This is an expanded version of an argument I introduced in the FireRed and LeafGreen review, although I tried to tone down the salt and stick to the facts this time. If you watch these back to back, maybe this video will make the other one make a bit more sense. ua-cam.com/video/GcLKCGGG340/v-deo.html
Great video Tama, though as a fan of Japanese video games, I do need to point out that many games are not short, in fact, a great many either have no end goal and can be played infinity till ur sick of it or take 50-100+ hrs to beat or even finish. Also, even IF SV add in the remaining missing mons, its too late for gen 8 to have every mon as gen 8 is the first (of likely many) gens that will never have every mon avail in a main series game... Minior is one of those mons and I mention this specifically becus they (Via Home) seem to have changed its shiny... I don't like this. Perhaps u could do a vid on shinies that have been changed over time and more so the recent ones that have had their shiny color changed such as Minior (Though it remains to be seen if it'll keep the new colors given its not in a main series game yet sicne the change...)
This was a very awesome and needed addendum to that Leaf and Fire video and really clears up why this current gen seems so soulless. I'd really love to hear your take on the whole Meltan/Melmetal thing.
Hey Tama, thanks for the video and THANKS for keeping out the salt. It's really not necessary for the argument and I find it usually just detracts. And I get the salt, because I am definitely salty at times too (Banette, my baby, whenn will I get to see you on Switch in a new region?). And when I see 'PokéBros' ranting for over twenty minutes about the coast of the game, it just makes me disinterested in the video. So also pointing out that Gen 3 was also hecka expensive if you wanted to complete te dex and had no friends or siblings to play with. Like, definitely more than twenty dollars expensive (which is also ain't fantastic). Probably something I'd want to add there though is that I'm not sure if adding the console cost is entirely fair, since it's technically not a Pokémon playing machine. It is for some people, of course. But you could, if you wanted to, use it for other games as well. I also didn't realise that the weird trading stuff in Gen 3 was cause of the rental industry, though tbf I'm not sure if that was a very big industry in the Netherlands/Europe to begin with. Films and series, sure, but I don't think I ever saw videogame rentals advertised as a kid. Annyway, thanks again for the video!
The Devil Of Xudian The Devil From The Start, Always Killing Tanned The Devil To The Death From The Start, And Always Killing Indian The Devil To The Death In Every Dimension From The Start..And Also To Always Killing Edison The Devil To The Death From The Start..
As someone who really started getting into Pokémon during Gen 3, I’ve never felt so seen. I went through ALL of this. We only figured out how to trade our FRLG games with RSE because one of us convinced their parents to buy a guidebook. And then we had to strategically figure out when we could meet up to even do any trading, because we were kids with 0 control over our schedules. Had a friend who owned Colosseum, and we were stoked bc that meant we could get the remaining Johto Pokémon… only to find out his memory card wasn’t big enough to save on Colosseum. Plus I don’t even think he owned the GameCube to GBA cable. In the end, one guy got a GameShark, and then he became the king of the neighborhood, and we all had to pay him in candy if we wanted to use it to get mythicals or non-native Pokémon.
The difference is that at least the Pokemon were programmed into Hoenn you just needed to trade them in, but not all Pokemon are programmed into SwSh, even though they could have done it easily.
I don't know this person, I don't live in the same country, I didn't even live those same hardships...and I still related to every single word you said. Damn gen 3 was a rough time for continue/starting being a Pkmn fan.
People forget that it's the fact that it was very hard to get certain pokémon that the franchise was in a good path. Gen4 brought the "cheatmania", which allowed everyone to get a darkrais, deoxys, etc. THAT'S when the franchise started its downfall.
@@luiscfdsilva >People forget that it's the fact that it was very hard to get certain pokémon that the franchise was in a good path. But at a high risk as well
Speaking from a purely emotional attachment perspective, Gen 3's lack of backwards compatibility hit the hardest, but it sorta helped that at least the National Dex existed, that somehow, some way, any Pokemon can be obtained. With Gen 8 cutting out the Pokemon entirely, its very similar to the Gen 3 gap, but it feels worse that they aren't programmed in at all, so there's nothing you could ever do to bring your favorites to a game that they don't exist in. I never cared about Pokedex completion, I just wanted to bring my old buddies with me for every journey.
Yup yup. I'll add that I looked, and still look, forward to new Dex entries that expand on the world and that particular pokemon. It bums me out to see recycled entries, which make me feel like the inclusion of pokemon not in the regional Dex more of a formality. What hope is there in Gamefreak designing the next game as a collective of lovers of pokemon and immersive games versus a soulless company with a monetary bottom line?
Same here, all I wanted was for all of the Pokémon to be transferable like they did in Gen 7. I want all of my mons in a game and not get stuck in Home.
At least with gen 3, it was possible to make your own transfer device if you REALLY wanted the exact same Pokemon or a Pokemon generator to insert the same Pokemon in. Also cheat systems were much easier to get at the time, so you could always use those.
One thing I hate about Pokémon is that special event bull shit. Whole ass areas and Pokémon you can get in older games without just straight up hacking. Like most of us didn’t even witness these events.
I feel like the most important thing was the very last thing you said: "They're creating the problem they're selling the solution to." This can't be understated
Though it wasn't the best example to end it on. To get the arceus in BDSP you have to have already gotten it in legends arceus. And you can transfer that one over. So you would have 2 arceus at that point.
@@Depressed_Dandelion In what way? The reason why I brought up LA, was because the video states you have you buy an extra game to get an arceus. But at that point you would already have one. Ignoring that getting Arceus in general isn't nessessary because mythicals don't ever count torwards national dex completion in games. Unless you are saying like, the more generous offer was the SwSh DLC because you could get the pokemon without paying for them as long as someone traded them to you or you imported them yourself. To which I would agree but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
@@LordRoto I meant that, if the topic is GF creating a problem (cutting the pokemon) only to sell the solution (another game) back, then the better example is SwSh's DLC, because (as far as I'm aware) if you wanna have those mons you either buy the DLC itself or get Switch Online to trade with someone who has them (or also through Home question mark, I don't really know how that works) (Speaking of Home, let's not pretend they didn't get rid of the GTS in SwSh exclusively for this piece of crap. And since it has a subscription service, it's also kinda applicable here, right?)
I saw you say on Twitter the other day how Gen 3 was the point where a huge chunk of Pokémon's original audience fell off the series, and it was nice to see somebody else remembers that! I was in high school at the time, and it was like RSE didn't even happen. Gen III might as well have started with FRLG as far as my peers were concerned (not that EVERYONE was playing it by any means, you still had a lot of "you're STILL playing Pokémon!?" types, but at least my fellow nerds were), and it's always felt like the main Gen III game to me too, because I played it so much more. xD
Pokemon wasn't really known as a game franchise where I'm from because Nintendo wasn't a big deal here (most people just knew Pokemon from the anime and nothing else), but I think most people stopped watching the anime around gen 3 as well so that tracks for me. Kind of reminds me of how people stopped caring about Tamagotchis around v3 as well - when I got the v4 people were giving me the "you're still playing with this?" shit at school too lol
As someone who started as the target audience in Gen 1, it always confused me how Gen 3 became so many peoples' favorite for awhile, while Sword and Shield were hated for doing exactly the same thing. I was one of those people that dropped off after GSC and I'm far from the only one that I knew. I came back with Platinum and HGSS later and those games were incredible, and I've just been on and off with the series since.
I was in elementary school at the time and we were playing RSE, but I know a good chunk of the older kids (including me) started falling off at that point. I know that while I was wowed by the graphics and the music, I didn't like gen 3 nearly as much because I didn't get to play with my favorites, and a lot of the new pokemon felt (at the time) like cheap knock-offs of ones from the previous games. I didn't end up getting another Pokemon game til XY around the beginning of college
Honestly, I was always uncool, and was picked on for everything except being a Pokémon fan. Even my friends still played! I'm just happy I grew up sheltered from any sort of Pokémon stigma, despite the experience of so many others.
Nintendo: "WE MUST FIND A WAY TO STOP KIDS FROM PIRATING!!! >:(" Nintendo: *gives children the option to either cheat, or spend over $300 basically buying (and completing) the same game 497 times simply to trade pokemon*
I think this is how a lot of players (including myself) took x&y and omega Ruby&Alpha Sapphire for granted. The only restriction really was needing two Pokémon two trade and unlocking the ability, which didn’t require internet if by passerby. If playing x or y, you could trade as early as route 2 with no restriction on if it was in the dex or not. Same with omega Ruby/Alpha sapphire, you just needed to get the tutorial by Wally. Great video btw as always!!
I stopped playing legal Pkmn games (I'm not ashamed on saying I used emulation) in Gen 2, so for me trading back and forth between those first two gens IS the standard play. It baffles me that you can't trade your Torchic bred with all the benefits of ORAS improvements all the way back to RSE.
@@IceSpoon Same here on my gen 6 play-throughs! Once I learned about eggs, I would trade them to a new play through so the Pokémon would obey me and I could use a variety of Pokémon. I’d say I played those games the most strictly because I could use any Pokémon I wanted without cheating or needing to put in tons of time in another game.
Eh. Except X and Y never got the new mega stones that oras did. I remember wishing that they would just go all out and give the games complete compatibility with each other.
Gen VI was also the only Gen other than Gen I where you could get every non-mythical Pokémon with only the mainline games of that generation. No trades from outside gens or Wi-Fi events needed.
Yeah but Gen 6 had its own slew of issues. ORAS were okay, but still severely lacking in the difficulty that some of the previous generations had (namely gens 3-5), and x and y were just baby mode. As soon as the player had access to mega evolution every important trainer from there onward should have also had a mega.
I, for one, appreciate Tama's gradual evolution to that of Poké-historian, bridging the gap between real-life events and expectations and how they influenced one of the highest-selling game franchises of all time. Excellent, detailed video with a lot of food for thought (it's practically a buffet for gluttony). Thank you for all the effort you take to provide people with your voice and input. And for putting up with the GameCube games, lol.
Also adding to something I said at the end, guess who wasn't president of Nintendo at the early stages of gen 3 when Colosseum was being made, therefore preventing Ishi(t)hara from making gen 3 cost multiple consoles from different systems and many, many different games in order to complete the PokéDex in Hoenn (because at the end I said that Pokémon is greedier now than before when Iwata was there and it could be countered with "gen 3 cost this much"). Iwata became president of Nintendo May 2002, Ruby and Sapphire were released on November 2002, Colosseum on November 2003, but I bet development on Colosseum began before he became president and therefore making gen 3 cost another different console for the Dex to be completed Ishi(t)hara's decision. You could blame it on the previous president of Nintendo but the business decisions made by Ishi(t)hara on recent years strongly indicate who's more likely to be responsible of such a thing.
This was a very hard pill to Swalot because of how much I adore Generation III as a whole. I was given Emerald as a birthday gift, and when I tell you it took hell AND high water to get every single mon, I mean it! You obviously know from your amazing video and experience, but I felt *so* accomplished for managing to ALMOST collect them all (384 out of 386, I think???). As a kid and even now, I love challenges in video games, so the whole "beat the whole game to trade between A and B" or "do this long sidequest so you can do XYZ" was very fun for me, but that doesn't mean I can't see the flaws and anti-player mentality. I'm obviously in a very small minority of people who enjoyed the challenge. I also recognize I benefitted from a household that COULD afford all the things you mentioned over birthday and christmas gifts (I have two brothers, and we all LOVED pokemon, so the gifts were a no-brainer). Over just a few years, we had everything you listed minus Sapphire and XD, so when I took the challenge to "catch them all" after the dust of the new games settled, I had a much easier time to do so: I had loads of free time, and I did not have to pay for anything as my family received them as gifts. I guess I'm just sad to know that something that I personally loved was actually a tedious, grinding, unfriendly, and greedy tactic used to maximize profits for others. I do not mean this in any negative way at all, Tama, but thank you for showing me the experiences of others and putting my childhood into perspective. I cannot imagine the frustration that kids must have had to have been restricted access to their favorite pokemon from reruns or seeing them at friends' houses due to money or esoteric game design.
One thing not mentioned is the move reset when traded to games in the same generation. I wanted to trade my guys from home (Iron Fist Infernape with Egg Moves) to do Battle Tower in Brilliant Diamond Nope. I basically gotta breed a whole new chimchar.
I mean you can still give the infernape his egg moves but you do still need another one with that move bred within bdsp (or grand underground) and then stick them in the day care with one empty move slot so it'll learn that egg move. Still a pain though
@@PokeHokage but the point is too not have basically do all that. Then at that point who cares of Home compatibility is a thing. We essentially have to start from scratch for a set up we want. And no, it’s not about laziness, look at transferred Pokémon into SWSH, they keep it all, ability, current move set, and all relearn sets from previous gens including TMs and TRs ( aslong as the move is programmed in them). Idk why they could’ve do the same for BDSP instead of just resetting the Pokémon we transfer as of it was caught in the wild at the level we transferred it.
Though I agree with the move to reset moves on entry (for logistical and balance reasons), they should just remove egg moves or add some way to learn them on grown Pokémon (like they do for other mechanics like IVs), because otherwise we run into your issue and there's really no benefit to Pokémon (financially or otherwise) for forcing players to RE-train and move their pokemon upon trade.
The main problem for me with the whole dexit thing was when it was demonstrated that the "redone-from-scratch assets" thing was a lie. Once the data files leaked from SwSh, people were able to compare the old models and new models side by side and show that they were the exact same down to the polygon, So not only was graphical fidelity not the best reason in some people's mind, it wasn't even the truth, and the outright lie is what made some fans like me upset.
to be fair if they said "we need to update the textures for any pokemon we add, along with testing them in both freeroam and camping AND compress any and all files relating to them while being overworked to add new stuff" people would still call bullshit and complain
The reason Gen 2 to Gen 3 wasn't as big of a controversy was because they completely changed the data of Pokemon, which didn't happen from Gen 7 to Gen 8. Also, there was no way to link the GB games to the GBA games as far as I know. Definitely agree with FRLG and Emerald's trade restrictions. Made no sense to have those at all.
This video really puts things into perspective. I feel like perhaps the biggest factor in sparking the SwSh Dexit controversy was the fact that Masuda just straight-up announced that not every mon would be in the game at such a major video game event. It didn't take long before things were blown out of proportion after that. Makes you wonder how things would have been in the run-up to SwSh's release if Masuda hadn't said what he said at E3, and the players found out after the game was released instead, or even in a written statement on social media that wasn't live.
It would have been a huge disappointment for people who had bought the game and played it only then to find out the content was missing. It might have actually been more controversial.
Not only that, it was at E3, after Treehouse Live, at the end of the stream when most viewers already left, as though trying to bury/hide the announcement. Thus, game journalists who stuck around got the news out to most of the fanbase. I first learned of Dexit a couple hours after Treehouse Live when the news appeared on my Twitter feed. This news was also never officially announced in Japan, which made the dedicated Japanese playerbase upset.
It's not even just that, all the Pokemon were available in Gen 3. You just couldn't get them in the Hoenn region. But in the modern games the Pokemon just aren't programmed into the game, even though they showed in the Sword and shield DLC that they were perfectly capable of adding in all the pokemon via patches and shit but just chose not too.
@@thaiboypsp3000 They're not saying they wished this had happened instead, they're just wondering what _could_ have happened. On one hand, it may have had less of an impact in the short run, until dataminers brought the missing entries to light. There would still be controversy, but I reckon people would've held onto the hope that DLC would be announced to fill those gaps seeing as no official statement was made (in this reality), and therefore the backlash would be significantly less. On the other hand, there's also the possibility it would've been worse, as the controversy would be front and centre at the games launch instead of simmering over the course of how many months it was before the games launch. In our situation, there was time for people to get over the shock.
I wasn’t expecting a punch to the gut watching this, but the: “It’s really funny to read back in the Serebii forums from 2005…” moment hit REAL HARD. Feeling real old, thinking back on the forum browsing days. Another really great video - love all of your Pokémon retrospective videos!
I was a casual viewer of your channel in the 2010s and just checked back in recently, and I gotta say I love where your content has gone. You went from a well-spoken pokemon youtuber to a full-blown pokemon investigative journalist and I'm living for it. Keep it up!
JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU! Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6 "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33 “For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
From what I've learnt from this video Nintendo has been focused on vertical integration for decades; wanting to control all levels of production to boost sales. This explains their attitudes towards filing cease and desists for romhacks and creating their own digital publishing services. It's all to maximise profits for full control of their products, which to me, is a perfect reminder that the Pokémon franchise is a distinct mirror of their times.
It goes back to the Famicom. That console had no means of locking out unapproved cartridges, so unlicensed Famicom games started popping up, and Nintendo started obsessing over how to prevent people from playing games on Nintendo systems without Nintendo getting a cut. Nintendo's high licensing fees and strict terms were factors that drove 3rd party developers into Sony's arms when they launched the PlayStation.
I wouldn't mind the dex cut so much if pokemon home had more functionality than just a pretty prison for mons that had no appearance in a gen. Like- even just dumb pokemon amie-esque minigames to do with my mons would be great, but no. They're just sitting there, rotting until who knows when, IF they even get a game where they're allowed in, since they're not exactly the cash grabber mons. It's already been confirmed that some pokemon who didn't appear in gen 8 aren't gonna appear in gen 9 either, some starters being among them. I'm already 99% sure that means my fav is unusuable and held hostage inside pokemon home once again. It's shitty.
I never understand why pokemon fans won't just simply boycott a game or product. you flat out admitted that you payed for home and transferd your mons that can't be transferred to gen 8 to home. Whats the point of tpc adding in new features, when they know that blind fanboys like you will pay for everything they throw out. Even if the product is still bad.
I saw the idea of Pokemon Home becoming the place for strategy, and that seems such a perfect idea. So they probably won't do it, but having it double as Stadium would be pretty much ideal.
@@treek10k I don't understand this either. If people putted their money where they mouth was when the dexit controversy happened, this would have impacted the sales of the games and Game Freak would probably have been forced to go back on their horrible decision of cutting the national dex, and released all the Pokémon through updates at least, but instead of that they got millions for their anti-consumer practices. They have absolute zero respect for their fans, it's disgusting, and the fans still blindly gives money for them. Pokémon needs a huge boycott.
Also, back in the day, the target audience for video games was generally kids who have limitless time and very limited budgets. Whereas today, there's a big market for adults (and adults with kids) who have a lot of expendable income and limited free time.
An important point about "rebuilding the models from scratch" that genuinely made it worse (for me, at least) was that people datamined the game, sun and moon, and let's go P/E and found that the models were *identical*. Not extremely similar. Not the same with higher polygon counts, identical. Line for line. If they rebuilt them from scratch, it was incredibly wasteful and unnecessary. More likely, that was a lie. And to follow that up - the reason that myself and many others expected came out very quickly: DLCs to re-unlock already existing mons.
Something thats not often stated is that its was the TEXTURES that were the issue, but im guessing they wanted the issue to sound more important than it was to avoid controversy. it backfired but I do feel they were justified in their attempt, especially since as developers they were at the mercy of the company's demands
This whole controversy along with the newer games just not being very good, has made me appreciate/ replay the older games a lot more. I think what bothered me the most about cutting the national dex was that it made it obvious Gamefreak no longer cared about non-competitive players. The newer games lack post game other than raising/battling competitive Pokémon. Cutting the national dex was one less thing for me to do. I feel very neutral about it. Yeah cutting the national dex sucked, but sword and shield weren’t good enough games for me to care too much. Legends Arceus implemented a limited dex much better. I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Here’s to hoping I will like gen 9 more.
@@notgeorgemiller yeah if anything they also demonstrated they don't care about competitive players too. They got rid of megas which arguably made the meta a lot more stable from what I understand.
Confused what some of you are going on about. I've played Pokémon with no pause since Gen-1, and SwSh VGC has been a freakin blast for the entire 2.5 years since release for me. I've never been this invested and excited about competitive in the entire history of the series, and believe me, I always tried to be. There's tons of changes and additions that have shown game after game that Gamefreak cares about competitive.
Sometimes Game Freak makes decisions that just completely confuse me even if I love the Pokemon series a lot. I think you were in the stream for it, but I was trying to complete my 'seen' Pokedex on Pokemon White 2 so I could get the special shiny Haxorus for fun. Only to find out that for whatever reason you don't fight a single trainer with a Buneary in the entire game, meaning that yeah it actually seems to be impossible to do that in White 2 specifically without trading for one (which thankfully some extremely kind individual was willing to do for me but still). Also, I had no idea renting video games wasn't allowed in Japan? I didn't do it a lot and I may just be emulation scum because my 3DS has no space and the EShop is dying, but that seems kinda silly?
Yep! There's no way to see Rufflet and Skitty in Black 2, and Vullaby and Buneary in White 2. It is also impossible to see the first stage of the last starter (and third stage unless Memory Link fights with Cheren or Bianca use them).
So true! The gen 3 dex fragmentation issues were so annoying. I had Colosseum and so had access to Johto mons, but then my friend got Leafgreen and had a Squirtle! How can I not be jealous of gen 1 starters! With trading limitations, I ended up having to get FRLG myself despite *even at the time* recognizing the somewhat absurdity of having to play through the game again to get Pokemon that I still had access to on my RBY carts. Although it was kind of fun to be able to be the local broker for Johto Pokemon, it was unfair to my friends who didn't have a gamecube+gba link+colosseum to get it all going, and just wanted to recreate their teams from GSC.
Fun fact: The swsh models of old pkmn are the exact same as before! They literally had all the old pkmn models stored and ready to be put into new games. These stored models were exactly what was put into swsh. They easily coulda put them all in. They only cut some so they could go “hey look! We brought a bunch back!” In the dlc
Yeah, it was kind of a huge omission for her not to mention this. She made it seem as though they prioritized graphics over content, and some people were upset about that. No, they didn't prioritize graphics. The models are THE SAME
@@pikapete2719 the model skeletons are the same, but the actual model textures were redone and upscaled one by one, including shiny forms. That's a lot of work for an artist
@@Whiteythereaper you are somewhat correct. Some textures are clearly redone but others are clearly not, or they are so simple that it wouldn't make sense to. A lot of Pokemon make heavy use of solid color rather than actual textures. A lot of the visual upgrades from the 3ds to the switch are also just because of the fact that they removed the ugly black outline from the 3DS days and the models aren't being rendered on a 240p screen. In Pokemon Go, models ripped directly from SwSh look identical in quality to models that have been in the game since launch. In addition, it's definitely a lot of work, but Pokemon is quite literally the highest grossing media franchise in human history. They have the money to hire the manpower to make it happen, but they choose to cut corners instead.
A wonderful breakdown on how insanely hard it is to complete Gen 3 by design. Completing Gen 8 is at least theoretically less time-consuming, but that doesn't exactly make it fine either.
This really takes me back to being a kid, and going over to my sisters friends house every so often. He had a huge TV, all the GBA games, an action replay, and XD with link cables. It was like Mecca for someone growing up during Gen 3.
To be fair, I think you could hypothetically have bought a memory card and rented Colosseum a lot in order to complete it, since game data is stored on the memory card, not the game
I can't remember whether or not she mentioned the need to purify the Shadow Pokemon. Personally I believe buying the GameCube games was more than worth it back during Gen 3.
Exactly, I thought her getting into all that money crunching was kinda unnecessary. Not to also bring up the fact that back then it was a group effort. You may have owned Emerald your freind May have owned XD and his brother may owned leaf green. Pokémon was more of a social effort back then when it came to gathering what you wanted.
From what I can tell, the multiple versions and focus on trading was primarily to get people interacting with each other. The plan wasn't originally for one person to get every game, but to go out and meet friends to trade with. The restrictions in Gen 3 regarding trading were still stupid and outright hindered the key focus. My sister and I each got our own Gameboy Advance and opposite versions, granted I wasn't much more social then than I am now and the trading mainly took the form of my sister getting all three starters. Meanwhile in the romhacking scene, I had a Pokemon I wanted in Unbound that wasn't available, not even in the game's National Dex, but I was still able to get a copy of Radical Red, catch the desired Pokemon, and then immediately trade it over with no issue. And it was _amazing!_
There was also another factor limiting your ability to trade between people in Gen 3. The other person had to be willing to ACTUALLY TRADE a pokemon to you. Plenty of us were kids at the time. Why should YOU be the one to trade away your version exclusive legendary pokemon to complete someone else's pokedex? You could always trade and trade back, but of course you had to REALLY trust the other person to be handing over your rare pokemon for any length of time. If you want the other Hitmons, you'd better hope the other person completed the game, has a Ditto, and is willing to breed you a few Tyrogue.
This was a great breakdown, great format, very well-structured and articulated. I learned a lot about how the rental market actually played into so many design and business choices back then. I was only a kid in the gen3 era, so all this just seemed 'the way things are', but to see the actual reasons behind it unpacked now was super interesting. And it seems like the type of thing that will get lost to time and understanding, since the rental market is such a thing of the past. Great video as always!
This is quite possibly the best video you've made, Tama. The amount of effort you put in this from research to reasoning to delivery to editing is beyond top notch.
It’s always refreshing to see Tama’s takes on the franchise, she tends to take into consideration things that many people don’t, like the gaming climate and market at the time. In this case the anti game rental designs. It’s made me appreciate some of the decisions made in the series going forwards, like the digital events and such mentioned in the video. Personally I now find myself questioning what I want out of a Pokémon game, as I consider Gen 3 to be my favorite and Gen 8 my least favorite, although that might just be because I’m a sucker for dongles and the connectivity between everything, even if it’s just limited to the post game. But at the very least it’s gotten me thinking and realizing valid critiques of my favorite Pokémon games and perhaps giving credit where it’s due with the latest generation. Quick side question if you happen to read this Tama, (or anyone else reading this that happens to know) but what model is the TV you had around 11:45 in the video?
Thanks for the education on game rentals! It does really bug me that the available Pokémon are so split up now. Generation 4 really had the right idea.
I love hearing the sardonic 'part 1'. It's the signal that I'm about to get lost in an informative and intensely interesting video essay about Pokémon. The videos Tama has put out since changing her name and video format are all seriously top-tier stuff. Some of my absolute favorite videos on UA-cam and always well worth the wait.
Love the Robopon reference. I adored the GBA sequel Robopon Cross version. Love seeing a Tama video come out. I have really distinct memories of being unable to Catch 'em All in Gen III because I did not have the money to buy all the necessary games, nor did I have WiFi for a long time so even Gen IV was a bit off. It's incredible how history is repeating itself again but even worse.
I look forward to each new video from you! I really enjoy these in-depth essays and reviews. Very eye opening, and informative! Thanks much for all the time you put into these!
Thank you for saying what I’ve been saying the last 3 years. Catching them all in Gen 3 was no doubt a complete nightmare, and that’s definitely why they dropped the old slogan from the RS boxart, because you just couldn’t! The original English slogan was “Catch ‘em if you can” which I feel fits much better these days! :P
So glad to see another great deep dive into Pokemon games. I was a few years late to the rental gaming market, so hearing about how it connects to the game's structure is so interesting. Though I feel one of the standout differences between Gen 3's mess and Gen 8's mess is also hindsight and technology. By now, we've worked out ways to trade between Gen 2 and Gen 3, even GF has... but they probably didn't have that understanding back then, especially when we consider the new work (sprites, music, new EV system) GF had to do for Gen 3, alongside the history of programming difficulties GF has. The most difficulty Gen 8 had (to our knowledge) was matching pre-made models to the newer animations and graphics. There's also the matter of technology. While I bet GF and Nintendo definitely enjoyed dulling out heaps of accessories to buy, the Gamecube and Gameboy don't seem as inherently designed to connect, and the GBC and GBA have two different link cables that don't seem capable of connection. I think it's interesting how the debate around the NatDex was so much fluff instead of tackling the core problem. Especially now that we still have issues with gating content despite the transfer of data being easier than ever. Nowadays we don't really need special adapters, just wireless communication and the software to interpret that data. Though something I feel is actually similar between both situations is the disregard towards Dex completion. All the spending in Gen 3 really seems to communicate the idea that national dex collection is only something older, super dedicated adult fans would've completed. A young kid will probably just buy one game and maybe a Gamecube game to go along it. But the adult collector is definitely going to spend so much money and time on every game. So they continue to disregard that audience because they don't matter in the long run and the games will sell well regardless. Even with all the trade difficulties, the Gen 3 games are some of the best selling GBA games, and vice versa for the Gen 8 games. I think GF has mainly been learning what they don't have to do to hold and audience, especially with how big Pokemon is now.
Don't forget actual data as well! Gen 2 to Gen 3 did a huge revamp in terms of Pokemon data, whereas you can't say the same for Sword and Shield. As for your last statement, I think that goes in general for some series. Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Mario Strikers on the Switch have less content compared to their predecessors, and yet, they are (likely) the best selling games in their series.
@@Mrperson0 It's good to see people actually looking into the technological reasons from the eras. Just because something is possible now doesn't mean it could've been a thing back then.
I appreciate this channel and how it's grown over the years so much! Nuance without blind service to the franchise or outrage farming is so rare in the Pokémon Fandom. Not to mention how you talk about Pokémon beyond just the surface level and analyze it both as art w themes and a comercial product.
Awesome video! It’s hard to know how frustrating all these restrictions are until you start collecting Pokémon. I don’t even want to collect the nat dex, but trying to send all my battle ready mons to my main emerald game is a huge pain in the ass. Having to finish Colo to get my swablu out is so depressing lol. It’s hard to see these restrictions as anything other than malicious. I also don’t think people necessarily even realize how difficult finding people to trade with was back then. I think I only traded with my brother, my cousin, and one elementary school friend in RS. Whereas in RBY/GSC I remember trading or battling with everyone in my class.
I haven’t been into Pokémon much since 2019. But even when I was still a mega fangirl who breathed the series, I didn’t realize just how tedious it was to trade between the GBA games. I’m terrified to go back to emerald now considering it used to be one of my favorites.
Damn, when I was a kid, my brother and our friend and I all spent a summer collecting Pokémon across the different GBA and GameCube games. I remember feeling so lucky at the time that we all had each other to trade with. I still feel grateful for those days. Sounds like not everyone had that kind of experience.
Never forget the firered and leaf green puzzle to find the grunt with the sapphire in the sevi islands that if you’re a kid and can’t figure it out you’re just screwed from trading with ruby sapphire or emerald
An interesting side-note from a Gen Z perspective: I came into the Pokemon franchise right around the time Diamond and Pearl came out, but I had a handful of GBA Pokemon games inherited second-hand from my cousins that I played on the DS Lite's GBA port. Trading with my friends on Diamond was super easy, because everyone had a DS and either Diamond or Pearl and you could trade between friends wirelessly, but trading with my friends on the GBA games was impossible because of the need for a link cable and actual Game Boy Advances. Thus, I was basically locked out of any pokemon not on Sapphire, even if I could have theoretically traded for them with someone who had Ruby had I been born just one generation earlier. The moment I saw a GBA Link Cable in a secondhand store as a teenager, I immediately bought it as a status symbol to myself of finally being able to own something that was an impossible dream as a kid, even though it was a moot point by then. Tl;dr: Diamond and Pearl have a special place in my heart for letting me enjoy the social features of Pokémon for the first time.
Yup, though I think Gen V was my first Wi-Fi experience, Gen IV was at least cable/accessory-free so trading between a DS Lite and the DSi I upgraded to was enough
I can say pretty similar lol. DP was the first game I played but a lot of older kids around me would play the GBA games as well, and eventually I'd get to play Gen 4 with kids my age. If the DP did one thing right, it was making it that much easier for anyone to connect with others.
Reminds me, Pokémon White was the first DS game I played online because it was the first to support more secure connections, so I could actually get it to work.
I'm in a similar position. I was able to do some trades and stuff in the first two gens, and actually had every Gen III game, but it wasn't until Gen IV and the GTS that I was actually able to complete the entire National Dex.
As a kid, I actually liked this system. It led to the lending of Gamecube games with friends and trading with friends felt meaningful. I was able to set up meet ups with friends and trade.
According to some old interviews, every copy of the game was going to be personalized based on your trainer ID, something which is often forgotten to be in Gen 1. Miyamoto is the one said something like "let's make only 2 or three versions instead, so people can swap secrets like in zelda". Nowadays with randomizers, the fans have re-built the idea for themselves!
It annoyed me to no end when this happened and why they said. Like Pokemon is the biggest multimedia franchise in the world and they were acting like they made a ship to big to steer. Like they made their own bed on this one. This is the accumulative cost of all this success and new content each year. That's the promise they made.
THIS. This is what I was thinking during the Dexit controversy. My favorite pokemon is Teddiursa, so gen 3’s dex hurt me lol I love your voice and your videos! I feel like your content is perfect for people like me, and I appreciate your dorky charm. c:
A bit wild that I’m just now finding out about Emerald. I wish I still had the save file to check, but I think in my first Hall of Fame team I had one non regional Pokémon on my team. I remember seeing that it had no Pokédex number at the time. Also, having a sibling at a close enough age to play with had me ending up with 6 of the 7 games of Gen 3 😂
This was quite a deep and insightful video. I grew up playing the Gen 4 games when they were released in the U.S., so I had no idea that the Gen 3 games had this problem that is apparent in the recent games. Thank you so much for this, Tama!
BRO! I've been looking for your channel for literal weeks! I had such fond memories of your videos from my childhood and I remembered you doing something with Pokémon Green in Japanese but I couldn't remember your channel name and just your voice. It's nice to be back here.
Man I knew trying to trade in gen 3 was bad, but I didn't realize how *bad* it actually was. There are so many hurdles you needed to jump through in order to get like one or two Pokemon or in some cases even trade at all. When you finally reach that point though, there's really no reason to trade at. This was about as informative as it was kind of sad and what's sadder is that it feels like history is somewhat repeating itself for less of a reason.
You know, I never thought of the idea that needing to unlock regional trades in Gen 3 in the post game being an anti-rental measure never occurred to me🤔.
Thank you SO much for making this video Tama! It was a very much needed discussion about how Pokemon has always been predatory, and it's not something as recent as some people want to believe. You handled everything perfectly, and everything you put out is accurate and very informative! I don't know if this was a crazy coincidence, but I decided around a month ago to complete the original Emerald dex once and for all because I never got the chance when I was a kid, and now that I had all the legal resoruces, I wanted to try and see how long it'll take. After +4 weeks, I'm not done with the full dex yet, and I realized why I was never able to complete the dex when I was 7, and I highly doubt any normal kid would have completed the dex ever, without a cheating device that is. The time it takes, the resources, everything!! It's just awful, and I was amazed how little people actually pointed out the parallels to the current situation, and I thought that maybe I was overreacting,. After watching this video, I feel reasured that the way I feel is warranted and now I understand better why Pokemon and Nintendo did what they did (not that it makes any of their actions better though lmao). But yeah, thanks for the insight again Tama! It is very important to talk about companys' predatory tactics, and Pokemon shouldn't be inmune to them!
I just wanted to say thank you so much for letting me contribute even a small part of my own Pokemon journey to one of your videos. The Gen 8 era of Pokemon was emotionally draining for a lot of people, myself included. There was so much hostility across the entire web that just made me feel like I was no longer welcome to enjoy Pokemon the way that I had been, nor was I able to find a place of belonging within the modern day of the Pokemon franchise. Your videos always go above and beyond in emphasizing not only what makes Pokemon special for the people who played it at the specific timeframe that they were released in, but also highlights the complexity of how these generations were formed and defined by the real world events and occurrences that took place in the lives of the people working on the games. Your passion on the subject always manages to reignite my love for Pokemon. And since I'm one of the weirdos who actually BEGAN my Pokemon journey in the Orre region, it was incredibly special to be able to provide the Colosseum footage for this video. :)
I'm really impressed with your documentaries! I lived through these events as a kid, but I never stopped to think about why they were that way. Kudos! You are an amazing researcher!
I totally agree with the criticism, your videos are always wonderful. I even remember counting how many version exclusives in FRLG were already available in RS so I could decide which version I would get. I wanted to add something though: the sheer amount of time you had to invest in your national Dex really made me play the games for the whole life spam of gen 3. I was the one who played FRLG 3 Times to get the beasts, looked for someone in real life events so I could have Johto starters and I soon learned in the beginning of gen III that I could not restart my save files anytime (as I did in gen II) - I had to keep a save file intact. It was really memorable to complete the dex and it really changed forever the way I play Pokemon. Perhaps that's something that came with the way the Nat dex was implemented in gen 3.
What was really frustrating about arguing with people in 2019 as someone who didn't support "dexit" was that you would say you didn't like it because you wanted the national dex in the game. Then someone would claim that it was OK because they were redoing the models. This was proven false very early on, as you could simply watch the trailers and compare the models from previous games. They made minor improvements to the old models from 2013, and when you explained this to people who thought it was fine, they would throw some other reason that you could pretty much discredit. Claim graphics were going to be better, insert meme comparing textures to super old games and other games on the switch. Claim that they were adding more pokemon, proven false by leaks and still holds true to this day, very few new pokemon added. Claim that animations would be better, insert meme comparing animations from gen 1 to now (especially double kick) and memes comparing animations to pokemon stadium. You could go on and on and I guarantee that there was no actually good argument for removing the national dex. This led to many people who really liked pokemon becoming very, very frustrated and increasingly unwilling to talk about it. You even had many popular youtubers come out denouncing the people against removing it. It's like arguing with super religious types, eventually I figured it was pointless and moved from pokemon after being a huge fan for 10 years, but I am still a little bitter about the whole ordeal. I mean, I was well informed and I was right. They are a multibillion dollar company who put as little effort as possible into there games, yet even though you knew you were right and nobody could make a valid argument against you, the number of people who knew what I did was very few and the ones who didn't failed to systematize the information given to them. It's like extreme gaslighting or something, it doesn't feel good. The memes were funny though, phrases like "halve dex" or "but it is in the game! in lore." and photoshops of trainers of pokemon dressed up as other pokemon that were confirmed to be in the game pleading to border officers. They loved to mock the game devs official statements as well.
I remember using my Action Replay to catch national dex Pokemon in Ruby / Sapphire. I was so happy seeing their new sprites, different from FR/LG. The memories 💖
Although the situation was somehow similar to Gen3, in my opinion, there are still 2 main differences: 1. The Ruby/Sapphire games were programmed with all 386 Pokemon and the national dex from the get-go, meaning they intentionally left the option of putting back Pokemon into the game with future games. That is actually not the same with the 2019 Sword/Shield dexit, because the Pokemon that are not available was straight up not coded in the games, and GameFreak also denied the possibility of adding them back by DLCs. Of course we all know that they were lying and still added like 200 Pokemon back with the DLCs, but that's not all of the Pokemon in existence, we are still missing Pokemon from the national dex on the Switch even after the last game of Gen 8 is out. This is not the same as back in Gen3 they added all the past generation pokemon back with newer games. 2. When Ruby/Sapphire was released, Pokemon was just 7 or 8 years old, and as you said, due to game rental and the younger age of the franchise, not a lot of people have a dedicated collection of digital creatures they want to bring into newer games, therefore this wasn't a big issue like nowadays. Nowadays Gamefreak has been dedicated to including all Pokemon in every mainline game until Gen7 and also always provided a way to let players transfer their Pokemon up to the newer games since Gen3. That's a 15 year time span and a lot of players had become collectors within this time span for a lot of reasons, and that really makes a big difference to the players' reactions in these two different times. Even to date I still feel very upset that there are certain Pokemon unable to enter Sword and Shield, and I don't think GameFreak is planning to do any updates for this either. Still a great video, though I don't feel any better about the Gen8 dexit after watching it. It is a piece of history in the Pokemon franchise after all.
This also makes the Braile puzzle for the Regis make more sense. You'd have to realize what you need to do, rent a book on braile from the library, and decode everything ALL during the rental period.
I've seen people talking about this subject before, but it's the first time I hear about this background on videogame renting and that brings up a unique way of looking at the gen 3 national dex. I really love this about your videos, even on subject that are widely talked about you always bring up something unique, there's always something that I'm gonna find in your video but not on others.
Amazing video. I feel a lot of people don’t realize just how terrible gen 3 was when it comes to collecting mons, it took me getting all gen 3 mons from Ruby and Sapphire to realize this, and yeah in that sense the lack of ditto makes it absolutely dreadful. Though I love this look back through how the trading idea went from a risky shot in the dark into a greedy limiting choice. It just goes to show how even idea born from innovation can be twisted in ways that hurt the players. Hopefully the push back Gen 8 has had throughout its entire life atleast slows this down and maybe Gen 9 will try to get back on the right path
I assure you whatever "pushback" you think occured it doesn't amount to anything. For every hardcore established fan like me not buying games there's 10 or 100 new fans coming in. As long as the games keep selling, nothing will change.
It’s nice to see you tama. I like to think that you have a nice relationship with UA-cam, making occasional videos without pressure or obligation, doing video ideas that you find interesting
Oh wow, I never even thought about how game rentals would shake up how video games were developed. That's a super interesting bit of inside baseball about the game industry! Well done 👏
The whole SwSh situation got very out of hand for sure. The fact the reason for the National Dex cut likely was "We need a reason to sell you Home subscriptions" certainly didn't help though.
Thank you for being a calm voice of facts for such an important topic in this community. Your videos are always fun and insightful to watch. I also would like to point out that the code for some of the Pokemon left out in sword and shield was still present, those being the Pokemon in their planned dlc at the time. :/
I really appreciate all the research that goes into your videos, I always leave knowing more about a product I thought I knew everything about. Thank you for your efforts!
You know what really gets me about the "better graphics" claim is... Scarlet and Violet actually DO have better models/textures, and didn't suffer any sort of weird delay for that. Like, wonky as some other parts of the game might be, Gen 9 has amazing looking Pokemon. Really makes me wonder what the heck was up with Sword/Shield
I remember abusing the GameStop used return policy to complete the Emerald national dex. Riding my bike back and forth to the store and recycling the same like $40 to get different games, consoles, and cables. That was a fun and lonely😭 summer
I genuinely don’t mind mythical Pokémon being available through owning other save files, Because the alternative is just mystery gift events that people who buy the game late never get to access. I’d much prefer mythical Pokémon to be available late game like Deoxys and Keldeo, But if they’re set on not making them available to normal gameplay, then I find the method of used in legends Arceus a better alternative than mystery gifts
I agree with you here, but my only question is that aren't mythicals usually released after the main games have already come out? Which could be why they're not in the base game.
@@iamyourfathr420 The issue is that it is 100% possible to make them available in the base game when it comes out. The fact that they choose not to and use two less than ideal methods of distribution is disappointing.
@@RBGolbat True, my only hope is that they start to put in the mythical pokemon/event after the game has come out via patch/update since in Legend:Arceus, they added in some new content via the Daybreak update, maybe they can do it to mythicals. However, I do worry that they go Mario Sports Game approach, where they add in more content with future updates even though the base game is a little barebones.
@@RBGolbat think of it as a “steak knives” for playing through multiple games. Buy these games individually, or buy 2 of them both and get X, or buy 5 games and get U, V, X, Y & Z.
You simultaneously explained my exact opinions clearly and comprehensively while at the same time teaching me about why those things happened in the first place in Gen III. Like, I was a kid who went through Fire Red using a novelization of the original Red/Blue as a guide and had no idea about the Sevii Islands postgame. (I also sucked enough that I didn't beat the E4 for a very long time.) I really, really wanted an Eevee in Hoenn and tried every method to trick the game into trading with Emerald (which was completed and did have the National Dex), but to no avail. Only Kanto Pokemon in Emerald party like GSC, nope. Put Eevee up for trade in that wireless adapter room asking for a type I had in Emerald? Nope. The opposite, putting up the Pokemon in Emerald and asking for Eevee? Nope. And I was one who was lucky enough to get multiple GBAs and a Link Cable so I could trade with myself. I had no idea game rentals were the reason the restrictions were there. I thought it was just Game Freak being bad at game design. Diamond/Pearl and particularly HGSS were magical *because* I could trade any Pokemon in from other games for replays. And I used that freedom often. Honestly I think the struggles to get an Eevee into Emerald *when I had already beaten Emerald* made that freedom so much sweeter and so much more a part of my enjoyment of the Pokemon franchise. I thought it was a staple and because they mentioned the GCS->RSE lack of commuinication "making players feel bad" in interviews so often, I assumed it was an integral part of the series that would never change. And then Dexit happened. Now, I'd had small issues in the background since Gen V when they started phasing out side features and changing route design philosophy, but the collection aspect, the huge customizability from having kept up with the series, and the fact that the story battles were still fun (and in fact were better than games before in the Unova and Alola games) kept me enjoying the series. But Dexit sent the Jenga tower of my love of the series toppling down.
i grew up during this time i had the games on gamecube i had access to my gba sp and my friends gba the ONLY problem we had was finding link cables to use and for my entire childhood i never saw a link cable for sale anywhere, not in local stores, not in stores we went to out of town, none at garage sales and thrift stores we went to, anyone who cared enough to buy one was obviously using it so no one ever resold it. Maybe they were on ebay or something but online shopping wasn't as big then and usually when stuff was on places like ebay they would sell it for way more than it was worth. Also important to note my friend DID NOT play pokemon other than whan she was hanging out with me borrowing my games so I had to play the different versions and everything all by myself. I never knew anyone else who played pokemon until I got to middle school and even then it was only a few kids who played the video games. I was bullied for liking pokemon so much because it was "lame" in the 2000s through to the mid 2010s(when 90s nostalgia was trendy and pokemon go released) where I lived.
Yeah, gen 3 was the growing pains of the franchise. Kids in Nyc still played Pokemon post 2003 but when I moved to NC in 2007 hardly anyone was into Pokemon.
Me: Oh, we still don't have all the Pokemon in Gen 9. At least we can get some cool outfits to mess around with, right? Gamefreak: You get a uniform and that's it :)
To me it shows another drastic change in direction out of sights. Since gen1 we would get a few trade Pokémon that couldn't be caught in either version as a trade from a distance place. Jynx and Farfetch'd were the ones for Red, Green and Blue before Farfetch'd became available in yellow for instance. Trading to other versions encouraged making friends and asking friends to play together, as well as checking out the cool parties each one made. Instead of throwing a hundred or two new pokemon every game, they could add a few more for each version and have moveset changes or place games un different regions and give a narrative in universe explanation that added to the game play
In the intro, you seem really biased against people who were upset with Dexit. You pointed out that the excuse they gave for Dexit was for higher quality graphics and rebuilding all pokemon models from the ground up, and then go on to say that graphical quality is extremely subjective, and that a lot of fans would never be happy no matter how good the changes were, implying that fans were dissatisfied with the graphical changes that they made. You left out the fact that they flat out lied, they did not create any new models for pokemon besides the brand new ones added in Sword and Shield, and same goes for the move animations. People were not upset that the graphical changes were not up to snuff, they were upset that no changes were made at all, despite these changes being the excuse given to cut the national dex and so many pokemon from the games. The way you talked about it was very misleading
another banger, crazy how tama can't miss. i learned a lot here, and feel like i ended up with a more educated stance on the whole national dex crap with sword and shield. that truly was a monumental moment in the series history given that we're all still talking about it and are constantly getting new perspectives. gotta say though, production keeps going up on these video essays. your narration felt extra passionate this time and the editing was really sharp. loving your work, it's some of my favorite stuff on the platform!
I'm so happy someone finally put all this to words in a video. I've been ranting about this for years. It's even a thing in gen 2. In GSC you can't trade with rby until you have 3 badges I believe and stadium 2 only let's you move pokemon with different ID numbers if your pokedex is 150+.
I love the new direction of your videos! Super well and nice take on Game Freak's and Nintendo's history to look at a recent problem. I had all the games from gen 3 and did trade once in a while but was never my major concern I just liked playing the games themselves. This was a treat showing up in my sub box ^-^
Let's not forget that they also removed the GTS from not only SwSh, but also from BDSP, the remake of the games where they even originated. The GTS, despite all its issues of illegal Pokemon and impossible trades, was still the easiest way to trade exclusives for exclusives, or starters for starters. Now locked behind Pokemon Home...
Pokémon was a game that got me out of some bad times in my life. When complaints started creeping up around the 3DS era, I blocked them out, and I didn't start seeing the cracks until it was too late. Now, dexit has permanently ruined it for me, and I can't trust any more games that are put out. It's hard to still enjoy your favorite game franchise when you have the unfortunate enlightenment of knowing those games were made by conmen. Some poor child is gonna look at which Pokémon are compatible with what game, and they're gonna get so confused or frustrated, they drop Pokémon and never play it again.
Incredibly well-researched. I only ever really got into Gen 3, and was so upset that I couldn't trade with my friends with GB(C)s. I haven't hardly played since then, but now my interest lies in the single-player play style - use patches to combine all versions' content for that generation and go for the regional dex only.
I'm pretty sure we all know about the inability to bring Pokemon from Gen 2 to Gen 3. And yes, it sucked, but *that* was simply because of hardware limitations. Granted, they were limitations they could have potentially gotten around if they tried hard enough, but still. They still had the data for the Pokemon in the games, and they did eventually make it possible to get them all using only Gen 3 games (including the GameCube games), you just couldn't bring them up from previous gens. The main issue with the Sword and Shield thing was that *they literally removed the actual Pokemon data, which made it flat-out impossible to use that species of Pokemon in those games.* So you can't really compare the two situations because they're not really *that* similar. Yes, they both prevented players from bringing Pokemon from previous gens, but one still allowed you to use all of those species of Pokemon and the other just flat-out removed the ability to use them. Though I will confess, those trading restriction were *really* bad. Also, the Let's Go games are Gen 7, not Gen 8.
Pokémon games are like streaming services now: you HAVE to buy these games in order to use/breed your favorites because they are deliberately refusing to ever make the most recent mainline titles have everything accessible. Wanna use/breed Galar starters? Buy Swooshi. Wanna use/breed Sinnoh starters? Buy Botched Diamond/Subpar Pearl. Wanna use/breed Kalos starters? Well you've been shit out of luck for the past few years and if you've made the grave mistake of transferring them to the prison known as "H🚫ME," well I hope you enjoy their pretty little PNGs. And transfers have only been getting worse as I think they're trying to do away with transfer-only moves. Since you mentioned the Shadow Lugia from Gale of Darkness, that Lugia is the only way to get a Lugia with the move Psycho Boost (normally exclusive to Deoxys). Swooshi allowed for transfer moves, but BDSP did not. And I feel like this is a harbinger for what's to come because I think defaulting transferred Pokémon to level-up moves would just be easier on the development team (but the main excuse will probably be something like "game balance" or something meaningless like that). I don't think SV is going to allow for transfer moves. The only things people will be able to keep are EVs and levels. On I final note, every time I learn something new about BDSP, it's NEVER something good. I'm sorry, but BDSP is the worst thing that's ever came from this series. It is a product of pure corporate nihilism. The only Switch era game I've gotten was PLA and I think I might skip out on everything else going forward, no matter if it's mainline or a Legends title because it's just Pokémon as a service now. I will not keep consuming next product. It's just a mediocrity factory now. No need to make a slam-dunk generation when they can release a bunch of passable games and make oodles of cash that way. Tis the standard for mainstream entertainment nowadays, whether you're talking about Pokémon or if you're talking about Disney. I miss Pokémon. Pour one out for my builds still remaining in my Ultra Sun cartridge. o7
I've been watching your videos for what feels like a decade now and I can't quite emphazise how well you hit the nail on the head with these videos. wonderful video as always :)
This is an expanded version of an argument I introduced in the FireRed and LeafGreen review, although I tried to tone down the salt and stick to the facts this time. If you watch these back to back, maybe this video will make the other one make a bit more sense. ua-cam.com/video/GcLKCGGG340/v-deo.html
Great video Tama, though as a fan of Japanese video games, I do need to point out that many games are not short, in fact, a great many either have no end goal and can be played infinity till ur sick of it or take 50-100+ hrs to beat or even finish. Also, even IF SV add in the remaining missing mons, its too late for gen 8 to have every mon as gen 8 is the first (of likely many) gens that will never have every mon avail in a main series game... Minior is one of those mons and I mention this specifically becus they (Via Home) seem to have changed its shiny... I don't like this. Perhaps u could do a vid on shinies that have been changed over time and more so the recent ones that have had their shiny color changed such as Minior (Though it remains to be seen if it'll keep the new colors given its not in a main series game yet sicne the change...)
Btw, Thanks Tama, never knew thats why certain games were made the way they were (Including Pokemon with its trade locks in gen 3), makes sense now.
This was a very awesome and needed addendum to that Leaf and Fire video and really clears up why this current gen seems so soulless. I'd really love to hear your take on the whole Meltan/Melmetal thing.
Hey Tama, thanks for the video and THANKS for keeping out the salt. It's really not necessary for the argument and I find it usually just detracts. And I get the salt, because I am definitely salty at times too (Banette, my baby, whenn will I get to see you on Switch in a new region?). And when I see 'PokéBros' ranting for over twenty minutes about the coast of the game, it just makes me disinterested in the video.
So also pointing out that Gen 3 was also hecka expensive if you wanted to complete te dex and had no friends or siblings to play with. Like, definitely more than twenty dollars expensive (which is also ain't fantastic). Probably something I'd want to add there though is that I'm not sure if adding the console cost is entirely fair, since it's technically not a Pokémon playing machine. It is for some people, of course. But you could, if you wanted to, use it for other games as well.
I also didn't realise that the weird trading stuff in Gen 3 was cause of the rental industry, though tbf I'm not sure if that was a very big industry in the Netherlands/Europe to begin with. Films and series, sure, but I don't think I ever saw videogame rentals advertised as a kid.
Annyway, thanks again for the video!
The Devil Of Xudian The Devil From The Start, Always Killing Tanned The Devil To The Death From The Start, And Always Killing Indian The Devil To The Death In Every Dimension From The Start..And Also To Always Killing Edison The Devil To The Death From The Start..
Tama: "Let's talk about Sword and Shield!"
Also Tama: **Talks about Gen 3 for half an hour**
Gen 3 was the original dexit
Oh you devious Tama, never change
I mean the title of the video should have given away the primary discussion.
Classic Tama
@@tuesti7c Not entirely, unlike Sword and Shield you were able to transfer and use All of Gen1&2 Pokemon from FRLG, Coliseum, and XD to RSE.
As someone who really started getting into Pokémon during Gen 3, I’ve never felt so seen. I went through ALL of this. We only figured out how to trade our FRLG games with RSE because one of us convinced their parents to buy a guidebook. And then we had to strategically figure out when we could meet up to even do any trading, because we were kids with 0 control over our schedules. Had a friend who owned Colosseum, and we were stoked bc that meant we could get the remaining Johto Pokémon… only to find out his memory card wasn’t big enough to save on Colosseum. Plus I don’t even think he owned the GameCube to GBA cable. In the end, one guy got a GameShark, and then he became the king of the neighborhood, and we all had to pay him in candy if we wanted to use it to get mythicals or non-native Pokémon.
The difference is that at least the Pokemon were programmed into Hoenn you just needed to trade them in, but not all Pokemon are programmed into SwSh, even though they could have done it easily.
I don't know this person, I don't live in the same country, I didn't even live those same hardships...and I still related to every single word you said.
Damn gen 3 was a rough time for continue/starting being a Pkmn fan.
@@IceSpoon Gen 3 kicked me off Pokemon as a kid. Didn't come back until I was in Uni.
People forget that it's the fact that it was very hard to get certain pokémon that the franchise was in a good path. Gen4 brought the "cheatmania", which allowed everyone to get a darkrais, deoxys, etc. THAT'S when the franchise started its downfall.
@@luiscfdsilva >People forget that it's the fact that it was very hard to get certain pokémon that the franchise was in a good path.
But at a high risk as well
Speaking from a purely emotional attachment perspective, Gen 3's lack of backwards compatibility hit the hardest, but it sorta helped that at least the National Dex existed, that somehow, some way, any Pokemon can be obtained. With Gen 8 cutting out the Pokemon entirely, its very similar to the Gen 3 gap, but it feels worse that they aren't programmed in at all, so there's nothing you could ever do to bring your favorites to a game that they don't exist in. I never cared about Pokedex completion, I just wanted to bring my old buddies with me for every journey.
Yup yup. I'll add that I looked, and still look, forward to new Dex entries that expand on the world and that particular pokemon.
It bums me out to see recycled entries, which make me feel like the inclusion of pokemon not in the regional Dex more of a formality.
What hope is there in Gamefreak designing the next game as a collective of lovers of pokemon and immersive games versus a soulless company with a monetary bottom line?
Same here, all I wanted was for all of the Pokémon to be transferable like they did in Gen 7. I want all of my mons in a game and not get stuck in Home.
At least with gen 3, it was possible to make your own transfer device if you REALLY wanted the exact same Pokemon or a Pokemon generator to insert the same Pokemon in. Also cheat systems were much easier to get at the time, so you could always use those.
the loss of gen 2s pokemon stuck on those older systems is still the biggest oof for sure
One thing I hate about Pokémon is that special event bull shit. Whole ass areas and Pokémon you can get in older games without just straight up hacking. Like most of us didn’t even witness these events.
I feel like the most important thing was the very last thing you said: "They're creating the problem they're selling the solution to." This can't be understated
Also known as "The Apple strategy"
Though it wasn't the best example to end it on. To get the arceus in BDSP you have to have already gotten it in legends arceus. And you can transfer that one over. So you would have 2 arceus at that point.
@@LordRoto the better example is actually SwSh's dlc
@@Depressed_Dandelion In what way? The reason why I brought up LA, was because the video states you have you buy an extra game to get an arceus. But at that point you would already have one. Ignoring that getting Arceus in general isn't nessessary because mythicals don't ever count torwards national dex completion in games.
Unless you are saying like, the more generous offer was the SwSh DLC because you could get the pokemon without paying for them as long as someone traded them to you or you imported them yourself. To which I would agree but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
@@LordRoto I meant that, if the topic is GF creating a problem (cutting the pokemon) only to sell the solution (another game) back, then the better example is SwSh's DLC, because (as far as I'm aware) if you wanna have those mons you either buy the DLC itself or get Switch Online to trade with someone who has them (or also through Home question mark, I don't really know how that works)
(Speaking of Home, let's not pretend they didn't get rid of the GTS in SwSh exclusively for this piece of crap. And since it has a subscription service, it's also kinda applicable here, right?)
I saw you say on Twitter the other day how Gen 3 was the point where a huge chunk of Pokémon's original audience fell off the series, and it was nice to see somebody else remembers that! I was in high school at the time, and it was like RSE didn't even happen. Gen III might as well have started with FRLG as far as my peers were concerned (not that EVERYONE was playing it by any means, you still had a lot of "you're STILL playing Pokémon!?" types, but at least my fellow nerds were), and it's always felt like the main Gen III game to me too, because I played it so much more. xD
Gen 4 was the second wave of fans. I remember quite a bit of my classmates picking up diamond and pearl, especially due to how popular the DS was
Pokemon wasn't really known as a game franchise where I'm from because Nintendo wasn't a big deal here (most people just knew Pokemon from the anime and nothing else), but I think most people stopped watching the anime around gen 3 as well so that tracks for me. Kind of reminds me of how people stopped caring about Tamagotchis around v3 as well - when I got the v4 people were giving me the "you're still playing with this?" shit at school too lol
As someone who started as the target audience in Gen 1, it always confused me how Gen 3 became so many peoples' favorite for awhile, while Sword and Shield were hated for doing exactly the same thing. I was one of those people that dropped off after GSC and I'm far from the only one that I knew. I came back with Platinum and HGSS later and those games were incredible, and I've just been on and off with the series since.
I was in elementary school at the time and we were playing RSE, but I know a good chunk of the older kids (including me) started falling off at that point. I know that while I was wowed by the graphics and the music, I didn't like gen 3 nearly as much because I didn't get to play with my favorites, and a lot of the new pokemon felt (at the time) like cheap knock-offs of ones from the previous games. I didn't end up getting another Pokemon game til XY around the beginning of college
Honestly, I was always uncool, and was picked on for everything except being a Pokémon fan. Even my friends still played!
I'm just happy I grew up sheltered from any sort of Pokémon stigma, despite the experience of so many others.
Nintendo: "WE MUST FIND A WAY TO STOP KIDS FROM PIRATING!!! >:("
Nintendo: *gives children the option to either cheat, or spend over $300 basically buying (and completing) the same game 497 times simply to trade pokemon*
I think this is how a lot of players (including myself) took x&y and omega Ruby&Alpha Sapphire for granted. The only restriction really was needing two Pokémon two trade and unlocking the ability, which didn’t require internet if by passerby. If playing x or y, you could trade as early as route 2 with no restriction on if it was in the dex or not. Same with omega Ruby/Alpha sapphire, you just needed to get the tutorial by Wally. Great video btw as always!!
I stopped playing legal Pkmn games (I'm not ashamed on saying I used emulation) in Gen 2, so for me trading back and forth between those first two gens IS the standard play. It baffles me that you can't trade your Torchic bred with all the benefits of ORAS improvements all the way back to RSE.
@@IceSpoon Same here on my gen 6 play-throughs! Once I learned about eggs, I would trade them to a new play through so the Pokémon would obey me and I could use a variety of Pokémon. I’d say I played those games the most strictly because I could use any Pokémon I wanted without cheating or needing to put in tons of time in another game.
Eh. Except X and Y never got the new mega stones that oras did. I remember wishing that they would just go all out and give the games complete compatibility with each other.
Gen VI was also the only Gen other than Gen I where you could get every non-mythical Pokémon with only the mainline games of that generation. No trades from outside gens or Wi-Fi events needed.
Yeah but Gen 6 had its own slew of issues. ORAS were okay, but still severely lacking in the difficulty that some of the previous generations had (namely gens 3-5), and x and y were just baby mode. As soon as the player had access to mega evolution every important trainer from there onward should have also had a mega.
I, for one, appreciate Tama's gradual evolution to that of Poké-historian, bridging the gap between real-life events and expectations and how they influenced one of the highest-selling game franchises of all time.
Excellent, detailed video with a lot of food for thought (it's practically a buffet for gluttony). Thank you for all the effort you take to provide people with your voice and input. And for putting up with the GameCube games, lol.
I'm always impressed by how much newer information about these games you're able to present that other poketubers haven't covered.
Also adding to something I said at the end, guess who wasn't president of Nintendo at the early stages of gen 3 when Colosseum was being made, therefore preventing Ishi(t)hara from making gen 3 cost multiple consoles from different systems and many, many different games in order to complete the PokéDex in Hoenn (because at the end I said that Pokémon is greedier now than before when Iwata was there and it could be countered with "gen 3 cost this much"). Iwata became president of Nintendo May 2002, Ruby and Sapphire were released on November 2002, Colosseum on November 2003, but I bet development on Colosseum began before he became president and therefore making gen 3 cost another different console for the Dex to be completed Ishi(t)hara's decision. You could blame it on the previous president of Nintendo but the business decisions made by Ishi(t)hara on recent years strongly indicate who's more likely to be responsible of such a thing.
This was a very hard pill to Swalot because of how much I adore Generation III as a whole. I was given Emerald as a birthday gift, and when I tell you it took hell AND high water to get every single mon, I mean it! You obviously know from your amazing video and experience, but I felt *so* accomplished for managing to ALMOST collect them all (384 out of 386, I think???). As a kid and even now, I love challenges in video games, so the whole "beat the whole game to trade between A and B" or "do this long sidequest so you can do XYZ" was very fun for me, but that doesn't mean I can't see the flaws and anti-player mentality. I'm obviously in a very small minority of people who enjoyed the challenge.
I also recognize I benefitted from a household that COULD afford all the things you mentioned over birthday and christmas gifts (I have two brothers, and we all LOVED pokemon, so the gifts were a no-brainer). Over just a few years, we had everything you listed minus Sapphire and XD, so when I took the challenge to "catch them all" after the dust of the new games settled, I had a much easier time to do so: I had loads of free time, and I did not have to pay for anything as my family received them as gifts.
I guess I'm just sad to know that something that I personally loved was actually a tedious, grinding, unfriendly, and greedy tactic used to maximize profits for others.
I do not mean this in any negative way at all, Tama, but thank you for showing me the experiences of others and putting my childhood into perspective. I cannot imagine the frustration that kids must have had to have been restricted access to their favorite pokemon from reruns or seeing them at friends' houses due to money or esoteric game design.
Lol I'm going to try to used the emerald cloning giltch and all 5 gen 3 games
One thing not mentioned is the move reset when traded to games in the same generation. I wanted to trade my guys from home (Iron Fist Infernape with Egg Moves) to do Battle Tower in Brilliant Diamond
Nope. I basically gotta breed a whole new chimchar.
I mean you can still give the infernape his egg moves but you do still need another one with that move bred within bdsp (or grand underground) and then stick them in the day care with one empty move slot so it'll learn that egg move. Still a pain though
@@PokeHokage but the point is too not have basically do all that. Then at that point who cares of Home compatibility is a thing. We essentially have to start from scratch for a set up we want.
And no, it’s not about laziness, look at transferred Pokémon into SWSH, they keep it all, ability, current move set, and all relearn sets from previous gens including TMs and TRs ( aslong as the move is programmed in them).
Idk why they could’ve do the same for BDSP instead of just resetting the Pokémon we transfer as of it was caught in the wild at the level we transferred it.
This made my eyelid twitch
I dropped out in gen 3 and genuinely did not realise the series went on to degenerate into design as hostile as this
@Abraham_Torres Because then we wouldn't have movesets "faithful" to the originals, or something.
Though I agree with the move to reset moves on entry (for logistical and balance reasons), they should just remove egg moves or add some way to learn them on grown Pokémon (like they do for other mechanics like IVs), because otherwise we run into your issue and there's really no benefit to Pokémon (financially or otherwise) for forcing players to RE-train and move their pokemon upon trade.
The main problem for me with the whole dexit thing was when it was demonstrated that the "redone-from-scratch assets" thing was a lie. Once the data files leaked from SwSh, people were able to compare the old models and new models side by side and show that they were the exact same down to the polygon, So not only was graphical fidelity not the best reason in some people's mind, it wasn't even the truth, and the outright lie is what made some fans like me upset.
It's one thing to not have every Pokemon in the game. It's another thing to lie about the reason for removing Pokemon
to be fair if they said "we need to update the textures for any pokemon we add, along with testing them in both freeroam and camping AND compress any and all files relating to them while being overworked to add new stuff" people would still call bullshit and complain
Completing the Dex in Gen 3 without glitches or hacking is one of the most herculean tasks in the series lol. I wasn't able to do it anyway.
The reason Gen 2 to Gen 3 wasn't as big of a controversy was because they completely changed the data of Pokemon, which didn't happen from Gen 7 to Gen 8. Also, there was no way to link the GB games to the GBA games as far as I know.
Definitely agree with FRLG and Emerald's trade restrictions. Made no sense to have those at all.
This video really puts things into perspective. I feel like perhaps the biggest factor in sparking the SwSh Dexit controversy was the fact that Masuda just straight-up announced that not every mon would be in the game at such a major video game event. It didn't take long before things were blown out of proportion after that. Makes you wonder how things would have been in the run-up to SwSh's release if Masuda hadn't said what he said at E3, and the players found out after the game was released instead, or even in a written statement on social media that wasn't live.
It would have been a huge disappointment for people who had bought the game and played it only then to find out the content was missing. It might have actually been more controversial.
Not only that, it was at E3, after Treehouse Live, at the end of the stream when most viewers already left, as though trying to bury/hide the announcement. Thus, game journalists who stuck around got the news out to most of the fanbase. I first learned of Dexit a couple hours after Treehouse Live when the news appeared on my Twitter feed.
This news was also never officially announced in Japan, which made the dedicated Japanese playerbase upset.
It's not even just that, all the Pokemon were available in Gen 3. You just couldn't get them in the Hoenn region.
But in the modern games the Pokemon just aren't programmed into the game, even though they showed in the Sword and shield DLC that they were perfectly capable of adding in all the pokemon via patches and shit but just chose not too.
So you would’ve preferred customers getting ripped off? What a shill comment.
@@thaiboypsp3000 They're not saying they wished this had happened instead, they're just wondering what _could_ have happened.
On one hand, it may have had less of an impact in the short run, until dataminers brought the missing entries to light. There would still be controversy, but I reckon people would've held onto the hope that DLC would be announced to fill those gaps seeing as no official statement was made (in this reality), and therefore the backlash would be significantly less.
On the other hand, there's also the possibility it would've been worse, as the controversy would be front and centre at the games launch instead of simmering over the course of how many months it was before the games launch. In our situation, there was time for people to get over the shock.
I wasn’t expecting a punch to the gut watching this, but the: “It’s really funny to read back in the Serebii forums from 2005…” moment hit REAL HARD. Feeling real old, thinking back on the forum browsing days.
Another really great video - love all of your Pokémon retrospective videos!
I was a casual viewer of your channel in the 2010s and just checked back in recently, and I gotta say I love where your content has gone. You went from a well-spoken pokemon youtuber to a full-blown pokemon investigative journalist and I'm living for it. Keep it up!
You found the perfect tone to present such a controversial and serious topic.
I don't really like negativity like this.
@@wikiuser92 Almost everything she said were facts. It's not about positive or negative.
@@SaberWolf94 I know. The ending statement just left a bad taste in my mouth.
JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS!
HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU!
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6
"But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33
“For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
@@wikiuser92 ik ur used to most poketubers sucking up to gamefreak but tama doesn't do that so that's too bad for u :p
From what I've learnt from this video Nintendo has been focused on vertical integration for decades; wanting to control all levels of production to boost sales. This explains their attitudes towards filing cease and desists for romhacks and creating their own digital publishing services. It's all to maximise profits for full control of their products, which to me, is a perfect reminder that the Pokémon franchise is a distinct mirror of their times.
It goes back to the Famicom. That console had no means of locking out unapproved cartridges, so unlicensed Famicom games started popping up, and Nintendo started obsessing over how to prevent people from playing games on Nintendo systems without Nintendo getting a cut. Nintendo's high licensing fees and strict terms were factors that drove 3rd party developers into Sony's arms when they launched the PlayStation.
Wow, all that information about how renting changed a lot of exports from Japan was fascinating. Thank you for that!
yeah, no wonder "Nintendo hard" is a thing.
I wouldn't mind the dex cut so much if pokemon home had more functionality than just a pretty prison for mons that had no appearance in a gen. Like- even just dumb pokemon amie-esque minigames to do with my mons would be great, but no. They're just sitting there, rotting until who knows when, IF they even get a game where they're allowed in, since they're not exactly the cash grabber mons.
It's already been confirmed that some pokemon who didn't appear in gen 8 aren't gonna appear in gen 9 either, some starters being among them. I'm already 99% sure that means my fav is unusuable and held hostage inside pokemon home once again. It's shitty.
Even SKYLANDERS is better about this.
At least your favorite mons aren't event mons that get given to you at an insanely overpowered level meaning good fucking luck.
I never understand why pokemon fans won't just simply boycott a game or product. you flat out admitted that you payed for home and transferd your mons that can't be transferred to gen 8 to home. Whats the point of tpc adding in new features, when they know that blind fanboys like you will pay for everything they throw out. Even if the product is still bad.
I saw the idea of Pokemon Home becoming the place for strategy, and that seems such a perfect idea. So they probably won't do it, but having it double as Stadium would be pretty much ideal.
@@treek10k I don't understand this either.
If people putted their money where they mouth was when the dexit controversy happened, this would have impacted the sales of the games and Game Freak would probably have been forced to go back on their horrible decision of cutting the national dex, and released all the Pokémon through updates at least, but instead of that they got millions for their anti-consumer practices.
They have absolute zero respect for their fans, it's disgusting, and the fans still blindly gives money for them.
Pokémon needs a huge boycott.
Also, back in the day, the target audience for video games was generally kids who have limitless time and very limited budgets. Whereas today, there's a big market for adults (and adults with kids) who have a lot of expendable income and limited free time.
That probably explains why GO is TPC’s big moneymaker now
@@Smfsableye I thought it was Pkmn merch, like plush toys and what not.
@@IceSpoon That too, but as far as game profits go it’s not even close
@@IceSpoon look at Pokémon’s financials. Their profits went up over 6x because of Pokémon GO.
@@UltraBall23 yet they always make mediocre games
An important point about "rebuilding the models from scratch" that genuinely made it worse (for me, at least) was that people datamined the game, sun and moon, and let's go P/E and found that the models were *identical*. Not extremely similar. Not the same with higher polygon counts, identical. Line for line. If they rebuilt them from scratch, it was incredibly wasteful and unnecessary. More likely, that was a lie.
And to follow that up - the reason that myself and many others expected came out very quickly: DLCs to re-unlock already existing mons.
quite LITCHERALEEEEE
Something thats not often stated is that its was the TEXTURES that were the issue, but im guessing they wanted the issue to sound more important than it was to avoid controversy.
it backfired but I do feel they were justified in their attempt, especially since as developers they were at the mercy of the company's demands
This whole controversy along with the newer games just not being very good, has made me appreciate/ replay the older games a lot more. I think what bothered me the most about cutting the national dex was that it made it obvious Gamefreak no longer cared about non-competitive players. The newer games lack post game other than raising/battling competitive Pokémon. Cutting the national dex was one less thing for me to do. I feel very neutral about it. Yeah cutting the national dex sucked, but sword and shield weren’t good enough games for me to care too much. Legends Arceus implemented a limited dex much better. I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Here’s to hoping I will like gen 9 more.
if it makes you feel any better as soon as GF started caring about competitive players the meta got 100 times worse
@@notgeorgemiller older gens VGC is so much more fun than current rulesets
@@notgeorgemiller yeah if anything they also demonstrated they don't care about competitive players too. They got rid of megas which arguably made the meta a lot more stable from what I understand.
@@spoopzey honestly the megas made the meta stale in vgc because every team started running the same core team
Confused what some of you are going on about.
I've played Pokémon with no pause since Gen-1, and SwSh VGC has been a freakin blast for the entire 2.5 years since release for me. I've never been this invested and excited about competitive in the entire history of the series, and believe me, I always tried to be.
There's tons of changes and additions that have shown game after game that Gamefreak cares about competitive.
Sometimes Game Freak makes decisions that just completely confuse me even if I love the Pokemon series a lot. I think you were in the stream for it, but I was trying to complete my 'seen' Pokedex on Pokemon White 2 so I could get the special shiny Haxorus for fun. Only to find out that for whatever reason you don't fight a single trainer with a Buneary in the entire game, meaning that yeah it actually seems to be impossible to do that in White 2 specifically without trading for one (which thankfully some extremely kind individual was willing to do for me but still). Also, I had no idea renting video games wasn't allowed in Japan? I didn't do it a lot and I may just be emulation scum because my 3DS has no space and the EShop is dying, but that seems kinda silly?
Yep! There's no way to see Rufflet and Skitty in Black 2, and Vullaby and Buneary in White 2. It is also impossible to see the first stage of the last starter (and third stage unless Memory Link fights with Cheren or Bianca use them).
So true! The gen 3 dex fragmentation issues were so annoying. I had Colosseum and so had access to Johto mons, but then my friend got Leafgreen and had a Squirtle! How can I not be jealous of gen 1 starters! With trading limitations, I ended up having to get FRLG myself despite *even at the time* recognizing the somewhat absurdity of having to play through the game again to get Pokemon that I still had access to on my RBY carts.
Although it was kind of fun to be able to be the local broker for Johto Pokemon, it was unfair to my friends who didn't have a gamecube+gba link+colosseum to get it all going, and just wanted to recreate their teams from GSC.
Lol. "It's me, your local Johto broker."
Fun fact: The swsh models of old pkmn are the exact same as before! They literally had all the old pkmn models stored and ready to be put into new games. These stored models were exactly what was put into swsh. They easily coulda put them all in. They only cut some so they could go “hey look! We brought a bunch back!” In the dlc
Yeah, it was kind of a huge omission for her not to mention this. She made it seem as though they prioritized graphics over content, and some people were upset about that. No, they didn't prioritize graphics. The models are THE SAME
@@pikapete2719 the model skeletons are the same, but the actual model textures were redone and upscaled one by one, including shiny forms. That's a lot of work for an artist
The fact they choose to not include ALL missing Pokemon in the DLC is scummy
@@Whiteythereaper Though its not an excuse for Gen 9 since most of them are already prepped since they've been upgraded to the Switch
@@Whiteythereaper you are somewhat correct. Some textures are clearly redone but others are clearly not, or they are so simple that it wouldn't make sense to. A lot of Pokemon make heavy use of solid color rather than actual textures. A lot of the visual upgrades from the 3ds to the switch are also just because of the fact that they removed the ugly black outline from the 3DS days and the models aren't being rendered on a 240p screen. In Pokemon Go, models ripped directly from SwSh look identical in quality to models that have been in the game since launch. In addition, it's definitely a lot of work, but Pokemon is quite literally the highest grossing media franchise in human history. They have the money to hire the manpower to make it happen, but they choose to cut corners instead.
A wonderful breakdown on how insanely hard it is to complete Gen 3 by design. Completing Gen 8 is at least theoretically less time-consuming, but that doesn't exactly make it fine either.
This really takes me back to being a kid, and going over to my sisters friends house every so often. He had a huge TV, all the GBA games, an action replay, and XD with link cables. It was like Mecca for someone growing up during Gen 3.
To be fair, I think you could hypothetically have bought a memory card and rented Colosseum a lot in order to complete it, since game data is stored on the memory card, not the game
she talked about that, in the end renting it would cost more than straight up buying it.
I can't remember whether or not she mentioned the need to purify the Shadow Pokemon. Personally I believe buying the GameCube games was more than worth it back during Gen 3.
Exactly, I thought her getting into all that money crunching was kinda unnecessary. Not to also bring up the fact that back then it was a group effort. You may have owned Emerald your freind May have owned XD and his brother may owned leaf green. Pokémon was more of a social effort back then when it came to gathering what you wanted.
@@pikaijzer no it wouldn’t
@chuganoga1908 i mean, you can call it a group effort all you want, it's still an inconvenience.
From what I can tell, the multiple versions and focus on trading was primarily to get people interacting with each other. The plan wasn't originally for one person to get every game, but to go out and meet friends to trade with. The restrictions in Gen 3 regarding trading were still stupid and outright hindered the key focus. My sister and I each got our own Gameboy Advance and opposite versions, granted I wasn't much more social then than I am now and the trading mainly took the form of my sister getting all three starters.
Meanwhile in the romhacking scene, I had a Pokemon I wanted in Unbound that wasn't available, not even in the game's National Dex, but I was still able to get a copy of Radical Red, catch the desired Pokemon, and then immediately trade it over with no issue. And it was _amazing!_
There was also another factor limiting your ability to trade between people in Gen 3. The other person had to be willing to ACTUALLY TRADE a pokemon to you. Plenty of us were kids at the time. Why should YOU be the one to trade away your version exclusive legendary pokemon to complete someone else's pokedex? You could always trade and trade back, but of course you had to REALLY trust the other person to be handing over your rare pokemon for any length of time. If you want the other Hitmons, you'd better hope the other person completed the game, has a Ditto, and is willing to breed you a few Tyrogue.
OMG TAMA i have been a fan since i was like 5 i love your vids and you!!! you made me the pokemon fan i am today thanks for the great vid!!!
This was a great breakdown, great format, very well-structured and articulated. I learned a lot about how the rental market actually played into so many design and business choices back then. I was only a kid in the gen3 era, so all this just seemed 'the way things are', but to see the actual reasons behind it unpacked now was super interesting. And it seems like the type of thing that will get lost to time and understanding, since the rental market is such a thing of the past. Great video as always!
This is quite possibly the best video you've made, Tama. The amount of effort you put in this from research to reasoning to delivery to editing is beyond top notch.
It’s always refreshing to see Tama’s takes on the franchise, she tends to take into consideration things that many people don’t, like the gaming climate and market at the time. In this case the anti game rental designs. It’s made me appreciate some of the decisions made in the series going forwards, like the digital events and such mentioned in the video.
Personally I now find myself questioning what I want out of a Pokémon game, as I consider Gen 3 to be my favorite and Gen 8 my least favorite, although that might just be because I’m a sucker for dongles and the connectivity between everything, even if it’s just limited to the post game. But at the very least it’s gotten me thinking and realizing valid critiques of my favorite Pokémon games and perhaps giving credit where it’s due with the latest generation.
Quick side question if you happen to read this Tama, (or anyone else reading this that happens to know) but what model is the TV you had around 11:45 in the video?
Its a 9" Toshiba MD9DP1! Thank you for the thoughtful comment :)
Thanks for the education on game rentals!
It does really bug me that the available Pokémon are so split up now. Generation 4 really had the right idea.
I love hearing the sardonic 'part 1'. It's the signal that I'm about to get lost in an informative and intensely interesting video essay about Pokémon. The videos Tama has put out since changing her name and video format are all seriously top-tier stuff. Some of my absolute favorite videos on UA-cam and always well worth the wait.
Love the Robopon reference. I adored the GBA sequel Robopon Cross version.
Love seeing a Tama video come out. I have really distinct memories of being unable to Catch 'em All in Gen III because I did not have the money to buy all the necessary games, nor did I have WiFi for a long time so even Gen IV was a bit off. It's incredible how history is repeating itself again but even worse.
I look forward to each new video from you! I really enjoy these in-depth essays and reviews. Very eye opening, and informative! Thanks much for all the time you put into these!
Thank you for saying what I’ve been saying the last 3 years. Catching them all in Gen 3 was no doubt a complete nightmare, and that’s definitely why they dropped the old slogan from the RS boxart, because you just couldn’t!
The original English slogan was “Catch ‘em if you can” which I feel fits much better these days! :P
So glad to see another great deep dive into Pokemon games. I was a few years late to the rental gaming market, so hearing about how it connects to the game's structure is so interesting.
Though I feel one of the standout differences between Gen 3's mess and Gen 8's mess is also hindsight and technology.
By now, we've worked out ways to trade between Gen 2 and Gen 3, even GF has... but they probably didn't have that understanding back then, especially when we consider the new work (sprites, music, new EV system) GF had to do for Gen 3, alongside the history of programming difficulties GF has.
The most difficulty Gen 8 had (to our knowledge) was matching pre-made models to the newer animations and graphics.
There's also the matter of technology. While I bet GF and Nintendo definitely enjoyed dulling out heaps of accessories to buy, the Gamecube and Gameboy don't seem as inherently designed to connect, and the GBC and GBA have two different link cables that don't seem capable of connection.
I think it's interesting how the debate around the NatDex was so much fluff instead of tackling the core problem. Especially now that we still have issues with gating content despite the transfer of data being easier than ever.
Nowadays we don't really need special adapters, just wireless communication and the software to interpret that data.
Though something I feel is actually similar between both situations is the disregard towards Dex completion. All the spending in Gen 3 really seems to communicate the idea that national dex collection is only something older, super dedicated adult fans would've completed.
A young kid will probably just buy one game and maybe a Gamecube game to go along it. But the adult collector is definitely going to spend so much money and time on every game.
So they continue to disregard that audience because they don't matter in the long run and the games will sell well regardless.
Even with all the trade difficulties, the Gen 3 games are some of the best selling GBA games, and vice versa for the Gen 8 games.
I think GF has mainly been learning what they don't have to do to hold and audience, especially with how big Pokemon is now.
Don't forget actual data as well! Gen 2 to Gen 3 did a huge revamp in terms of Pokemon data, whereas you can't say the same for Sword and Shield.
As for your last statement, I think that goes in general for some series. Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Mario Strikers on the Switch have less content compared to their predecessors, and yet, they are (likely) the best selling games in their series.
yay aguchamp has graced us with his presence 🧑🏾💻
@@niteriemcfarlane5285 heyoooo
@@Mrperson0 It's good to see people actually looking into the technological reasons from the eras. Just because something is possible now doesn't mean it could've been a thing back then.
I appreciate this channel and how it's grown over the years so much!
Nuance without blind service to the franchise or outrage farming is so rare in the Pokémon Fandom.
Not to mention how you talk about Pokémon beyond just the surface level and analyze it both as art w themes and a comercial product.
Awesome video! It’s hard to know how frustrating all these restrictions are until you start collecting Pokémon. I don’t even want to collect the nat dex, but trying to send all my battle ready mons to my main emerald game is a huge pain in the ass. Having to finish Colo to get my swablu out is so depressing lol. It’s hard to see these restrictions as anything other than malicious.
I also don’t think people necessarily even realize how difficult finding people to trade with was back then. I think I only traded with my brother, my cousin, and one elementary school friend in RS. Whereas in RBY/GSC I remember trading or battling with everyone in my class.
I haven’t been into Pokémon much since 2019. But even when I was still a mega fangirl who breathed the series, I didn’t realize just how tedious it was to trade between the GBA games. I’m terrified to go back to emerald now considering it used to be one of my favorites.
Damn, when I was a kid, my brother and our friend and I all spent a summer collecting Pokémon across the different GBA and GameCube games. I remember feeling so lucky at the time that we all had each other to trade with. I still feel grateful for those days. Sounds like not everyone had that kind of experience.
Never forget the firered and leaf green puzzle to find the grunt with the sapphire in the sevi islands that if you’re a kid and can’t figure it out you’re just screwed from trading with ruby sapphire or emerald
An interesting side-note from a Gen Z perspective:
I came into the Pokemon franchise right around the time Diamond and Pearl came out, but I had a handful of GBA Pokemon games inherited second-hand from my cousins that I played on the DS Lite's GBA port. Trading with my friends on Diamond was super easy, because everyone had a DS and either Diamond or Pearl and you could trade between friends wirelessly, but trading with my friends on the GBA games was impossible because of the need for a link cable and actual Game Boy Advances. Thus, I was basically locked out of any pokemon not on Sapphire, even if I could have theoretically traded for them with someone who had Ruby had I been born just one generation earlier. The moment I saw a GBA Link Cable in a secondhand store as a teenager, I immediately bought it as a status symbol to myself of finally being able to own something that was an impossible dream as a kid, even though it was a moot point by then.
Tl;dr: Diamond and Pearl have a special place in my heart for letting me enjoy the social features of Pokémon for the first time.
Yup, though I think Gen V was my first Wi-Fi experience, Gen IV was at least cable/accessory-free so trading between a DS Lite and the DSi I upgraded to was enough
I can say pretty similar lol.
DP was the first game I played but a lot of older kids around me would play the GBA games as well, and eventually I'd get to play Gen 4 with kids my age.
If the DP did one thing right, it was making it that much easier for anyone to connect with others.
Reminds me, Pokémon White was the first DS game I played online because it was the first to support more secure connections, so I could actually get it to work.
@@NitroIndigo same
I'm in a similar position. I was able to do some trades and stuff in the first two gens, and actually had every Gen III game, but it wasn't until Gen IV and the GTS that I was actually able to complete the entire National Dex.
You’re the best, Tama! Always exciting to see you pop up in my feed. 💕
As a kid, I actually liked this system. It led to the lending of Gamecube games with friends and trading with friends felt meaningful. I was able to set up meet ups with friends and trade.
According to some old interviews, every copy of the game was going to be personalized based on your trainer ID, something which is often forgotten to be in Gen 1. Miyamoto is the one said something like "let's make only 2 or three versions instead, so people can swap secrets like in zelda". Nowadays with randomizers, the fans have re-built the idea for themselves!
It annoyed me to no end when this happened and why they said. Like Pokemon is the biggest multimedia franchise in the world and they were acting like they made a ship to big to steer. Like they made their own bed on this one. This is the accumulative cost of all this success and new content each year. That's the promise they made.
Great video! Figuring out the Gen 3 trading situation was an absolute nightmare for younger me to deal with 😵💫
THIS. This is what I was thinking during the Dexit controversy. My favorite pokemon is Teddiursa, so gen 3’s dex hurt me lol
I love your voice and your videos! I feel like your content is perfect for people like me, and I appreciate your dorky charm. c:
A bit wild that I’m just now finding out about Emerald. I wish I still had the save file to check, but I think in my first Hall of Fame team I had one non regional Pokémon on my team. I remember seeing that it had no Pokédex number at the time.
Also, having a sibling at a close enough age to play with had me ending up with 6 of the 7 games of Gen 3 😂
This was quite a deep and insightful video. I grew up playing the Gen 4 games when they were released in the U.S., so I had no idea that the Gen 3 games had this problem that is apparent in the recent games. Thank you so much for this, Tama!
BRO! I've been looking for your channel for literal weeks! I had such fond memories of your videos from my childhood and I remembered you doing something with Pokémon Green in Japanese but I couldn't remember your channel name and just your voice. It's nice to be back here.
Man I knew trying to trade in gen 3 was bad, but I didn't realize how *bad* it actually was. There are so many hurdles you needed to jump through in order to get like one or two Pokemon or in some cases even trade at all. When you finally reach that point though, there's really no reason to trade at. This was about as informative as it was kind of sad and what's sadder is that it feels like history is somewhat repeating itself for less of a reason.
You know, I never thought of the idea that needing to unlock regional trades in Gen 3 in the post game being an anti-rental measure never occurred to me🤔.
Thank you SO much for making this video Tama! It was a very much needed discussion about how Pokemon has always been predatory, and it's not something as recent as some people want to believe. You handled everything perfectly, and everything you put out is accurate and very informative!
I don't know if this was a crazy coincidence, but I decided around a month ago to complete the original Emerald dex once and for all because I never got the chance when I was a kid, and now that I had all the legal resoruces, I wanted to try and see how long it'll take. After +4 weeks, I'm not done with the full dex yet, and I realized why I was never able to complete the dex when I was 7, and I highly doubt any normal kid would have completed the dex ever, without a cheating device that is. The time it takes, the resources, everything!! It's just awful, and I was amazed how little people actually pointed out the parallels to the current situation, and I thought that maybe I was overreacting,. After watching this video, I feel reasured that the way I feel is warranted and now I understand better why Pokemon and Nintendo did what they did (not that it makes any of their actions better though lmao).
But yeah, thanks for the insight again Tama! It is very important to talk about companys' predatory tactics, and Pokemon shouldn't be inmune to them!
I just wanted to say thank you so much for letting me contribute even a small part of my own Pokemon journey to one of your videos. The Gen 8 era of Pokemon was emotionally draining for a lot of people, myself included. There was so much hostility across the entire web that just made me feel like I was no longer welcome to enjoy Pokemon the way that I had been, nor was I able to find a place of belonging within the modern day of the Pokemon franchise. Your videos always go above and beyond in emphasizing not only what makes Pokemon special for the people who played it at the specific timeframe that they were released in, but also highlights the complexity of how these generations were formed and defined by the real world events and occurrences that took place in the lives of the people working on the games. Your passion on the subject always manages to reignite my love for Pokemon. And since I'm one of the weirdos who actually BEGAN my Pokemon journey in the Orre region, it was incredibly special to be able to provide the Colosseum footage for this video. :)
I'm really impressed with your documentaries! I lived through these events as a kid, but I never stopped to think about why they were that way. Kudos! You are an amazing researcher!
I totally agree with the criticism, your videos are always wonderful. I even remember counting how many version exclusives in FRLG were already available in RS so I could decide which version I would get. I wanted to add something though: the sheer amount of time you had to invest in your national Dex really made me play the games for the whole life spam of gen 3. I was the one who played FRLG 3 Times to get the beasts, looked for someone in real life events so I could have Johto starters and I soon learned in the beginning of gen III that I could not restart my save files anytime (as I did in gen II) - I had to keep a save file intact. It was really memorable to complete the dex and it really changed forever the way I play Pokemon. Perhaps that's something that came with the way the Nat dex was implemented in gen 3.
What was really frustrating about arguing with people in 2019 as someone who didn't support "dexit" was that you would say you didn't like it because you wanted the national dex in the game. Then someone would claim that it was OK because they were redoing the models. This was proven false very early on, as you could simply watch the trailers and compare the models from previous games. They made minor improvements to the old models from 2013, and when you explained this to people who thought it was fine, they would throw some other reason that you could pretty much discredit. Claim graphics were going to be better, insert meme comparing textures to super old games and other games on the switch. Claim that they were adding more pokemon, proven false by leaks and still holds true to this day, very few new pokemon added. Claim that animations would be better, insert meme comparing animations from gen 1 to now (especially double kick) and memes comparing animations to pokemon stadium. You could go on and on and I guarantee that there was no actually good argument for removing the national dex. This led to many people who really liked pokemon becoming very, very frustrated and increasingly unwilling to talk about it. You even had many popular youtubers come out denouncing the people against removing it. It's like arguing with super religious types, eventually I figured it was pointless and moved from pokemon after being a huge fan for 10 years, but I am still a little bitter about the whole ordeal. I mean, I was well informed and I was right. They are a multibillion dollar company who put as little effort as possible into there games, yet even though you knew you were right and nobody could make a valid argument against you, the number of people who knew what I did was very few and the ones who didn't failed to systematize the information given to them. It's like extreme gaslighting or something, it doesn't feel good. The memes were funny though, phrases like "halve dex" or "but it is in the game! in lore." and photoshops of trainers of pokemon dressed up as other pokemon that were confirmed to be in the game pleading to border officers. They loved to mock the game devs official statements as well.
I remember using my Action Replay to catch national dex Pokemon in Ruby / Sapphire. I was so happy seeing their new sprites, different from FR/LG. The memories 💖
Me in 2011 watching Tama's new video: :)
Me in 2022 watching Tama's new video: :)
Although the situation was somehow similar to Gen3, in my opinion, there are still 2 main differences:
1. The Ruby/Sapphire games were programmed with all 386 Pokemon and the national dex from the get-go, meaning they intentionally left the option of putting back Pokemon into the game with future games. That is actually not the same with the 2019 Sword/Shield dexit, because the Pokemon that are not available was straight up not coded in the games, and GameFreak also denied the possibility of adding them back by DLCs. Of course we all know that they were lying and still added like 200 Pokemon back with the DLCs, but that's not all of the Pokemon in existence, we are still missing Pokemon from the national dex on the Switch even after the last game of Gen 8 is out. This is not the same as back in Gen3 they added all the past generation pokemon back with newer games.
2. When Ruby/Sapphire was released, Pokemon was just 7 or 8 years old, and as you said, due to game rental and the younger age of the franchise, not a lot of people have a dedicated collection of digital creatures they want to bring into newer games, therefore this wasn't a big issue like nowadays. Nowadays Gamefreak has been dedicated to including all Pokemon in every mainline game until Gen7 and also always provided a way to let players transfer their Pokemon up to the newer games since Gen3. That's a 15 year time span and a lot of players had become collectors within this time span for a lot of reasons, and that really makes a big difference to the players' reactions in these two different times. Even to date I still feel very upset that there are certain Pokemon unable to enter Sword and Shield, and I don't think GameFreak is planning to do any updates for this either.
Still a great video, though I don't feel any better about the Gen8 dexit after watching it. It is a piece of history in the Pokemon franchise after all.
Agreed completely & while I can understand no Megas or Z Moves in Galar it bothers me that Ampharos wasn't usable in the region even after DLC.
This also makes the Braile puzzle for the Regis make more sense. You'd have to realize what you need to do, rent a book on braile from the library, and decode everything ALL during the rental period.
Wasn't there a Braille guide in the manual?
I've seen people talking about this subject before, but it's the first time I hear about this background on videogame renting and that brings up a unique way of looking at the gen 3 national dex.
I really love this about your videos, even on subject that are widely talked about you always bring up something unique, there's always something that I'm gonna find in your video but not on others.
Amazing video. I feel a lot of people don’t realize just how terrible gen 3 was when it comes to collecting mons, it took me getting all gen 3 mons from Ruby and Sapphire to realize this, and yeah in that sense the lack of ditto makes it absolutely dreadful. Though I love this look back through how the trading idea went from a risky shot in the dark into a greedy limiting choice. It just goes to show how even idea born from innovation can be twisted in ways that hurt the players. Hopefully the push back Gen 8 has had throughout its entire life atleast slows this down and maybe Gen 9 will try to get back on the right path
I assure you whatever "pushback" you think occured it doesn't amount to anything. For every hardcore established fan like me not buying games there's 10 or 100 new fans coming in. As long as the games keep selling, nothing will change.
@@SaberWolf94 very well said. sword and shield selling so high despite the massive controversy says it all.
It’s nice to see you tama. I like to think that you have a nice relationship with UA-cam, making occasional videos without pressure or obligation, doing video ideas that you find interesting
Oh wow, I never even thought about how game rentals would shake up how video games were developed. That's a super interesting bit of inside baseball about the game industry! Well done 👏
The whole SwSh situation got very out of hand for sure. The fact the reason for the National Dex cut likely was "We need a reason to sell you Home subscriptions" certainly didn't help though.
Thank you for being a calm voice of facts for such an important topic in this community. Your videos are always fun and insightful to watch.
I also would like to point out that the code for some of the Pokemon left out in sword and shield was still present, those being the Pokemon in their planned dlc at the time. :/
Grateful for tama uploads and the research that goes into these. Pokémon history is really interesting
I really appreciate all the research that goes into your videos, I always leave knowing more about a product I thought I knew everything about. Thank you for your efforts!
You know what really gets me about the "better graphics" claim is... Scarlet and Violet actually DO have better models/textures, and didn't suffer any sort of weird delay for that. Like, wonky as some other parts of the game might be, Gen 9 has amazing looking Pokemon.
Really makes me wonder what the heck was up with Sword/Shield
Honestly, this video made me realize how much contempt Gamefreak and Nintendo have for their player base/cutomers
I remember abusing the GameStop used return policy to complete the Emerald national dex. Riding my bike back and forth to the store and recycling the same like $40 to get different games, consoles, and cables. That was a fun and lonely😭 summer
I genuinely don’t mind mythical Pokémon being available through owning other save files, Because the alternative is just mystery gift events that people who buy the game late never get to access. I’d much prefer mythical Pokémon to be available late game like Deoxys and Keldeo, But if they’re set on not making them available to normal gameplay, then I find the method of used in legends Arceus a better alternative than mystery gifts
I agree with you here, but my only question is that aren't mythicals usually released after the main games have already come out? Which could be why they're not in the base game.
@@iamyourfathr420 The issue is that it is 100% possible to make them available in the base game when it comes out. The fact that they choose not to and use two less than ideal methods of distribution is disappointing.
@@RBGolbat True, my only hope is that they start to put in the mythical pokemon/event after the game has come out via patch/update since in Legend:Arceus, they added in some new content via the Daybreak update, maybe they can do it to mythicals. However, I do worry that they go Mario Sports Game approach, where they add in more content with future updates even though the base game is a little barebones.
@@RBGolbat think of it as a “steak knives” for playing through multiple games. Buy these games individually, or buy 2 of them both and get X, or buy 5 games and get U, V, X, Y & Z.
You simultaneously explained my exact opinions clearly and comprehensively while at the same time teaching me about why those things happened in the first place in Gen III.
Like, I was a kid who went through Fire Red using a novelization of the original Red/Blue as a guide and had no idea about the Sevii Islands postgame. (I also sucked enough that I didn't beat the E4 for a very long time.) I really, really wanted an Eevee in Hoenn and tried every method to trick the game into trading with Emerald (which was completed and did have the National Dex), but to no avail. Only Kanto Pokemon in Emerald party like GSC, nope. Put Eevee up for trade in that wireless adapter room asking for a type I had in Emerald? Nope. The opposite, putting up the Pokemon in Emerald and asking for Eevee? Nope.
And I was one who was lucky enough to get multiple GBAs and a Link Cable so I could trade with myself. I had no idea game rentals were the reason the restrictions were there. I thought it was just Game Freak being bad at game design.
Diamond/Pearl and particularly HGSS were magical *because* I could trade any Pokemon in from other games for replays. And I used that freedom often. Honestly I think the struggles to get an Eevee into Emerald *when I had already beaten Emerald* made that freedom so much sweeter and so much more a part of my enjoyment of the Pokemon franchise. I thought it was a staple and because they mentioned the GCS->RSE lack of commuinication "making players feel bad" in interviews so often, I assumed it was an integral part of the series that would never change.
And then Dexit happened. Now, I'd had small issues in the background since Gen V when they started phasing out side features and changing route design philosophy, but the collection aspect, the huge customizability from having kept up with the series, and the fact that the story battles were still fun (and in fact were better than games before in the Unova and Alola games) kept me enjoying the series.
But Dexit sent the Jenga tower of my love of the series toppling down.
i grew up during this time i had the games on gamecube i had access to my gba sp and my friends gba the ONLY problem we had was finding link cables to use and for my entire childhood i never saw a link cable for sale anywhere, not in local stores, not in stores we went to out of town, none at garage sales and thrift stores we went to, anyone who cared enough to buy one was obviously using it so no one ever resold it. Maybe they were on ebay or something but online shopping wasn't as big then and usually when stuff was on places like ebay they would sell it for way more than it was worth.
Also important to note my friend DID NOT play pokemon other than whan she was hanging out with me borrowing my games so I had to play the different versions and everything all by myself. I never knew anyone else who played pokemon until I got to middle school and even then it was only a few kids who played the video games. I was bullied for liking pokemon so much because it was "lame" in the 2000s through to the mid 2010s(when 90s nostalgia was trendy and pokemon go released) where I lived.
Yeah, gen 3 was the growing pains of the franchise. Kids in Nyc still played Pokemon post 2003 but when I moved to NC in 2007 hardly anyone was into Pokemon.
This was incredibly great, so much information, already a great impression from your channel. Congrats on such a complete video.
And the lack of a national dex is one of the reasons I quit playing new Pokémon games. Why play if I can’t have my precious clefable?🥺
Me: Oh, we still don't have all the Pokemon in Gen 9. At least we can get some cool outfits to mess around with, right?
Gamefreak: You get a uniform and that's it :)
Thanks for putting this out
I was never really aware of the rental market impact on game development. Money grabs suck
To me it shows another drastic change in direction out of sights.
Since gen1 we would get a few trade Pokémon that couldn't be caught in either version as a trade from a distance place.
Jynx and Farfetch'd were the ones for Red, Green and Blue before Farfetch'd became available in yellow for instance.
Trading to other versions encouraged making friends and asking friends to play together, as well as checking out the cool parties each one made.
Instead of throwing a hundred or two new pokemon every game, they could add a few more for each version and have moveset changes or place games un different regions and give a narrative in universe explanation that added to the game play
In the intro, you seem really biased against people who were upset with Dexit. You pointed out that the excuse they gave for Dexit was for higher quality graphics and rebuilding all pokemon models from the ground up, and then go on to say that graphical quality is extremely subjective, and that a lot of fans would never be happy no matter how good the changes were, implying that fans were dissatisfied with the graphical changes that they made. You left out the fact that they flat out lied, they did not create any new models for pokemon besides the brand new ones added in Sword and Shield, and same goes for the move animations. People were not upset that the graphical changes were not up to snuff, they were upset that no changes were made at all, despite these changes being the excuse given to cut the national dex and so many pokemon from the games. The way you talked about it was very misleading
There's also the fact DLCs can easily bring back all of the missing Pokemon too.
I looove these types of deep, insightful videos. They help put so much into perspective
another banger, crazy how tama can't miss. i learned a lot here, and feel like i ended up with a more educated stance on the whole national dex crap with sword and shield. that truly was a monumental moment in the series history given that we're all still talking about it and are constantly getting new perspectives.
gotta say though, production keeps going up on these video essays. your narration felt extra passionate this time and the editing was really sharp. loving your work, it's some of my favorite stuff on the platform!
I'm so happy someone finally put all this to words in a video. I've been ranting about this for years.
It's even a thing in gen 2. In GSC you can't trade with rby until you have 3 badges I believe and stadium 2 only let's you move pokemon with different ID numbers if your pokedex is 150+.
I love the new direction of your videos! Super well and nice take on Game Freak's and Nintendo's history to look at a recent problem. I had all the games from gen 3 and did trade once in a while but was never my major concern I just liked playing the games themselves. This was a treat showing up in my sub box ^-^
Let's not forget that they also removed the GTS from not only SwSh, but also from BDSP, the remake of the games where they even originated. The GTS, despite all its issues of illegal Pokemon and impossible trades, was still the easiest way to trade exclusives for exclusives, or starters for starters. Now locked behind Pokemon Home...
Pokémon was a game that got me out of some bad times in my life. When complaints started creeping up around the 3DS era, I blocked them out, and I didn't start seeing the cracks until it was too late. Now, dexit has permanently ruined it for me, and I can't trust any more games that are put out. It's hard to still enjoy your favorite game franchise when you have the unfortunate enlightenment of knowing those games were made by conmen.
Some poor child is gonna look at which Pokémon are compatible with what game, and they're gonna get so confused or frustrated, they drop Pokémon and never play it again.
Incredibly well-researched. I only ever really got into Gen 3, and was so upset that I couldn't trade with my friends with GB(C)s. I haven't hardly played since then, but now my interest lies in the single-player play style - use patches to combine all versions' content for that generation and go for the regional dex only.
I'm pretty sure we all know about the inability to bring Pokemon from Gen 2 to Gen 3. And yes, it sucked, but *that* was simply because of hardware limitations. Granted, they were limitations they could have potentially gotten around if they tried hard enough, but still. They still had the data for the Pokemon in the games, and they did eventually make it possible to get them all using only Gen 3 games (including the GameCube games), you just couldn't bring them up from previous gens. The main issue with the Sword and Shield thing was that *they literally removed the actual Pokemon data, which made it flat-out impossible to use that species of Pokemon in those games.* So you can't really compare the two situations because they're not really *that* similar. Yes, they both prevented players from bringing Pokemon from previous gens, but one still allowed you to use all of those species of Pokemon and the other just flat-out removed the ability to use them. Though I will confess, those trading restriction were *really* bad.
Also, the Let's Go games are Gen 7, not Gen 8.
You have been posting videos so long I finished middle and high school thank you for em all
Pokémon games are like streaming services now: you HAVE to buy these games in order to use/breed your favorites because they are deliberately refusing to ever make the most recent mainline titles have everything accessible. Wanna use/breed Galar starters? Buy Swooshi. Wanna use/breed Sinnoh starters? Buy Botched Diamond/Subpar Pearl. Wanna use/breed Kalos starters? Well you've been shit out of luck for the past few years and if you've made the grave mistake of transferring them to the prison known as "H🚫ME," well I hope you enjoy their pretty little PNGs. And transfers have only been getting worse as I think they're trying to do away with transfer-only moves. Since you mentioned the Shadow Lugia from Gale of Darkness, that Lugia is the only way to get a Lugia with the move Psycho Boost (normally exclusive to Deoxys). Swooshi allowed for transfer moves, but BDSP did not. And I feel like this is a harbinger for what's to come because I think defaulting transferred Pokémon to level-up moves would just be easier on the development team (but the main excuse will probably be something like "game balance" or something meaningless like that). I don't think SV is going to allow for transfer moves. The only things people will be able to keep are EVs and levels.
On I final note, every time I learn something new about BDSP, it's NEVER something good. I'm sorry, but BDSP is the worst thing that's ever came from this series. It is a product of pure corporate nihilism. The only Switch era game I've gotten was PLA and I think I might skip out on everything else going forward, no matter if it's mainline or a Legends title because it's just Pokémon as a service now. I will not keep consuming next product. It's just a mediocrity factory now. No need to make a slam-dunk generation when they can release a bunch of passable games and make oodles of cash that way. Tis the standard for mainstream entertainment nowadays, whether you're talking about Pokémon or if you're talking about Disney. I miss Pokémon. Pour one out for my builds still remaining in my Ultra Sun cartridge. o7
I've been watching your videos for what feels like a decade now and I can't quite emphazise how well you hit the nail on the head with these videos. wonderful video as always :)