Our Pokémon Faves: Mainline games and Poke-spinoffs

It’s time again to poll the team and poll you, our next instalment is our favourite Pokemon mainline games and our favourite spinoffs.

Pokemon spin off games get a bad rap, well some of them do (Pokemon Dash ew) but on the flip side there’s some really awesome spin off games in the franchise.

We’d like to hear from you after you’ve had a read, let us know your favourite mainline game but more importantly, your favourite spinoff.

Steven

Mainline – Pokemon Sapphire Version

My favourite Pokemon game will always be the one I played when I was in high school. I played Pokemon Sapphire more than any Pokemon game before or since. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it the best Pokemon game, but it was the game that was out when I was in high school, surrounded by friends who were also playing and more than willing to visit after school to mix records and have battles. The post-game content was seemingly endless, secret bases of my friends made training high level teams far less tedious, there were so many obscure Pokemon to discover and if all that didn’t appeal at the time then I could just tend my berry farm. In the end I felt like I knew Hoenn like the back of my hand.

Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire will never have the wow factor of first discovering Pokemon Yellow, nor the massively sized world of Pokemon Silver, but it’s the version I had the most fun with and that trumps everything else for me.

Spinoff – Pokemon Colosseum

There’s a bit of a pattern here so my favourite spinoff might be a little predictable. Pokemon Colosseum came out at the perfect time. I wasn’t working full time, didn’t have the study load of university, and was old enough to actually understand the underlying systems of Pokemon. The idea of a fully 3D console version of Pokemon was something I’d wanted for years (and heck, people still pine for it now!). Colosseum absolutely didn’t live up to my stratospheric expectations but I still grew to really enjoy the first proper console Pokemon adventure. Unlike regular Pokemon games, there was no world map and there were no wild Pokemon to hunt for. Instead you found Shadow Pokemon, creatures who had been used by their human masters for nefarious purposes. To get new Pokemon, you stole (or ‘snagged’) them from bad trainers and then purified them until their hearts opened up and their true strengths were revealed.

There was a heck of a lot of game here, which teenage me just lapped up. Once done with the campaign there was even more to play in the regular Colosseum competition modes, and as a nice bonus you could trade the Pokemon you had purified from Colosseum onto your main GameBoy Advance Pokemon games.

I am certain that Pokemon Colosseum would be unbearable to play these days, but damn if that didn’t stop me from living in Orre for a good while.

Daniel P

Mainline and Spinoff 

If you know anything about me, I’ve never denied that Generation II is my favourite, It’s not because of the ‘two regions in one’ game thing, in actuality I see returning to Kanto pointless due to the game not scaling up and you just rampage through in an hour. Soul Silver & Heart Gold were the best announcement ever for me, your Pokemon followed you around; all of them, anywhere, something even after playing Yellow growing up I never knew I wanted.

The game was exactly like I remembered growing up and it was my first experience of the nostalgia strings pulling away at me. As for the plethora of spinoffs, a few come to mind, Pokemon Picross (don’t judge me), Pokemon Snap and even Pokemon Trozei, before they ruined it with Shuffle are all great games. Colosseum and XD are also downright fantastic games, better than mainline series in many ways, but for me my personal favourite has to be the Pokemon Rumble Series.

It’s an odd choice, it started off with a little WiiWare game that’s very simple but entertaining at least, and then Rumble Blast/Super Pokemon Rumble came out and I wasn’t expecting much from the game… 70 hours later I was amazed. Rumble isn’t a fan favourite by a long shot, but damn if it’s not a solid experience that’s thoroughly worth your time. Just stop at the first two games, Rumble U, while being the introduction to the drug we all call “amiibo”…. like most amiibo games, the game itself was horrible.

The latest game, Pokemon Rumble World, well, it was one of Nintendo’s Free To Play games and eventually made itself into a retail release with no transactions which is great, but the game is so heavily built around spending money and waiting for events to happen in real time that the game really suffered, it’s not fantastic and even experiencing the full game is very hard as all the areas are randomised. Hopefully we get a decent sequel, but I’m not holding my breath.

Wayne

Spinoff – Pokemon Snap

It’s not hard for me to choose a favourite Pokemon game that isn’t part of the main series. That’s because I haven’t really played any of them except for some of the spinoff games. Being that the Nintendo 64 was one of the main consoles I had growing up, it’s easy for me to choose Pokemon Snap.

It really is a weird kind of game. I mean who wants to go around taking photos of things?

Even though the courses are short, you had to go back multiple times to try and get photographs of every Pokemon and use special items to lure them into better poses or even evolve. My favourite part in the whole game is in the volcano level. In the distance you see some Charmander just chilling. To get their attention you throw food to them and they come-a-runnin’. But one apple isn’t enough. They stand there screaming at you. “CHAR! CHAR! CHAAAAAR!” So you go ahead and throw some more food, but it hits one in the face! He squints, leans back a bit and waves his arms in disbelief.

I did this every time I played. It was a necessity. Almost like a compulsion. I can only imagine what they thought as the food smacked them in the money-maker… “Why?” Just a simple why. Yet the trust was never broken. After that few seconds of pain, the insatiable hunger takes over and the cry for more food begins.

I don’t think I ever finished everything in Pokemon Snap, but that’s not what I was there to do. I was there to tease some Charmander.

Troy

Mainline – Pokemon Gold Version

This is a tough one, but I’m going to have to go with Gold Version, simply because I have a lot of fond memories attached to it. It was a late birthday present, coming out about 2 months later than my actual birthday. The pre-order at Tea Tree Plaza EB Games was the actual present, but we picked it up on our way to a boring adult games night, where my parents played cards and games with friends, while I sat on their couch and played non-stop for a few hours. Looking at dates, I would have only been around 10 or 11 years old.

There was also just so much to do in that game! Johto was a cool and interesting new world, but still familiar enough that it made sense. The Unown ruins (Alyph Ruins, I think?) were one of my favourite areas, with a lot of mystery attached to the alphabetical Pokemon. I remember catching all of them, and trying to decipher any meaning from the words attached to each letter of Unown with a friend. For the record, no, the words are pretty much garbage.
And then there’s Kanto too! And that chilling ‘final boss’ fight with Red… that was really cool.

Spinoff – Pokemon Rumble

I can’t narrow it down to just one game, but my favourite spinoff franchise is Pokemon Rumble. Sometimes I just want a game where I can turn my brain off, and just mash buttons, and Rumble lets me do exactly that! You basically just collect wind up toys representing each Pokemon, and each toy will have two attacks, representing the attacks/moves in the mainline games. You go through, button mash your attacks, get to the boss, button mash the boss, and the level is complete.

It’s a complete guilty pleasure game for me – I know it’s shallow, definitely. It just has good game feel, and smashing through a dozen Pokemon with a single attack at a time just feels amazing. I was a little disappointed when they added microtransactions to the latest one, but I did like the way balloons to access different areas was handled. And don’t forget, Pokemon Rumble U introduced us to Nintendo NFC figures! I still have them laying around somewhere…

Daniel V

Mainline – Pokemon Heart Gold Version

Since Troy already stole my favourite version there’s little point in me repeating all the terrific points he has made. So instead I’ll point out Pokemon Heart Gold – the perfect remake of those games. It’s just a shame we’ll probably never get the ‘Kanto’ surprise we got in Gold and Silver ever again.

Spinoff – Pokemon Pinball

This is a really hard decision for me, of course Pokemon Snap is brilliant, I love Pokemon Stadium 2 as well and Pokemon Puzzle League was great fun too.

But there’s one Pokemon spin off game that I really played an obscene amount of and that was the original Pokemon Pinball for the Game Boy Color. Pinball has always been something I’ve enjoyed playing even as a kid and get it, portable, with Pokemon and with force feedback well that’s just awesome.

Pokemon Pinball only had two fields (aside from the secret ones) but each of them was filled with secrets and hidden Pokemon. While the two fields were the same you could travel around different locations in Kanto, this would change the Pokemon available to catch. Not only that you can make your Pokemon evolve, how else would you catch them all? The pinball itself was also a Pokeball that was upgraded by playing on the field. You could go to the Great Ball, the Ultra Ball and eventually the Master Ball to rack up higher Pokemon.

Looking back on it now it wasn’t the best example of a pinball game or anywhere near a simulation. There was no fine control over the flippers for example – teenage me didn’t care. Last but not least Pokemon Pinball was one of the few games on the Game Boy to have a rumble pack built in, it added a lot – pinball is all about the ‘feel’ of the game and the rumble helped that.

I just hope the jerk at high school who stole my Game Boy Color with Pokemon Pinball in it enjoyed the game too. I know who you are and if I ever see you again you’re gonna get a punch in snoz.