Glen-i

A little extra money tip as well. In the small village with the mercenary HQ, there's a shop that if you buy 1 of everything, you can get the deeds at Development Level 1, this increases the battle money you get by 10%, which will pay for itself in the long run.

I wouldn't worry too much about money, to be honest. Sooner or later, you'll be swimming in dosh. But you should routinely sell any core crystals and accessories you aren't using. They build up quick.

Ah, bugger! Thanks for that. I've added it to the post. No pressure then, watch me overlook it now. Diamond and Pearl had some serious teething problems, much like every Pokémon game on a new console. But I still consider it one of the most important games for modern Pokémon, even if it's not my favourite. It would be wise to expect similar teething problems with the Switch game. But something tells me Zelda is indirectly raising people's expectations way too high. I tell you what though, I'm going to miss dual screen functionality.

I just got that myself. Laughed out loud when I saw the running animation.

Yeah, yeah. I said it'd be up Thursday, I suck with deadlines. Generation 4 - Diamond/Pearl/Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver Gen 4 kicked off with the DS games Diamond and Pearl. They came out in 2006 over in Japan and utilised the dual screens (One of course being touch controlled) of the hit console to streamline the Pokemon experience. The games were set in Sinnoh and introduced 107 new Pokemon (493 total), 29 of which are either prevolutions or evolutions of old Pokemon and 1 that looks like a penis. The third version, Platinum, came out in 2008. This generation also saw the remakes of the Gen 2 games. HeartGold and SoulSilver came out after Platinum did in 2009. It bought the classic Game Boy Colour games up to date, added new areas and included the extra content from Crystal. Diamond and Pearl bought back a few mechanics that were dropped in Gen 3. Backwards Compatibility returned, allowing players to transfer Pokemon from the Gen 3 games using the GBA slot the DS sported. This meant that you didn't need anything extra to do so. Well, you did need to finish the game and get access to the in game "Pal Park" This was a one way trip though, so you couldn't transfer Pokemon to the GBA games. The Day and Night cycle came back, making use of the DS' in-built clock. It was very similar to how it worked in Gen 2. What Diamond and Pearl introduced were... Well, the big new feature was worldwide online capabilities. Using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, friends could battle and trade with each other over the internet. It even featured Voice Chat using the DS' built in Microphone. There was also the option to trade pokemon with strangers online. You could search for a Pokemon you're looking for or put one of your own up for offer and state what you want in return. Cue thousands of totally reasonable people offering a Magikarp and wanting a Mewtwo in return. Over in the battling side of the game, there was a big massive change known as the Physical/Special Split. You may remember me talking about Physical and Special attacks back in the Gen 2 post. Up until now, it was determined by the type of the move. Fire, Water, and Grass moves were classified as Special moves while Normal, Fighting and Steel moves were Physical ones, etc. Gen 4 changes this so that it no longer mattered what type a move was. Whether a move was Physical or Special was determined by the move itself. For example, Thunderbolt and Thunder Punch are both electric moves. However, Thunderbolt is classified as a Special Attack while Thunder Punch is a Physical Attack. To date, this is the single most important thing to happen to the battling mechanics in Pokemon. Hundreds of new possibilities opened up to trainers. You could teach Physically based Pokemon like Feraligatr Ice Punch and it'd be able to pull it off well. The sheer scope of what every Pokemon could realistically use blew wide open. There was also a new multiplayer mode called the underground. Building upon the Secret Bases of Gen 3, the Underground allows players to use local wireless connections to simultaneously run around a sprawling underground cavern underneath the majority of the Sinnoh region. Players could build Secret Bases in the walls and decorate them with furniture and stuff. Players could also visit other people's bases and effectively jack their flag and leg it back to their base, before they're caught by anyone else. You could also set various traps to try and stop anyone nicking flags. Collecting flags would net you rewards. As well as petty theft, players could also perform excavations to find valuable items and jewels. That about does it for Diamond/Pearl, but Platinum tweaked the online capabilities a tad as well as bring back something from Emerald and introduce a new feature that only the most hardcore would really use. The online capabilities were expanded to include a new facility called the Wi-Fi Plaza which allowed you to play a number of mini games with random people online. Although you still couldn't battle them. The Battle Frontier made a return with 3 new facilities and 2 returning ones. The coolest thing about this was that you could team up with a friend through a Wi-Fi connection and tackle it together online. The Vs. Recorder made it's debut in Platinum. This allowed you to save recordings of battles you had in the Battle Frontier or against friends. You could even share these online so others could watch them. Some of you might remember me posting some of the battles I had online in the Sun and Moon thread. You've got Platinum to thank (or blame). Mystery Gift got another redesign, returning to it's original name. It finally settled into the usage it sees these days, allowing people to download Event Pokemon through an online connection, making them much more accessible to everyone. HeartGold and SoulSilver than went and gave us... The return of Pokemon following you. But instead of just Pikachu, any Pokemon could walk behind you. While it was mostly cosmetic, it added a lot of charm to the game, with different Pokemon reacting to different situations. Ground Pokemon get freaked out by standing in water, etc. There were even special interactions when you bought a specific Pokemon to a certain place. (Try bringing an Electrode to the Rocket Hideout) By the way, this would be the last time this feature showed up. No other game has done it, much to many fans disappointment. This game also came bundled with the Pokewalker. A real life accessory that let the player effectively take their Pokemon for a walk. (So no, Pokemon GO did not do it first) It had a pedometer that counted the number of steps you took, and connected with the DS game to help you train your Pokemon, get items and even catch new Pokemon. You could even connect to another person's Pokewalker and do an old school Mystery Gift connection, Gen 2 style. So that's Gen 4, while there weren't as many new mechanics as previous gens, what it did introduce was huge. Online capabilities allowed many more people to trade and battle with other players, and the battle mechanics were blown wide open. Gen 4 was quite the exciting time for long time fans, me being one of them. Next up is Gen 5, my personal favourite, but would it's mechanics have a lasting effect on the series?

Just gonna jump in here and point out that which Pokemon you get depends on the version you have. Sun and Ultra Sun get Palkia while Moon and Ultra Moon get Dialga. Effectively, it's the Gen 4 legendary you can't get through normal gameplay on the Ultra games.

I can answer both questions with one answer, budget. I don't make a lot of money, it's either internet or games. And what's the point in having internet with nothing to play? It's generally why I don't actually buy games like Mario Kart and Splatoon. Gaming in my house is mostly single player based.

Highlights from me and @Dcubed

Not for someone who doesn't have an internet connection in their house. (I know I'm in a massive minority)

Well, that was an interesting night. Here's the results. And here's the current League table. Well, first of all, the table paints a pretty disastrous picture at first glance, but everyone's averages actually went up. (Well, except @RedShell, @BowserBasher and me) Yesterday really narrowed the gulf between people. There's a lot of people with the same average as someone else now. @RedShell tying with @Nicktendo, @viceview51 with @Vileplume2000 and @Nintendo Fan with @S.C.G. Super creepy. Amazingly enough, @S.C.G, @Vileplume2000 and I all came first in the third GP. Is that a first in N-E history? @martinist and @Dcubed return to the League with varying degrees of success. @EEVILMURRAY romps straight into second place with a solid showing in battle despite his complaining. Of course, averages are still fragile at this early stage, so who knows what will happen next week? Speaking of next week, here's the first Theme night of the year. Room 1: @BowserBasher is host BowserBasher viceview51 Starting the themes with a pretty straight forward one. A setup that no-one really uses, with some different rules thrown into the mix. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to make it this week. So I'll leave the organising in @BowserBasher's and @RedShell's capable hands. @BowserBasher, don't forget to repost the theme image on Thursday and keep track of who is in. @RedShell, can I count on you to take a picture of the results on each GP? Ta! Sign Up Now!

Pretty much. I just gotta hope @Dcubed can't resist and piggyback off of that. I doubt they'll let people play the likes of Mario Kart and Splatoon without charging for it, though. That's too good to be true.

@Nicktendo, you coming? Typical, he would come online as soon as I post...

You need to join @BowserBasher via the Friends and Rivals option. His Mii's name is Simon. Make sure you have his friend code registered.

@BowserBasher, where you at?

It looks fine, but compared to the old one, it just feels a bit generic. The DS original had this nice rustic charm to it that helped it stand out from other JRPG's. Either way, I highly recommend it. It's got a great plot, some good characters and an interesting "Choose your own adventure book" style mechanic.

The demo is out now. I like the clearer resolution and the new voice acting seems serviceable so far. But... ...yeah... I'm buying the old art DLC and I hate myself for falling for that.

Nice to have that Baby Park mystery cleared up. Great video! I've missed them too. Next League Night: Tonight 8pm Group 1 @BowserBasher is host @Glen-i @BowserBasher @viceview51 @RedShell @Dcubed @martinist @S.C.G @Nicktendo @EEVILMURRAY (I assume you're in?) @Nintendo Fan Still time to sign up!

Guess I'm not making it to the end of Mario Kart League this year then.

I would have used Tora more if he wasn't so much of a pervy scumbag. I keep looking at Poppi (who I actually like, personality wise) and keep getting reminded of that side of him. Anyway, the fourth party member is way cooler.

@Kav I just got to Chapter 5, and so far I have Rex with all attacker blades with accessories that focus on nailing critical hits, which in turn raise the party gauge and heal Rex whenever he does so, Nia with all healing Blades with accessories that bolster that and keep her aggro low. Meanwhile, I've replaced Tora with the fourth party member, they're a tank that focuses more on agility than defense. So, basically Dunban from Xenoblade 1, and he was one of the best characters in the game. Accessories are focused on getting that agility as high as possible, as well as drawing aggro with all tanky blades. It seems to be working because I beat a unique monster 5 levels above my party, felt good.

OK, I couldn't wait, 8 player Smash Bros. gets me all hyped up. Generation 3 - Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/FireRed/LeafGreen Gen 3 started in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance with Ruby and Sapphire. Set in Hoenn, the game featured 135 new Pokemon, bringing the grand total to 386. The enhanced version, Emerald came out in Japan 2 years later. Something to note is the beginning of the Pokemon remakes. FireRed and LeafGreen are remakes of the original Gen 1 games, Red and Blue. It was first released in 2004 and bought the original games up to date with the more modern mechanics that Gen 3 sported. As well as having some extra post game content in the form of the Sevii Islands. We'll start with the main meat of the new mechanics introduced in this generation, introduced in Ruby and Sapphire. But before that, we have to acknowledge the bad news. This generation marked the beginning of the trend of old mechanics being dropped. Sometimes necessarily, sometimes... not so much. A long running series is bound to ditch some mechanics as it develops and sometimes, it's for the better. I'm not gonna get too hung up on the stuff I miss in these write-ups, we can save that for the in-between posts and my personal feelings at the end of this post. The most noticeable omission is the lack of backwards compatibility. You could not trade with any of the Game Boy/Game Boy Colour games in Gen 3. This was most likely dropped because it was technically unfeasible, not to mention a change in an old mechanic made it next to impossible to implement Pokemon from the Gen 1 and 2 games. More on that later. A more questionable missing feature is the removal of the day and night mechanic. Instead, Ruby and Sapphire had a simplified real time clock that only kept track of the current time, (Not the day of the week). Perhaps they just couldn't utilise it on the GBA for some reason? There's no way to know. Despite this, Ruby and Sapphire is one of the most influential games in the Pokemon franchise. Some of the features would become mainstays of the series, especially when it comes to the competitive aspect of Pokemon. So, apart from new Pokemon and moves, Ruby and Sapphire gave us... Double Battles are the biggest new feature Gen 3 introduced. The concept is simple. Each player sends out two Pokemon at once to battle. It's a simple change that would eventually end up shaping the competitive aspect of Pokemon. These days, it's the format used in the official Pokemon Championships as well as many of the online Tourneys that take place in the 3DS entries. The strategies utilised in Double Battles were much more complex than what you would see in the usual Single Battles. Some moves, like Earthquake, would hit everyone on the battlefield, including your own teammate. There were even some moves that only worked in Doubles, like Helping Hand. Another big change to the battling mechanics are Abilities. Each Pokemon now had a special ability, a sort of passive skill that activates in certain conditions. Some of the new Pokemon were defined by their ability, such as Kecleon's "Colour Change" which altered it's typing to whatever move it was hit by. This helped to make Pokemon more distinct from each other, and just like Hold Items in Gen 2, added yet another layer to the depths of strategy battles had. Along with these new battle mechanics, we saw Natures make it's first appearance. Each Pokemon could now have 1 of 25 different natures. 5 of these have no effect on the Pokemon, but the rest add modifiers to the stats a Pokemon has. Each of these natures adds 10% to one stat while subtracting 10% from another. (HP is never affected by this) This had the effect of making different Pokemon of the same species even more unique, but these days, competitive players use natures to help a Pokemon specialise a certain stat. Speaking of competitive, it's time to take another look at Effort Values (EV's). You should remember me talking about them in Gen 1. Well, Gen 3 completely redone this. This bit is gonna get quite technical, but I'll try to explain it as best as I can. The new system (Which is basically still around these days) allows one Pokemon to gain a grand total of 510 EV's. You gain EV's by defeating other Pokemon. There's one type of EV for each stat. (HP, Atk, Def, etc.) The Pokemon you defeat determines which type of EV you get. For example, defeating a Zigzagoon will net you 1 Speed EV. For every 4 EV's a Pokemon gets, the corresponding base stat goes up by 1. A maximum of 255 EV's can be put into a single stat, meaning you can increase one stat by a total of 63 points (255 divided by 4, which is then rounded down to a whole number, a.k.a 63) Because a total of 510 EV's can be given to one Pokemon, you could only ever max out two stats at most. Back in Gen 3, people didn't really fully utilise this new system, but these days, it's widely accepted that you need to carefully utilise this system in order to get the most out of the Pokemon you use (Charizard's best stats are Sp. Atk and Speed, so you wouldn't put EV's in Defense) if you want to play Pokemon competitively. Thankfully, if you just want to play through the single player content, you won't ever need to worry about this. But it's the foundation of competitive battling these days. By the way, this redone Effort Value is the most likely reason why Backwards Compatibility was dropped in Gen 3. Moving on, Mystery Gift was tweaked as well, getting renamed "Mystery Event". Instead of the Gen 2 method of getting you items for connecting with a friend, Mystery Event allowed the player to use special e-Reader cards (Remember those?) to unlock a room in a certain house and allowed players to fight special trainers. This didn't really see much usage outside of Japan though, due to the general failure of the e-Reader. Gen 3 had the first case of a Pokemon having different Formes. Some Pokemon would able to change formes under certain conditions. The poster child of this was Castform, who changed it's appearance and type depending on the weather that was in effect. If it was raining, it would become Water Type and so on. A number of other Pokemon would get alternate formes as the generations rolled on. Speaking of weather, Gen 3 had the first instance of external weather conditions. This helped to add some flavour to the Hoenn region, as well as affecting the weather in battles. Ruby and Sapphire also had Pokemon Contests, a minigame that utilised your Pokemon in a different style of Pokemon competition. Players entered one Pokemon into one of 5 categories (Beauty, Coolness, Cuteness, Smartness and Toughness) and compete to see which Pokemon is the best in that category. This would start a trend of similar minigames where players would utilise Pokemon and their moves in different ways to usual battles. Secret Bases also made it's debut here. Players could find many secret bases and commandeer it for themselves. They could then decorate it with various items you could find throughout the game. By utilising a feature called "Record Mix", you could even visit your friends Secret Bases. The Battle Tower also got a cool new feature. As well as double battle format. You were now able to team up with another player to take on the Battle Tower in a double battle format. Effectively, a co-op mode in Pokemon. Now, it's time to move on to Emerald, the Third Version of Ruby and Sapphire... There's one major feature that Emerald introduced which would become my favourite feature to date. The Battle Frontier was an absolutely humongous expansion to the Battle Tower, multiplying it sevenfold. They follow the same basic structure as the Battle Tower but have a number of twists that shake up the formula in interesting ways, from using rental Pokemon to enduring a randomly generated dungeon. Anyway, despite FireRed and LeafGreen being remakes, there was a new mechanic that Pokemon hadn't done before. Continuing from Gen 2, FireRed and LeafGreen (And later on, Emerald) would carry on the real life accessory implementation with the bundled Wireless Adapter. It functioned similarly to the Link Cable, except it did so wirelessly. Meaning that this was the first instance of wireless communication between two nearby consoles. And that's the main mechanics Gen 3 gave to us. Personally, I find this generation conflicting. The actual game is not one I rate that highly, but some of the mechanics it introduced were so damn cool, I can't help but give it credit for that. The amount of hours I burned with the Battle Frontier was immense! And Double Battles are cool. Anyway, this time, my next write up will be on Thursday with Generation 4.

As far as the exploration aspect of the game goes, absolutely. It's also the feature I like the most in Gen 2. But it wasn't integral to the main game. But sooner or later, you're gonna have to adapt to Dark and Steel Types or you're gonna make the game hard for yourself. I'm playing through Crystal again, and I'm floored that anyone can claim that Gen 1 was a better game than Gen 2. Everything about it is better and more polished. Sure, it has it's flaws, but they pale in comparison to the sheer improvements. I'm looking forward to writing up about Gen 3. That's when stuff starts to get removed, it also has one of the most subtle changes that would end up defining the competitive scene we see today. EDIT: Bugger! I forgot about the happiness mechanic. I've edited it in a short synopsis to the Gen 2 post.

Generation 2 - Gold/Silver/Crystal Generation 2 first hit Japan back in 1999, and with it, came a veritable smorgasbord of new mechanics and tweaks to existing ones. The game is set 3 years after Gen 1, making this one of the only Pokemon games that is effectively a sequel, story wise. It added 100 new Pokemon, bringing the total to 251. Apart from the new Pokemon and new moves, Gold and Silver introduced players to... 2 New Pokemon Types were added to the mix, Dark and Steel. Easily the biggest mechanic shift in Gen 2. Gen 1 had some serious balance issues due to the Psychic Type being incredibly overpowered. These two types both excelled against Psychic Pokemon and it changed a hell of a lot about battling. This type shakeup also had some smaller side effects, Magnemite and Magneton got the Steel type added to their typing, making them Steel/Electric. The move "Bite" also got it's typing changed from Normal to Dark. A real time clock was integrated into the game, allowing the game to have a day and night cycle. This mechanic was more than just cosmetic, certain Pokemon only appeared at certain times of the day, a number of special in-game events could be repeated once a day/week. A certain Pokemon even evolved depending on the time of day. Hold Items are special items that could be attached to a Pokemon to give different effects. While not as drastic a change as the 2 new types, this would have a lasting effect on battling, adding an extra layer of depth to building a team. Some hold items even evolved some Pokemon if you traded them while holding it. Mystery Gift made it's first appearance here. Although it's usage is completely different to modern-day Mystery Gift. Using the Game Boy Colour's Infared communicator, you and a friend could get a random item once a day. It also had a few other effects, such as being able to battle an AI controlled version of your friend's Pokemon team. I'll talk about how this changed in a future post. Backwards compatibility was a key feature that was also introduced here. Using the "Time Capsule", Players could trade with people who owned the Gen 1 games, there were some obvious rules when you were doing this, namely, no trading Pokemon that didn't exist in Gen 1 or Pokemon that had moves that didn't exist back then. Not every one of the Pokemon in Gen 1 is available in the Gen 2 games, which would have caused plenty of problems with cataloging some of the unevolved Pokemon. Thankfully, Game Freak thought of that and implemented... Pokemon Breeding is a mechanic that allowed a player to take two Pokemon of opposite genders (Another new mechanic) and have them breed to give players an Egg. If the player then walks a number of steps with the egg in their party, it would then hatch. What Pokemon you got depended on which Pokemon was the mother. For example, a female Charizard would produce an egg that would hatch into a Charmander. I would argue that this was the 2nd biggest mechanic that Gen 2 had. There were some nuances to breeding, clever pairing of Pokemon could give you a baby Pokemon that had special moves it could never possibly learn. For example, breeding a Male Tyranitar that knew Rock Slide with a female Feraligatr would produce a Totodile that knew Rock Slide. The Special Attack and Special Defense Stat was implemented here. These affected a Pokemon's ability to inflict damage with special attacks and it's defensive capabilities against said moves. You see, there are two main categories of attacks in Pokemon, Physical and Special. It was determined by the type of the move. Fire, Water, and Grass moves were classified as Special moves while Normal, Fighting and Steel moves were Physical ones, etc. In Gen 1, Special Attack and Special Defense was rolled into one stat, Special. Gen 2's new stats would change a lot about how each Pokemon would perform in battle. Pokemon with high Specials in Gen 1 were no longer both great in attack and defense. The new Pokégear would start a trend of convenient Gadgets designed to provide the player with important features to assist them in their journey. Gen 2's Pokégear provided a map (Originally an item in Gen 1), a clock, an in-game phone, and an in-game radio. While the gadget form and name would change in future games, they all have the same basic idea. The bag in Gen 2 had separate pockets which helped the player better keep track of their items. General Items, Poke Balls, Key Items and TM's were all separated from each other, making it easier to find what you're looking for. Gen 2 was the crowning example of the Post-Game Quest. While Gen 1 technically had this with Cerulean Cave, Gen 2 went fully in with this. After completing the game, players were able to travel to the Kanto region (The place where Gen 1 took place). This added a tremendous amount of content to the game. The Move Deleter is a person who allows you to force a Pokemon to forget one of the moves it knows. While this sounds pretty useless, this is the only way you can have a Pokemon forget HM's. Which is much appreciated by everyone really. Roaming Pokemon are special Pokemon that aren't confined to one area of the game. They effectively roam around the world. In this game, Raikou, Entei and Suicune are 3 legendary Pokemon that never stay in one place. Every time the player went to a new area, they would also move to a new area themselves. The player would have to try and intercept them. If successful, the player would be able to battle them... for one turn, before they bolt and start the whole process again. Thankfully, they didn't recover health in between encounters, so sooner or later, perseverance should win out. This feature didn't show up in Gen 7, so who knows what the future of this is? Happiness of Pokémon was also introduced, while there was a very simple of version of this with the Pikachu in Yellow, Gen 2 applied this to every Pokémon in the way modern games do. Treating your Pokémon well would cause them to become more affectionate. This doesn't have much of an effect on gameplay, except for the moves Return and Frustration, which got more powerful the more the Pokémon liked you/disliked you. There were also some Pokemon that evolved once they became happy. As you can see, a lot of new mechanics already, but Gen 2's Third Version, Pokemon Crystal also introduced us to a handful of new features. The one feature most people would remember is the option to play as a girl, seems like such a simple option in hindsight, but this helped female players to feel like the game was more their adventure, and considering that the idea is that the playable character is meant to be you, that's kinda important. Another biggie was animated Pokemon. Rather than explain it, I'll just show what happens when you encounter a Pokemon in the two games. Gold/Silver on the left, Crystal on the right Purely cosmetic, of course. But it helps add a bit of life to the many Pokemon you encounter. Strangely enough, this wouldn't be implemented in every game after this. For the next 2 generations, it generally only appeared in the Third versions of games. Move Tutors are people that could teach your Pokemon certain moves, kinda like TM's, but for a price. In Crystal, there's a person in Goldenrod City that offered to teach Pokemon either Flamethrower, Ice Beam or Thunderbolt for you. Effectively providing an infinite supply of these moves. The Battle Tower also made it's debut here. This was a facility that let players fight AI opponents to see if they can string together 7 wins in a row. Certain restrictions were placed, namely, only 3 Pokemon on a team which must be different species and have different items. Pull off 7 wins and you are rewarded with hard to get items. By the way, in the Japanese version of Crystal, the Battle Tower made use of the Japan-Only peripheral, Mobile Game Boy Adapter, which makes Crystal the first Pokemon game that had a real life accessory implementation. It provided a sort of psuedo online capability to the game allowing people to trade and battle with other people in Japan. This no longer works, by the way, the service ended a long time ago. And that wraps up Gen 2, just like any good sequel, it refines the mechanics of the original game with new features, Quality of Life improvements and general rebalancing. Gen 2 has a lot more presence in modern day Pokemon than Gen 1 does, which is quite remarkable really. For me, this makes Gen 2 a lot easier to replay, thanks to it's general polish and cool new features. I highly recommend Crystal if you haven't played an old-school Pokemon. It still holds up well. I won't be around until Thursday now, so you'll have to wait until then for Generation 3.

Are you @Ugh first aid? She had the same reaction once I told her that. A shame too, because Ampharos is one of the few Gen 2 Pokémon that's actually quite good in Crystal.

With Pokemon Crystal recently coming out on the 3DS Virtual Console and the Pokemon Switch game looming on the horizon, @Dcubed and I started talking about how the mechanics of Pokemon have changed since way back in 1996. Because we're super cool like that. A criticism of the Pokemon games you see thrown around is that they're "just the same game over and over again" These people know nothing and you should discount their opinions immediately, while the basic gameplay follows the traditional "Catch loads of different monsters and battle them in Turn Based RPG battles" format. It's the underlying mechanics that distinguish each entry. And these mechanics have changed many times over the seven generations of Pokemon. So I'm gonna go look through them and see just how influential each gen was. Generation 1 - Red/Blue/Yellow While there's no denying that Red and Blue will probably forever be the most important game in the franchise (I mean, it started the craze). The mechanics and features that make up the game are almost entirely gone from more modern games. Gen 1 is a very different beast to what you can play these days. That said, Red and Blue introduced a few things that have managed to stick around. And to better understand how things have changed, it would be a good idea to acknowledge these. Version Exclusive Pokemon is a term that most players use to describe a Pokemon that can only be caught in one version of Pokemon. For example, Scyther could only be caught in Pokemon Red while Pokemon Blue had Pinsir instead. Be as cynical as you like, but this was designed to encourage players to trade Pokemon with another person who has the opposite version. (Not to encourage people to buy both versions, only nutjobs do that) It bloody well worked, I remember bringing my Game Boy to my Primary School and trading Pokemon with other kids. Which brings me nicely to... The Multiplayer features are the main selling point of the Pokemon series. Using the Game Boy Link Cable, there were two things that you could do with a friend. Trading and battling, it's pretty obvious what they do, so I won't go into too much detail here. Technical Machines (Commonly known as "TM's") are items that you could find in the game that can teach a specific move to one of your Pokemon. Some Pokemon could use these to learn moves that they would otherwise be unable to use. They were one-time usage, with many of them being unable to be obtained again without starting a new game. Making them very valuable items. Well, except Water Gun, no-one cares about Water Gun. There were 50 TM's in Gen 1. There were also 5 Hidden Machines (HM's) which taught Pokemon a move that could actually be used outside of battles. Most of them were needed to complete the game (Except Flash) and once a Pokemon learned a HM move, it could not be forgotten. Effort Values (Also known in Gen 1 as Stat Experience) are more of a hidden mechanic that has also stuck around in modern day Pokemon. (Well, sorta, more on that later) For example, say you have a Charizard that you've trained to Level 50. If you compared the stats of that Charizard to a different level 50 Charizard, chances are they'd be different. That's because of Stat Experience. In Gen 1, whenever you beat a Pokemon, the Pokemon you used would get Stat Experience. These were completely invisible to the player. As an example, beating a Blastoise would net you... 79 HP 83 Attack 100 Defense 85 Special 78 Speed After a calculation that I won't bother going into, your Stat Experience will be added to the base stats of your Pokemon, which makes for the fluctuations of stats between different Pokemon of the same species. Every single stat can effectively be "Maximized" using this making for an extra 64 points in each stat for a level 100 Pokemon. Event Pokemon also saw it's first implementation here with the Mythical Pokemon Mew. Way back then, players had to go to a special event organised by Nintendo with their copy of the game where staff would plug their cartridge into, effectively, a glorified Super Game Boy which would then put the Mew into their party. There's one more mechanic that has stuck around, but it's quite a bit different in how it's implemented. The Third Version is a term that most players use to refer to a Pokemon game that is similar to another set of Pokemon games. These games tend to be enhanced versions of another game. So let me ask you something, what was the first Third Version Game released? While the Third Version is still kicking with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, it's not in every generation. But I won't get into that yet. Pokemon Yellow is also notable for having the first instance of a Pokemon following you outside of battles. This only applied to Pikachu though, and it's not a feature that is around these days, one of many things that got dropped in future generations, but I'll cover that when I get to them. Anyway, time for me to take a break, next up, I'll be talking about Generation 2, where things start changing and getting interesting. But before I go, I'd like to give my personal thoughts on the mechanics of Gen 1. As a game, I enjoy Gen 1, truly, I do. But the mechanics behind it are incredibly dated, which make gong back to it these days a bit difficult. It was a huge, influential game that would help popularize the Turn Based RPG genre in the west. And I will forever acknowledge it for that. But everything about it has since been improved in future installments. Which is a good thing. But for the love of God, Game Freak. Stop advertising Pokemon games using nothing but stuff that was seen in this Gen. The majority of people who want this kind of stuff stopped playing Pokemon years ago!