo for mentioning it! I have never really thought about it being "darker" than Gen 4 before, but now that you say it, I agree. And I like it. This helped the games feel more mature than Gen 4 which felt immature in many instances for me (especially HG/SS). I think this goes very well with the themes of the games being more serious and mature than previous generations. Another unpopular opinion is that I really like the sprites of Gen 5, I think they are really good and them being pixilated never bothered me at all.

This was once again another great opportunity for me to say some things I have wanted to say for a while. So thanks! If there are any responses to this, I'll answer back tomorrow.

 

[Samtendo09]

I disagree about the side-games making the main games better on their own, but I do agree with you that the older generations did side-games with connections to the main games better than the newer generations. As said, I never owned the Stadium games but I did play Colosseum and XD for Gen 3 and PBR for Gen 4, those games were a ton of fun! I kinda miss these types of games for the newer generations, it seems like the concept was more or less dropped after Gen 4. Might have been because PBR got a rather negative reception in general (I liked it though).

And the printer too! That's another unique thing for Gen 1 and 2. And another thing I never got to try out since I never owned a Game Boy printer, but it seemed really cool.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm going to check it out because I am really interested in how skill plays a part in the Gen 1 metagame.

This is a great point. I had forgotten about polls, but yeah, they show that the Gen 1 Pokémon are not the only popular ones. But I also agree that more reasearch is needed and that the official poll was flawed in structure. I also think you may be onto something when it comes to the fact that it seems that the favorites of the Game Freak staff are the ones getting the more attention. It does not surprise me that it seems to be the case now that we look closer at it. But I guess I would have done the same. If I were in charge, I would totally favorise my favorites and insta-dexit my least favorites.

Slightly unrelated to this entire thread and this discussion, but there is one Gen 1 Pokémon which I wonder about when it comes to popularity. It feels to me that it seems more popular than it is, for the lack of a better phrase. The one I am talking about is Jigglypuff. I only thought of this because of how it has been included in the Smash Bros series since the beginning. Going from the polls, Jigglypuff doesn't seem to be all that popular. It isn't even in the top 30 from Kanto in the official poll, meaning it got less than 9955 votes on the whole. It is notably less popular than Porygon, Dragonair and Magnemite if we go by the poll, which surprises me as those three doesn't seem like very popular Pokémon to me. If we look at the other poll, Jigglypuff is at 82nd place overall, with 162 votes. It made it to the top 100 at least but it stills feels rather low for a Pokémon that "feels" popular. I'm not sure about Jigglypuff really, maybe it is just still living on it's popularity from the Gen 1 days (I know that it had quite a role in the anime, and in Pokémon Adventures, Green (the girl) has one as her main Pokémon). Maybe it is super popular in Japan or something? I don't know.

Now, since the topic of B/W and the Gen 5 Pokémon came up, and I feel like I need to say something about it as well.

First of all, my unpopular opinion is that I liked how B/W had a 100% focus on their new Pokémon during the main game. I consider it to be something positive and not an issue. In comparison to the other first pairs, I think B/W is one of the few ones that actually does a good job at showcasing the new Pokémon. The only others that succeded reasonably well were R/S and R/B (since they had only new Pokémon by default). But the others have issues. Let's take a look.

G/S: Tried as hard as they could to make the Johto Pokémon overshadowed by the Kanto Pokémon in every instance
D/P: Did not even feature all the Sinnoh Pokémon in the regional dex
X/Y: Decent, but the combination of having the lowest amount of new Pokémon to date and the largest regional dex to date meant that the Kalos Pokémon more or less drowned in the masses of old Pokémon
S/M: Did their best to make a vast majority of the new Pokémon as uncommon, rare or elusive as possible
S/S: Did an excellent job at showcasing the new Pokémon early in the game, then they more or less went into the same trap as X/Y once you get to the wild area and beyond. Still decent though

Overall, I'd rank the first pairs like this when it comes to how well they managed to showcase their new Pokémon:
B/W = R/B (by default) > R/S > X/Y = S/S > D/P > S/M > G/S

So I think B/W did way better than most if not all other first pairs when it came to showcasing their new Pokémon.

I can't disagree more. Saying that they deserve more criticism for that is ridiculous considering how much they recieved in the past, and still do in the present to an extent. If anything, I think they did not deserve even half of the criticism they have gotten, I think they deserve a lot more praise instead. Also, how in the world is it "much more damaging than you think"? Even if we ignore the sales, I don't see it. If we do include the sales, I don't really see it either. B/W sold 15.64 million copies according to the official site, they are the 6th best-selling DS games overall. While that is less than D/P, the difference is only 2 million copies. And B2/W2 sold more than Platinum, Emerald and Crystal, they sold less than Yellow and US/UM though.

Hardly a legitimate reason to hate them if you ask me. I think dexit is a far more legitimate reason to hate criticise a game for. B/W still allowed you to get all old Pokémon, you just had to beat the game first.

Before B2/W2 came around, the games generally didn't have very large regional dexes. The only ones that are larger than B/W and were released before them are R/S/E, Platinum and the Johto games. Out of them, I think Platinum is fine. The Hoenn games have serious issues with the water routes but the land routes are fine. The Johto games had the largest pre-B/W dexes, but they have issues with diversity for some types (notably Ghost and Dragon) while they also have more serious issues with the overall Pokémon distribution. R/B/Y, FR/LG and D/P have more serious issues. That said, you could still argue that this is an issue with B/W, but only if you compare them to the games that were released after them. And even so, a large chunk of older games have the same issue as well, so then they deserve to be criticised for it as well.

If anything, I think most other first pairs deserve more criticism for their regional dexes than what B/W do. To me, the most notable are D/P which locks out a large chunk of the new Pokémon to the post-game, as well as G/S and S/M which do a terrible job at showcasing their new Pokémon.

It is no surprise that they more or less dropped the concept of cross-generational new evolutions after the reception they got for them in Gen 4. Did you know that prior to Gen 5, Gen 4 also recieved a lot of criticism for its new Pokémon? Most notably the majority of the new evolutions for old Pokémon, which many fans claimed "ruined" the old Pokémon, and it proved that Game Freak were "running out of ideas". After that, I am not surprised that they dropped them after that. If anything, I am more surprised that they actually did a few more in more recent generations, with Sylveon and the Galarian evolutions.

Other generations have recieved similar criticism, so I don't see your point here. Maybe it was more extreme for Gen 5 than others, but even so, I don't see why we should single out Gen 5. Gen 4 got criticised for other reasons as I stated above and did you know what? Gen 3 got criticised for similar reasons to Gen 5 when it was new, but it seems like everyone has forgotten about that nowadays. I found some old threads on Serebii (from when Gen 3 was the newest) a few years ago where people made similar statements to what the Gen 5 Pokémon got, and it surprised me.

They couldn't have done the same for Gen 6/7/8 since they have smaller numbers of new Pokémon, meaning their regional dexes would be extremely small compared to previous generations.

If anything, I think the extreme negative fan reception to the new Pokémon in Gen 5 is the reason they never did something like B/W again. Game Freak sometimes listens to their fans. While this might give us good results at some points, that's not always the case. After only focusing on new Pokémon in B/W, it seems obvious that they never wanted to do something like that again because the fans generally didn't like it. A shame for us that did like it though. Afterwards, we have gotten new generations with smaller numbers of new Pokémon that never have the full focus on them, which feels like a step backwards from B/W if you ask me.

Personally, I'd say the only way that B/W and Gen 5 "damaged the franchise" was because of the bad fan-reception they got, which caused Game Freak to completely change their approach to future games. This might be why all games after Gen 5 have been declining in content/features and even gameplay as of late. It may also be why the franchise is currently in such a sad state and why we see garbage like Let's Go, dexit and "free-to-start" Unite (lol) instead of the games and spin-offs with higher quality that we got in the past. I think the fandom in general needs to be less whiny and greedy. We might not agree with everything Game Freak does, but from what I have seen, complaining and whining about everything tends to make things worse in the next generation, not better.

While we're at it, more unpopular opinions from me that is related to this. First of all, I dislike when people talk about some Gen 5 Pokémon as "rip-offs" (or similar terms) of older Pokémon. And this is for several reasons. First of all, why can't there be two Pokémon of the same or a similar concept? Is the Simisear not allowed to exist because Infernape was first? Is the Poliwag line the only frog line allowed to exist, meaning that the Tympole line (and the Froakie line for that matter) are not allowed to exist? Personally, I don't mind there being two or more Pokémon based on the same concept. In fact, I even like it. For instance, if we look at Politoed, Seismitoad and Greninja, they are all Water-type frogs but they are very different in many different ways and I like all three of them.

Second, and this is definitely unpopular. I never really noticed that many of the Gen 5 Pokémon resembled older Pokémon when I first played B/W. If people hadn't whined so much about it on Pokémon sites, I would probably never have noticed it either. All of the Gen 5 Pokémon always felt completely new to me. And if we do look at them in comparison to older Pokémon, I personally much rather prefer to see them as homages and not "rip-offs", because homages are what they really are. And if we compare the Gen 5 Pokémon to similar older Pokémon, I prefer the Gen 5 Pokémon over the older ones in a vast majority of the cases.

Third, if we now are going to look at Pokémon as "rip-offs" of older Pokémon, why just focus on Gen 5? All other generations except maybe Gen 2 have plenty of examples that can be seem as "rip-offs" of older Pokémon as well. Some examples below.
Gen 3 had the Poochyena line which can be seen as similar to the Houndour line, the Wurmple line which is similar to the Caterpie and Weedle lines, and the Feebas line which is similar to the Magikarp line.
Gen 4 had the Glameow line which is similar to the Meowth line and the Shinx line which is similar to the Electrike line.
Gen 6 had the Fennekin and Froakie lines which are similar to the Vulpix and Poliwag/Tympole lines, and the Bunnelby line which is similar to the Buneary line.
Gen 7 had Passimian which is similar to the Mankey line, and the Bounsweet line which is similar to the Petilil line.
Gen 8 had Wooloo which is similar to Mareep, the Grookey line which is similar to the Pansage line, and the Nickit line which is similar to the Zorua line.
And there's many others too, I just listed some simple examples here. My unpopular opinions here is that Gen 5 gets too much criticism for this while all otheThr generations basically go uncriticized for this. I also dislike only seeing new Pokémon as similar to old ones, I prefer to see all new Pokémon as their own instead of just references/homages/"rip-offs" to old ones.

Lastly, what was more said about B/W? Late evolution levels and how some Pokémon are only available during the post-game. The really late evolution levels are not that much of an issue, I think there's only a handful of Pokémon that are downright impossible to evolve before the E4. That said, I am a person who tends to grind a lot so I am probably not the best person to ask here. I think my teams in B/W were at level 50 or above when I first beat the games. That said, I do agree that they handled Zoroark poorly, it shouldn't have been event-only.

But even so, B/W aren't the only games with this issue. Good luck getting several Johto Pokémon before beating the game in the Johto games, like Larvitar or Sneasel. Many new Pokémon in D/P suffers from the same issue, then you couldn't get the Beldum line before beating the game in R/S, and I think the Dreepy line in S/S too? Not sure about it though. So again, why complain about B/W when other games have the same issue?

Lastly, I also love the graphics and color palette of Gen 5. Thanks to Magcargo for mentioning it! I have never really thought about it being "darker" than Gen 4 before, but now that you say it, I agree. And I like it. This helped the games feel more mature than Gen 4 which felt immature in many instances for me (especially HG/SS). I think this goes very well with the themes of the games being more serious and mature than previous generations. Another unpopular opinion is that I really like the sprites of Gen 5, I think they are really good and them being pixilated never bothered me at all.

This was once again another great opportunity for me to say some things I have wanted to say for a while. So thanks! If there are any responses to this, I'll answer back tomorrow.

But the way fan complained massively about Dexit and even HOME for more than a year, it will definitely going to cause GF to ignore them even further if they proved ungrateful in the long run. I do not agree with the direction GF is going, but I definitely know that they are taking advantage of nostalgia as much as possible, even if they over did it with Gen 1 as we know it.

If you want a proper unpopular opinion, here goes nothing: Regardless of how do you think of Leon fondly or not, Charizard being Leon's Ace is just a bad story design. Not just because of the usual "Kanto pandering" reason, but because it was done in a way that not only it isn't even a Pokémon of Galar you could even catch, but the fact that the story makes it so Leon have always Charizard, not any of the other two Kanto starter depending on your starter.

Nothing tells where Leon even get his Charizard from in the game perspective - I don't know if the anime at least elaborated so I only said game perspective because of that - or if he even hails from Kanto where the three Kanto starters can be legitimately obtains where he goes on a similar journey to Red. Rules of convention to details tells he might, sure, but there's no concrete proof other than having Charizard as his Ace to clarify any of that.

Now Leon is definitely no pushover, he's the champion of Galar after all. But if you happens to choose Grookey, Leon ends up having two Fire-types that do not really cover each others' weaknesses except Charizard's Solar Beam (where it cannot summon sun because of it's Gigantamax form), as Cinderace only have Pyro Ball, Acrobatics, Feint and Quick Attack, the latter two bring priorty Normal-type attacks, and none of these moves allows it to hit super effectively against what could threaten Charizard. This is not a probelm if the player chooses Sobble (Leon uses Rillaboom in this case) or Scorbunny (Leon uses Intelleon), but still, this needs to be pointed out.

If Leon's Ace actually depends on what starter you choose (for example, Leon's Ace will be Blastoise so your Rillaboom would be useful but still had to watch for Cinderace, or inversely a Venusaur to match your starter's primary type), with the other two Kanto starters having their Gigantamax forms available earlier than Isle of Armor, then it wouldn't be as bad as him being completely locked into Charizard at the expense of the other two Kanto starters. Still "Kanto pandering", but nowhere as a severe favoritism.

The anime and Spin-off can all keep Leon his Charizard, but the game itself should at least not restrict to one previous starter and the Kanto starter in question should depends on what your Galar starter is as well, with the story not letting Leon showing his Ace before the point you get either Grookey, Scorbunny or Sobble. This at least give a layer of surprise that the player would not expect, Kanto or otherwise.

 

[Tmi489]

If you want a proper unpopular opinion, here goes nothing: Regardless of how do you think of Leon fondly or not, Charizard being Leon's Ace is just a bad story design.

its bad game design but story wise it makes sense
leon is a showman and charizard is a "cool", popular mon
because zard is popular leon could've imported it to look cool

Now Leon is definitely no pushover, he's the champion of Galar after all. But if you happens to choose Grookey, Leon ends up having two Fire-types that do not really cover each others' weaknesses except Charizard's Solar Beam (where it cannot summon sun because of it's Gigantamax form), as Cinderace only have Pyro Ball, Acrobatics, Feint and Quick Attack, the latter two bring priorty Normal-type attacks, and none of these moves allows it to hit super effectively against what could threaten Charizard. This is not a probelm if the player chooses Sobble (Leon uses Rillaboom in this case) or Scorbunny (Leon uses Intelleon), but still, this needs to be pointed out.

i think this wouldve been better if Cinderace had a better movepool (namely hjk or just jk)
though because its 2 fire types vs what is your traditionally higher leveled "ace" starter, you should have an easier time

If Leon's Ace actually depends on what starter you choose (for example, Leon's Ace will be Blastoise so your Rillaboom would be useful but still had to watch for Cinderace, or inversely a Venusaur to match your starter's primary type), with the other two Kanto starters having their Gigantamax forms available earlier than Isle of Armor, then it wouldn't be as bad as him being completely locked into Charizard at the expense of the other two Kanto starters. Still "Kanto pandering", but nowhere as a severe favoritism.
The anime and Spin-off can all keep Leon his Charizard, but the game itself should at least not restrict to one previous starter and the Kanto starter in question should depends on what your Galar starter is as well, with the story not letting Leon showing his Ace before the point you get either Grookey, Scorbunny or Sobble. This at least give a layer of surprise that the player would not expect, Kanto or otherwise.

storywise he should def be using zard, but if the other 2 mons were secretly in rotation that would be a surprise. the nongames and trailers would've spoiled the fact he used zard so we'd expect at least one starter

 

[Yung Dramps]

So I'm not gonna through every part of Suspicious' post, I skimmed through and it seems just as high quality as always

I do wanna respond to this doe

Hardly a legitimate reason to hate them if you ask me. I think dexit is a far more legitimate reason to hate criticise a game for. B/W still allowed you to get all old Pokémon, you just had to beat the game first.

I've seen this point a few time in discussions about why BW1's new mons only maingame is not as severe as dexit and I don't fully agree. Perhaps it applies to some of the more transfer-savvy hardcore fans, but in regards to the general public (aka the overwhelming majority) it's a much different story.

As we've gone over a few times in this forum across various threads, the aforementioned general public based off of anecdotal evidence and GF's changes in design philosophy tends to care very little for transferring and for postgame content. Now obviously there are outliers in all aspects here, but that's the overall trend. When you operate under this mindset, you'll find that BW1's way of going about things is infinitely worse than Dexit to the average buyer. So what if transferring opens up more old choices in BW1 than SWSH? Most are never gonna bother. BW1 may also have some foreign Pokemon available in postgame areas, but by that point most players have already put the game down and even if they haven't who actually changes up their main team of 6 in the postgame regardless of how much there is to do? In short all that matters to most buyers is what's in the main game, and from that perspective SWSH obviously wins out with the 2nd biggest dex in the series while BW1 has absolutely zero returning mons to let players who may not be as receptive to the new cast anchor themselves to.

Heck, not even the hardcore section at the time was totally safe. If you recall the first BW VGC season (I believe 2011?) had the new 156 minus mascots and mythicals as the only allowed mons. Obviously that's not an issue anymore, but at the time it may have been a pretty big bummer for those hoping that they'd be able to navigate around the restrictions postgame.

leonzard musings

You can actually get Charmander before the postgame. Via max raids only, granted, but it's still an option. I feel like it was probably meant as a reference to The Welsh Dragon and they were thinking "Hey it's a red dragon just like that popular mon." Also as tmi said fits into the whole showman persona, using a popular mon to make himself look good. I've seen people that if it was the former they shoulda given him Druddigon but lol Druddigon

 

[Samtendo09]

its bad game design but story wise it makes sense
leon is a showman and charizard is a "cool", popular mon
because zard is popular leon could've imported it to look cool

i think this wouldve been better if Cinderace had a better movepool (namely hjk or just jk)
though because its 2 fire types vs what is your traditionally higher leveled "ace" starter, you should have an easier time

storywise he should def be using zard, but if the other 2 mons were secretly in rotation that would be a surprise. the nongames and trailers would've spoiled the fact he used zard so we'd expect at least one starter

I feel guilty of not remembering Leon being that showy of a sort. A good person nonetheless, but definitely makes sense in the story after you told me that. Still, one have to consider that a good story design isn't always a good game design, like how you said that it's definitely isn't good game design.

You can actually get Charmander before the postgame. Via max raids only, granted, but it's still an option. I feel like it was probably meant as a reference to The Welsh Dragon and they were thinking "Hey it's a red dragon just like that popular mon." Also as tmi said fits into the whole showman persona, using a popular mon to make himself look good. I've seen people that if it was the former they shoulda given him Druddigon but lol Druddigon

Yeah, that's definitely a lucky reference, and Druddigon definitely isn't a champion ace material any time soon. The Gigantamax form doesn't really reflect that, unfortunately, as the form's only things it shares with the Welsh Dragon are being dragon-like, the orange/red color and fire breathing.

 

[SamuraiCelebi]

Didn't someone theorize that Leon received his Charmander from the Master Dojo, and that's why they only had Bulbasaur and Squirtle to hand out?

 

[Sonikku A]

Unpopular Opinion
Delphox is better than Braixen

The latter of whom who's horrificly feminized based on human standards despite being a 87.5/12.5 more male split, given a voice in Pokken and the anime which makes said issue worse, and its name is even based on feminine terms. Its proportions are weirdly skinny too compared to Delphox

It's honestly a similar issue to primarina, though that line was far more gradual than the "sudden mid stage"

 

[DrPumpkinz]

I think the problem with Leon isn't that he uses a Charizard. It's that he uses the unpicked starter. It was neat when Kukui did it because it was a genuine surprise to fight Kukui, but when Leon turns to the unpicked starter and says "And you’ll come with me! Charizard will show you the ropes." *nudge nudge wink wink* it's like... what's the point? I love when a team gets adapted to your choices, and Leon already does that in a cool and unprecedented way with Seismtoad/Rime/Rhyperior (they have no obvious counterparts with other team permutations, such as with Blue's FWG/FWE cores; they get swapped out with each other just because they do) but they just felt like they had to throw in the starters because they didn't get to do it in RGB, and SM wasn't enough for them, I guess.

 

[hypno28]

Just to be clear, is there any reason to think Charizard is native to Kanto? That's where the games in which players first saw it are set, but just that a species exists there doesn't mean it originated there.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Didn't someone theorize that Leon received his Charmander from the Master Dojo, and that's why they only had Bulbasaur and Squirtle to hand out?

Many think that and I used to, but thinking about it there's some oddity to it. Leon has been Champion for a few years now and had his Charizard for all those years... which would mean that Bulbasaur and Squirtle didn't change at all between the time Leon claiming Charmander and the player claiming one of them for Honey to take the other and train it up. Seems off.

An alternative theory is that the Charmander that Leon gives the player at the end of the game he got from Mustard (remember, you can't breed down Gigantamax factor so it's not the child of his Charizard). "But if you played the DLC before becoming the Champion the Charmander is still gone". That is another gap in the theory, best I can think to get around that is maybe the Charmander was originally going to be a gift for Hop. Around the time he endorsed Hop and the player he asked Mustard if he has another Gigantamax Charmander and was keeping it until he felt Hop was ready (probably after the Champion Cup). However then Hop decides he no longer wants to be a trainer but a Professor so instead gave the player, the new Champion, the Charmander as a congratulation gift.

Just to be clear, is there any reason to think Charizard is native to Kanto? That's where the games in which players first saw it are set, but just that a species exists there doesn't mean it originated there.

Aside from Max Raid Dens you can't get the Kanto Starters normally so they do seem foreign. And I'm not sure if I would count Pokemon found in Max Raid Dens to be considered native species, it feels like they're a bit too game-y to be part of in-game canon.

 

[Ironmage]

I'm really, really, not seeing the connections between Charizard and the Welsh dragon. It's not known for breathing fire, it associated with the Earth, and it's mythological arc deals with fighting a rival dragon. I would say that Garchomp would have worked better solely due to how well Dragon/Ground works for representing it.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Aside from Max Raid Dens you can't get the Kanto Starters normally so they do seem foreign. And I'm not sure if I would count Pokemon found in Max Raid Dens to be considered native species, it feels like they're a bit too game-y to be part of in-game canon.

I mean, it's not like you can get wild starter Pokemon in general. To my knowledge, they've all been either gifts or weird things like Friend Safari, Island Scan, or the aforementioned raids. So it's all a bit of a mystery regarding where these things are actually native to.

 

[DreamPrince]

Slightly unrelated to this entire thread and this discussion, but there is one Gen 1 Pokémon which I wonder about when it comes to popularity. It feels to me that it seems more popular than it is, for the lack of a better phrase. The one I am talking about is Jigglypuff. I only thought of this because of how it has been included in the Smash Bros series since the beginning. Going from the polls, Jigglypuff doesn't seem to be all that popular. It isn't even in the top 30 from Kanto in the official poll, meaning it got less than 9955 votes on the whole. It is notably less popular than Porygon, Dragonair and Magnemite if we go by the poll, which surprises me as those three doesn't seem like very popular Pokémon to me. If we look at the other poll, Jigglypuff is at 82nd place overall, with 162 votes. It made it to the top 100 at least but it stills feels rather low for a Pokémon that "feels" popular. I'm not sure about Jigglypuff really, maybe it is just still living on it's popularity from the Gen 1 days (I know that it had quite a role in the anime, and in Pokémon Adventures, Green (the girl) has one as her main Pokémon). Maybe it is super popular in Japan or something? I don't know.

Jigglypuff was included because it was very easy to model after Kirby- They are roughly the same weight, have similar body shapes, and puff and can float. The original Smash Bros. was very tight budgeted and did not have much development time. As a result, a lot of characters are Echoes due to being easier model. For example, Sakurai wanted to include Marth, but didn't have enough time to develop him.

It is no surprise that they more or less dropped the concept of cross-generational new evolutions after the reception they got for them in Gen 4. Did you know that prior to Gen 5, Gen 4 also recieved a lot of criticism for its new Pokémon? Most notably the majority of the new evolutions for old Pokémon, which many fans claimed "ruined" the old Pokémon, and it proved that Game Freak were "running out of ideas". After that, I am not surprised that they dropped them after that. If anything, I am more surprised that they actually did a few more in more recent generations, with Sylveon and the Galarian evolutions.

Wait? Really? That's shocking because Pokemon like Togekiss, Roserade, Magnezone, and Gliscor were Pokemon that redeemed their lines- without them, their lines genuinely sucked. Do you have any examples of posts like that? In Sylveon's case, I feel like it was an ad for the Fairy type. Ooooh! A new Eeveelution! What type could it be?


And on the topic of Gen 5 designs, its a mixed bag for me. You have Pokemon like Tympole, Munna, Sawk, Throh, and Timburr to name a few that do definitely feel like parallels to Gen 1. GF themselves have admitted to designing Pokemon to be counterparts of other generations, for the example the Minccino line was supposed to be a counterpart to the Clefairy line. Heck, even the Legendary Pokemon have allusions to past trios. The forces of Nature share the flying type with the birds, and Tao trio share their secondary typings with the bird's primary typing. Even the Swords of Justice share their height with the Legendary Beasts.

That being said, Gen 5 does have some pretty solid designs like Chandelure, Krookodile, Cryogonal, Volcarona, and Vanniluxe that are genuinely original, and some of which are my favorites. I think the problem lies in the fact that Gen 5 was supposed to be a "reboot", so people had probably had high expectations of The Pokemon, so when you discover that a new Pokemon is replacing a new Pokemon, it brings up the question? Why not include the old Pokemon if Timburr replaces that role? That being said, like Suspicious Derivative mentioned, it is a misplaced criticism if one does not criticize other Gens for that problem.

As for me, I wasn't fan of BW only having Unova only Pokemon. I was 11 back then. In hindsight, its not a bad choice at all, and if anything, it allows you to appreciate the new Pokemon. If anything, I'm not a fan of the philosophy behind it- Masuda mentioned that the reason BW featured only new Pokemon is be like RB, which is trying to relive the glory days, which has always been GF's priority when making the goal, actually known as Kanto fanservice. If it was to encourage use of new Pokemon, the decision would have been accepted with open arms.

I'm really, really, not seeing the connections between Charizard and the Welsh dragon. It's not known for breathing fire, it associated with the Earth, and it's mythological arc deals with fighting a rival dragon. I would say that Garchomp would have worked better solely due to how well Dragon/Ground works for representing it.

I thought Charizard was based off a Generic Fire-Breathing Dragon?