My Top 5 Favorite Pokemon Games

               When did you first realize you were a Pokemon fanatic? What was your first starter, and how did you know it was the one? Were your first dives into the Pokemon games solitary affairs, in the back of the family car on a long road trip, or group sessions where you and your friends would hunch together in the living room, arguing over which part of the Viridian Forest was most likely to land you that coveted, early-game Pikachu? Nidoqueen, or Nidoking? Hitmonlee, or Hitmonchan? Which stone would you use on the game's lone Evee? Was there really a hidden room in Cerulean Cave with a Togepi inside? How ethical was it to use the MissingNo Cheat to get infinite Master Balls and/or Rare Candy?

               The first Pokemon I ever saw, and where and when it was, is a detail lost to the mists of time; I simply don't remember. One day, sometime around 4^th grade, Pokemon was just there, everywhere, all the time. Didn't take long for my first favorites to become clear; Poliwrath, Victreebel, Rhydon, and of course, Porygon. My starter was Squirtle, because Blastoise. Obviously.

               For me, as for most people, the exact nature of how it all started for us is immaterial. Regardless of how we each game to the world of Pokemon, it remains a part of us. And for me, at least, I know it always will be. Individual mileage, of course, varies greatly; with the number of official Pokemon fast approaching 1,000, the old moniker “Gotta Catch 'Em All” is now less the cutesy marketing strategy it once was and more a recipe for psychological breakdown and eventual institutionalization. And with the increasingly wide range in quality between the Gens, which ones you actually like the best will boil down to personal taste. Same for the still-growing variety of side games being built into the games, some of which offer ways to enhance the story, while others...don't.

               No matter how deep you want to get, though, there really is something for everyone here. That's the thing about amazing, detailed, fantasy-filled worlds; the most fun and most compelling of them endure no matter what, always retaining an aura of the special in our minds.  I never stopped loving Pokemon, but circumstances of daily life did lead to me putting an active interest on pause for awhile after I headed off to college. For years, my old copies of Blue, Yellow, and Gold were stuck in boxes with other old stuff, untouched and unused. Then, about 5 years ago, for no particular reason, I decided to grab a used copy of one of the Red/Blue remakes for the Nintendo DS. Just to see if my old world-exploring skills were still sharp. To see if that flame still burned.

               Well, still burning it very much was, because I haven't put the games down since. While I am still jumping back and forth between newer and older games (the 3DS games remain mostly untouched- for now), I've successfully played my way through nearly every set of games for the first five Gens, and am still rolling. And now that I finally have enough experience to directly examine and compare all the games from the Game Boy Color through the DS, it's time to partake in one of my favorite pastimes; making a Best Of list. Here are, looking just at the first three consoles from the original Game Boy Color up through the DS, are my All-Tme Top Five Pokemon Cartridge Games.

5. Platinum (4^th Gen, 3^rd Game)

               While Gen 4 was, for me, the start of Pokemon's decline in terms of the quality, creativity, and originally of each new lineup (not to mention its explosion of TOO MANY useless legendaries), the Sinnoh region still offered a big, sprawling map filled with enough variety to make exploring it a lot of fun. It had a genuine haunted house, a snow-filled paradise, and a sprawling mountain range. There was also the mining function that offered a fantastically fun side quest that rewarded patience and repeated effort by allowing players unprecedented access to fossils and stones throughout the game.

               What made Platinum stand out from the other two games of the Gen, though, was its unique ending to the standard Evil Team plot contrivance. While featuring, of course, the standard “battle evil leader + acquire legendary from box cover” sequence, in Platinum, this part if then followed with a dive into the “Shadow Realm,” an otherworldly alternative dimension with its own weird physics. It is one of the most visually engaging and creative sites yet shown in a Pokemon game. Playing it made me feel like I'd stumbled into the sort of secret, hidden, “glitchy” extra rooms we all fantasized about finding in Cerulean Cave or near the S.S. Anne in the original series.

4. Crystal (2^nd Gen, 3^rd Game)

               Let's get this out of the way right now- Gen 2 of Pokemon is the best, hands down, no arguments. Yeah. I said it. Come at me, bro.

               For starters, it easily stands alongside Gen 1 in terms of the creativity, wonder, and quality of the Pokemon themselves. Later Gens, even the still-strong Gen 3, were clearly new sets developed and added-on after it was clear Pokemon was turning into an industry unto itself, giving all the later Gens a somewhat artificial feel, while Gen 1 Pokemon were surrounded by a mystical veil of “authenticity.” This same side divide ultimately lumped Gen 2 in with 1 for most fans, for the simple reason that, unlike the later Gens, Gen 2 was at least partially built into the world from the start; Togepi, and later Marill, were introduced in the anime long before the rest of Gen 2 was announced (and the very first episode of the anime features a shot of Ho-oh), and we all had that one friend whose Dad took regular trips to Japan and brought back cards of these strange, new Pokemon that could not be found anywhere else. Erego, when Gold and Silver finally came out and the anime hit up the Johto region, it felt less like a cash-grabbing add-on and more like the fulfillment of a promise that had long been latent within the world.

               This was further enhanced by the fact that the 2^nd Gen games were far more involved and comprehensive than Red and Blue. They had actual color variety in the graphics; the Pokemon looked crisp and recognizable, as opposed to some of the....interesting....block images in the original Gen. Plus, it featured both its own new map AND allowed the player to return to Kanto, three canonical years after the original games had taken the world by storm and literally rewired the psyche of an entire generation. Nothing before or since in the Pokemon world can or ever will successfully re-capture or re-create the unique, intensely pleasurable experience had by those of us that had memorized every tree and bush and stone in the original games, only to revisit this world a Gen later and see what had changed, hearing the in-game characters refer to past events in ways that really rewarded the attentive player.

               So why am I picking Crystal over the original Gold/Silver gameset? Simple- in addition to it having all the aforementioned benefits, it was also a huge historical first in the annals of Pokemon gaming: it was the first one to have in-game Pokemon animation for both the battles and the Pokedex.

               True, this animation was extremely limited in scope, given the restrictions of technology at the time, and has been long overshadowed by later Gens in terms of sheer beauty and quality. Nonetheless- the notion of Pokemon actually moving, however briefly, to match their undying battle cries was mind-blowing at the time, and for being so groundbreaking, this game deserves special honors. And even today, it still carries a strong, retrograde charm, especially when added to the other added wrinkles of the Johto storyline.

3. Black 2/White 2 (5^th Gen, 2^nd Gameset)

               It's starting with Gen 5 that I really check out of later-day Pokemon, and not just because I'm an old geezer now. Gen 4 was riddled with issues, sure- most notably, a line of astonishingly butt-ugly extra evolutionary forms for Gen 1 Pokemon that did NOT need them- but there was still plenty to like in it, Luxray and Lucario being particular favorites of mine. Gen 5, on the other hand....yikes. I can mostly tolerate the three starters. They're fine, I guess. A viper-style Grass starter slightly makes up for the fact that Arbok has always sucked way more than a giant cobra ever should. Sawk and Throh are legit. Lightning Zebra? I can dig it.

               Pretty much everything else, though? Woof. A Honeycomb Pokemon was offensive enough, but a fucking ICE CREAM CONE? Whatever the hell this is? A literal pile of shit? Even the fossils, typically one of the most rock-solid promises of sheer awesome in any Gen, aren't much to write home about. The Legendaries? More dragons, yawn yawn. It takes EFFORT to make dragons feel passe, but later-day Pokemon has somehow managed to do just that.

               Given the inherent suckiness of nearly the whole Gen, then, it speaks to how incredibly good the storyline and writing of both Gen 5 games are that this Gen not only makes the list, but manages to beat out one of the Gen 2 games. The stories of these games were praised to the sky all around me, which is what finally moved me to pick it up despite my very uncomfortable reservations about the Pokemon themselves. And I am ever-grateful I did. Team Rocket remains an iconic part of the entire Pokemon aesthetic, and deservedly so, but I would argue that Team Plasma takes the prize for being the most interesting and clearly motivated evil team. N is a genuinely great character, one who is understandable in terms of what drives him even as his means get more and more twisted as the game progresses. And that finale, with a massive castle literally rising out of the ground around the Elite Four? Stunning.

               The sequel games, then, took that excellent start and raised the bar even higher by being the first post-Gold/Silver gameset to actually take the foundations of a previous game and build a new story atop them, with a time skip and various alterations to the layout of the world being built in. You start in a wholly different part of the map, an island that was not part of the original games, and explore the original cities (and learn some of the original characters again) in a completely different order, lending it the sort of alternate, exploratory freshness that made Gold/Silver so special.

               Even better? While, yes, you are stuck picking one of the Gen 5 starters, right from the start the wild areas include Gen 1 and 2 Pokemon, with Fire, Water, and Electric types readily available. No being forced to built a solely Gen 5 team until after you beat the Elite Four. Starters aside, you can get away with never using a single other Gen 5 Pokemon for the rest of the game. And no being forced to sweat through the first gym with just Rattatta, a Bird Pokemon, and maybe one Bug. Not this time. This time, you can directly get access to some of the cool guns (MAGMAR! AMPHAROS!) and start building up a varied and dynamic team right from the get-go. It's the sort of launching point I sorely wish every Pokemon game had.

2. Yellow (1^st Gen, 3^rd Game)

               It had been years, literally at least a decade and possibly two, before I finally dug out my old Pokemon Yellow cartridge and started a new game; thanks to the fact that they contained no clock like in Gold/Silver/Crystal, the original cartridge games will remain playable as long as AA batteries exist.

               Revisiting Kanto through the lens of the very best of the first generation of games, I was struck by how Yellow remains the lone exception among the games in being, in many ways, a direct companion to the anime. In all the other games, character designs notwithstanding, the games have always existed in a realm of their own, separate from the adventures of Ash, Misty, and Brock. That Yellow is the lone game to even partially bridge this divide gives it a heft and nostalgic force that only gets more potent as time goes on.

               True, you don't play as Ash from the show, and Brock and Misty do not leave their gyms and tag along with you, but Jesse and James sure are present and accounted for, as are a number of smaller, one-of characters of various stripes from the show. Gary/Blue/Douchebag (c'mon- you know you went there as a kid) starts with an Eevee, and the three Gen 1 starters can all be acquired in-game in ways that partially reflect their introductions in the show.

               Most memorable of all, of course, is Pikachu. This is the lone main game where Pikachu, THE de facto symbol of the entire Pokemon world, is your starter, and like in the show it refuses to stay in its Pokeball, instead following you around, which in turn allows you to interact with it and see its reactions to various parts of the game. It's such an incredibly fun gimmick I can't believe it took as many years as it did before that particular feature was repeated in a game.

               It is its utter uniqueness that makes Pokemon Yellow the defining game of Gen 1, and for many Pokemon fans, it is THE definitive Pokemon game, especially for us First Wavers. Shockingly, though, it is not the BEST Pokemon game. That honor goes to....

1. Heartgold/Soulsilver (2^nd Gen remakes)

               Yes, you read that right. I can hear the monocles popping as I write this, but I'm sticking to my guns; with all due respect to Yellow, the absolute best of the pre-3DS Pokemon games are the Gen 4 remakes of the original Gold/Silver/Crystal games.

               Why? Simple. We've already established that Gold/Silver/Crystal were even better than the original games, and exceed most of all the later games, for the simple reason that there was just more- more to see, more to explore, more to do. They were not just sequels, they actively bridged two separate regions; Even Black 2/White 2, though sequels, stayed in the same region; no revisiting Sinnoh, or Hoenn, much less Johto or Kanto. Heartgold and Soulsilver retains this fundamental, dual-region, world-building excellence, but then throw EVEN MORE on top of it all. They are the broadest, deepest, and most expansive out of all the pre 3DS Pokemon games.

               First off, they are gorgeous- Gen 4 in general is the most beautiful out of the first five Gens in terms of the color, designs, and quality of graphics. Yes, even better than Gen 5, which followed it; both the pixelated quality of the battles and a lot of the Pokemon animation struck me as a bit off, a bit too frenetic and unclear. Gen 4 does not have that problem; the lines are smooth and everything flows beautifully, especially in the heat of battle, though I do find it amusing that a number of the big power moves late in the game end up looking like reproduction-destroying crotch shots.

               Getting down into the meat of the narrative, the story is expanded from the original games in really fun and creative ways. In effect, the extra quests in the games amount to a fusion of all the games from the first three Gens, nearly giving you 3 games jammed into one. The Suicune chase from Crystal is included, expanded to include in Johto during the game's second half. Cerulean Cave is back in business, and all the Legendaries from Gen 1 are available to be caught, whereas in the originals they'd seemingly disappeared from the Pokemon world. Even Gen 3 gets its day- Latios and Latias are available to be chased down Dog-style in Kanto, and the island where Cianwood City resides has a whole extra path into the mountains, including a cave where Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza are available if you have access to a trading partner.

               And that whole added trail isn't all that's been added on; a lot of extra stuff is there if you care to find, stuff that, in some cases, actually resolves various threads left wide open by the original games. At the end of that extra trail is the new and improved Safari Zone, the fate of which had only been hinted at before. Silver's efforts to redeem himself have a few moments of resolution, including an aside from Elm's assistant that he eventually returns to New Bark Town to apologize and offer to return the Pokemon he stole. It's a really, really small detail, almost insignificant, but the fact that it's there if you care to find it says worlds about the dedication that went into making this game something truly special.

               There are sidequests like the Battle Frontier, where you can get points and access special tutored moves, but honestly, I found this part too grinding to really be invested. Your mileage may vary on the sporting competition available near Goldenrod, but I personally found the games a fun diversion. Plus, the points you win there had the relevance of offering access to extra Evolution Stones early in the game. The restriction of exactly one Ev Stone per game in the originals was one of their few drawbacks, and given that many of my favorites are Stone evolutions, I was especially happy to see a way around this added.

               My absolute favorite part of the game, though, are the extra Gym Leader battles. In the original games, the only endless repeat battles available were the Elite Four, but even then they were at the same levels. So, really, once that mountain had been climbed, the only other challenge was the insanely difficult fight with Red at Mount Silver.

               In the remakes, though, the Elite Four actually get higher-level Pokemon in the second go-around. It's a one-time-only boost, but it still gives another great challenge and also offers the perfect way to test your Pokemon if you think you're ready to go seek out Red.

               Beyond even that is the ability to, at very specific times and places, run into the Gym Leaders outside their gyms and cities and get their phone numbers. Each Leader then has a set day of the week where they are available for a rematch, which 6 full-strength, Elite-Four level Pokemon. It's a fun expansion that in some cases gives a little more insight into the different personalities of the gym leaders, but also provides a regular way to keep challenging and training your Pokemon even after they get into the upper levels; it used to be that once a Pokemon was above level 60, further strengthening them was a real chore, since there were no options left to get them high amounts of XP in a short period of time. Heartgold/Soulsilver was the first Gen that found a way to fix that problem.

               Beyond all these grand, story-level expansions, though, there are numerous small, technical aspects of these games that make them easier, more streamlined, and more fun to play. Unlimited items get rid of the stress of having to use big items too early. Unlimited phone numbers is also a huge boon; the very strict limit on how many you could save in the originals made it a chore guessing which ones were most important.

               These were also the very first games since Yellow where Pokemon follow you around outside the ball. And not just your starter- any Pokemon first in your party stays outside, meaning that you can literally see and interact with all 493 total available Pokemon in-game. Like I said before, given how cool this function is, I find it astonishing that it took this long post-Yellow for another game to utilize it.

               Taken together, it staggers me how much, in every way that counts, Heartgold and Soulsilver managed to exceed all that came before them and (so far) all that has come since, creating the absolute perfect Pokemon gaming experience, better than any other I've had before or since. Pokemon is an amazing world, full of wonder and possibility, and for my money, there is no other game out there that takes such full advantage of that potential.

-Noah Franc