05 March 2022
Crystal: I’ve beaten the first Gym. Starting to remember how awkward the first two generations can be. Start at low levels and it takes a while to get typed attacks on a lot of pokemon. Lots of early game battles are just navigating the few defensive type matchups and slowly lowering HP bars. EXP-All isn’t available yet and while the slow early game makes it easy to swap, I forget if the game is going to ramp up. I started this one with Totodile, but I’ve decided to give Wooper a try. Starter into the box! Main goal is to see the story stuff that’s different, beating Red is just a bonus fun if I feel like it.
Heart Gold:Just restarted it and will use Chikorita. Primary goal is prepping the game for transfer stuff.
Black: Just going to run Tepig and goal is to play it all again for reminders. Just beat N in the first battle against him. I forgot how down right charming GenV is. B/W in particular are interesting. A very different look overall. To some it’s just another Pokemon Game, but it really does look different. Maybe to the extent that Ruby/Sapphire were to some people when the art started to look a little more rounded. Adding to that different feel, this was the first game without Nob Ogasawara translating. It might just be the characterization of the Professor in this one and the change in how the story and characters were focused, but there certainly is a different feel to how the characters talk. This could also just be changes to engine/tools giving more freedom to how the text is handled. Going from Crystal to this back and forth can sometimes be whiplash. It makes you appreciate how much changed over the years.
Platinum: I have an old save, I just beat the second gym I saved right before.
White/White2: May replay alongside once I remember where I am. It would make getting version exclusives easy
Yellow: This is an old save I had when I got it on a whim. Balanced team due to freebies and need to check a guide to figure out where I’m at. Just want to get far enough to have something worth transferring for fun.
Leaf Green:Just entered Mt. Moon. Mostly playing to see what the game is like alongside my Yellow.
Ultra Moon: I just finished RR story and am left with every little checklist and challenge content in the game. Going to take a break before going in to get Ultra Beasts and whatnot. I actually booted up shield because of this game. The Sun/Moon series games can get bogged down a little harsher by animations, sometimes feeling even a little more sluggish than XY. (Might not be true either, but I have zero motivation to go back to those right now.) Beyond story, characters, and stuff like that; I can see why some fans saw SwSh as a regression. However, upon revisiting it, I think the games actually look pretty alright. Sometimes, downright good. Yes, yes I’ve played other games on the switch. If one watches some news closer to the dev side, you’ll know a lot of tools have improved. That new Kirby looks way more stable than Star Allies, so HAL labs clearly got some stuff figured out. Let’s see if GameFreak’s tools got improved too.* It’s got rough spots for sure, but it’d place it more in other underbaked areas. My quick dip into Shield after UM, I found shield’s battles to be too sterile looking after gen V-VII. The camera in routes/towns just feels weird. It might just be because it’s 16:9 or something like that. I’m hoping the next pair of games on switch get a cool UI.
*Something I want to point out, it feels like in certain discussions RE: pokemon, a lot of “Will Nintendo do ___. Why didn’t Nintendo do ___” and I get the feeling Game Freak is a little bit like a HAL where very few Nintendo internal tools don’t make it over to their studios. While I’m sure Nintendo has input and pull, I’m sure TPC has their own agenda. GF is not an Intelligent Systems that has a hand in building dev hardware or SDKs. “why don’t they just” Just do this just do that. I too am getting tired of hearing just do something. Yeah, why don’t they just get BotW team to help. “Game Freak doesn’ like working with others” Have you seen the credits for some of these games? Lots of contractors. But also, it’s probably best that they maintain an internal engine and tools. The scale they work at it’s probably harder nowadays to just have a fixer come in. It also would remove any remaining independence to just adopt another engine. Maybe they did for the next one and this becomes a moot point though haha. Yes, they have a lot of money but you can’t throw money at everything and just magically get returns. (This is why “just use unreal” doesn’t work. You really want every dev reliant on Epic? Even if they borrow a nintendo related engine, that team at nintendo would have to support it. GF also devs for other platforms. Guarantee you if SEGA made a new platform there would be a Game Freak game on there. Buncha SEGA nerds there.)
