these are some classic choices! i really enjoyed gen 1 too and also missed out on pokemon yellow til recently. i havent tried the lets go branch but i have some vague interest in it!

if i had to list my TOP THREE, and reasons why... whew! i guess i'll start in order with main series...?

pokemon heartgold

this one is at the top, certainly, with no debate... i LOVE heartgold. i loved having my pokemon follow me around because i'm the kind of person who likes the interactions between pokemon and player more interesting than stuff regarding pvp or breeding or anything.

the music in heartgold is really pleasantly remixed (and the gb sounds item is nice but doesnt actually feel faithful to the original tracks...?). the color palette is really charming, slightly muted but still very cozy. i think the pokeathlon was fun too.

i actually preordered heartgold, back in the day! i got the strategy guide and the ho-oh figurine in addition to the pokewalker. i still have all of them! i would like to play it again sometime.

pokemon platinum

i actually started dppt with pearl, but prefer platinum due to how much extra stuff it has. i got around 429 hours in while waiting for heartgold to release initially.

i think the plot is good and the environment detail makes me smile. i remember learning some of the pokemon's names in japanese when the game hadn't released in the US yet. piplup is still my favorite starter of the three in this gen (i shiny hunted it in platinum.... )

i made up a lot of stories to keep me entertained in platinum post-game, i think. it was like playing pretend but in a singleplayer pokemon environment. i had an umbreon i raised to level 100 named apollo (adamant nature, i remember clearly), but when i moved him to heartgold and then somehow LOST my heartgold cartridge i was absolutely devastated. i still miss him a lot.

i really enjoyed the lake theme, as well as the atmosphere of eterna forest. have you ever seen the 'a thousand ways of seeing a forest' video? i think about it a disproportionate amount. i think of it any time i see a videogame forest now, and eterna forest i think is an example of it, for sure. give it a watch if you have 30 minutes spare.

pokemon firered and leafgreen

its so hard to describe the nostalgia i had for this one. it was one of my first pokemon games after getting pokemon blue from a classmate - i asked my dad for it for christmas one year and he got it with a gameboy advance sp and the bundled wireless adapter.

i used to spend a lot of time using the union room with my twin sister... especially the chatroom function. i used to go in the union room on long car rides because i hoped desperately that, somewhere in the cow fields we passed through, some other kid was playing the game too... haha, but no one ever came up!

i really loved the sevii islands. i know that was a new inclusion to the region in this gen, so it felt more mysterious than gen 1 did to me. i also really enjoyed the help menu L/R toggle. i used it to learn a lot about type matchups! TBH more games should have it, it made firered one of the most accessible pokemon games, IMO.


and if i went into my top three sidegames:

pokemon mystery dungeon: explorers of sky

cmoooon, this was a given. i think this entry is actually pretty popular, even outside of chibifur-esque culture. as a kid i loved games that let you play as animals, so this was inevitable... i played blue rescue team first, but got this when it came out too (after playing explorers of darkness prior).

i enjoy the QOL updates added after explorers of time/darkness! i liked sky village and i liked spinda's cafe and all that. i think i tried to submit a guide to gamefaqs years ago on when the best story pauses were for grinding levels some years ago but i don't think it was ever posted/accepted. sad! but i want to remake it for my site later when i revisit it.

EOS scratches an itch other games don't. i really like mystery dungeon games now because of it, but my experience is still limited to the pokemon-specific entries so far. i have wanted a multiplayer one for a long time now - i'm no stranger to pokemon mystery universe, but that game is definitely not the same at all (having played over 450 hours in it and experienced its jank). maybe a good one will come someday...?

pokemon legends arceus

i almost wanted to rank this ABOVE eos. which is kind of surprising! its got rough spots, sure - the dev cycle seems vicious now in terms of time crunch - but i enjoy the concept a lot more than the main games. i like that you can catch pokemon repeatedly with an actual purpose. i always felt like catching pokemon in maingame was kind of 'if necessary' type of circumstances, usually, unless going specifically for dex completion.

but i dunno. i think it just feels so markedly different from the main series formula that it feels so... refreshing? i like not focusing on the gym badges. i like exploring and learning and just messing around. and i do those things in the main game, sure. but i think that open world exploration is a fun direction for PLA. i wouldnt mind so much if it weren't so open, though...

also, i still think it's strange you cant change ur save portrait after youve gotten ur stuff customized. why ://!!!

pokemon ranger

another one of those 'i like the concept of pokemon but dont like the battle aspect' things. LOL. i only evr played the first two - the third didn't emulate well! - and despite the short playtime, it felt satisfying to play through. i think i almost broke my DS screen finishing either/both of them. but i enjoyed the music a lot! its been a long time since i played it but it would be fun to play through these ones again.

honorable mention to pokemon trozei, which i enjoyed too, and pokemon shuffle, which i played on the 3ds back in my college days and liked in some amount. (i didn't like the microtransactions though.)

All of this was SUCH a good read!! But I'll reply with the games I have the most to talk about xD

-I am SO excited to replay SoulSilver again soon, I totally agree with you on the visuals and music of HG/SS, and I am SO glad my first mainline pkmn game was one where the Pokemon could follow you in the overworld, although this totally set me up for disappointment when I would play Diamond next xDD Luckily I get the same experience in Yellow, I love having my Pikachu follow me around!! I'm glad they repeated the feature of your Pokemon emoting when you'd talk to them in HG/SS, I love checking up on my little buddy.

I think I played WAY More of the PokeAthelon in SS than I had the rest of the game, haha!! My Typhlosion was so OP, twelve year old me was addicted to seeing it smash the competition over and over lol. I always love the minigames offered in Pokemon. Lately I have been HOOKED on the slot machines in Celadon City, I'm up to a little over 3,000 coins!! I'm determined to get that Porygon >:3 It might be nice to fixate on the PokeAthalon again on my SS replay, because I think it might be better than the gambling addiction I've been enabling X.x


-The overwhelming amount of love people have for the "Explorers Of" series makes me SOOOOOO giddy to play it to completion!! Emulating Sky had me spoiled and I'm a tad worried about Time being noticeably different, but it seems like not too much has changed! I will really miss Spinda's Cafe when I start time though, mixing the jellies into fun juice is like. Idk how to explain this, but the same Sensory Heaven that you'd get as a kid when u would see cartoon food xD I like imagining how they'd all taste! I actually mistook the emulated game I played to be Time and not Sky, but it's not like I could have gotten a physical copy of Sky for a reasonable price anyways xD

I was pretty much destined to fall in love with the PMD series since I've been a hardcore Pikachu Kinnie since I was five years old, I remember the Pokemon website had the quiz online to promote Red/Blue Rescue Team, and I played the quiz over and over and over to get Pikachu xDD But it took until this year for me to finally pick up the series and Really enjoy it! I tried Super Mystery Dungeon on the DS, but was disappointed by it for whatever reason :S

I'd love to know what your first/usual team is!! I think it's so special that everyone can come away from the same game with attachments to different Pokemon because of it. The team I started with on Sky ended up being Pikachu & Eevee to represent me and my friend Kit! :3 I think this time around when I play Time, I'm going to make my team Pikachu & Skitty. I had to look up the cheat sheet for the quiz so I could get Pikachu, but the game Really wanted me to be Skitty (the naive type u.u). 


I loved reading your game opinions!! Your comment about playing Pokemon driving past fields of cows made me nostalgic about playing my DS on road trips to my grandparents' house <3

-OH MANNN I can't believe I forgot to even Mention Pokemon Stadium!! I believe I got my copy around the same time I got Snap, it was pretty key to my childhood xD I do think Pkmn Snap holds up better than the two personally, especially since I never had the novelty of importing my Pkmn over from my Gameboy, but I also spent most of my time playing the minigames in the Kids' Zone xD The Lickitung Sushi-Go-Round is an all time favorite, and I love Clefairy says even though it always stresses me out haha. I've only played a little bit of Stadium 2 on an emulator, I'm looking forward to it coming to the Switch! 

-I felt the same way about New Pokemon Snap, SOBS! I'd been begging for Yearsssss to watch a Nintendo Direct and see a new Snap get announced, I flipped OUT when they released the first teaser! The euphoria was real haha. Then I finally got the game, played it obsessively for about 5 days straight, then decided it didn't have Nearly the same appeal I also love replaying the original Snap, I remember browsing a video game forum around age 12 and finding out you could take an up close picture of Mew O.o I frantically ran to my 64 to replace the super far away photo of Mew, it was such a cool discovery!

-I never got to play Hey You Pikachu and I'm heartbroken about it!! It's been a dream for years, especially since I have such fond memories of Channel. I remember seeing my next door neighbors' copy and excitedly asking if I could play it! One of the kids shrugged and said I could, but the game was broken. I gave it a shot only to be greeted by a horrible noise, and Pikachu's face texture on the opening screen was replaced with dark bars. I was deeply upset by this   I ended up watching the same YouTube video about Hey You Pikachu on repeat as a fourth grader to cope with the fact that I couldn't play it. Anyone else watch PeanutButterGamer in the NormalBoots days?

-I introduced two of my friends to Puzzle League, and it's become a regular occurrence for us to quote voice lines. at each other in conversation. Some of our favorites are "I'm feeling giddy!", "When you're hot, you're HOT", and "AW, poor baby!" The Pokemon are equally fun to imitate xD

-Pichu Bros in Party Panic is genuinely one of my favorite pieces of Pokemon animation!!! I watched it countless times, I wish there was an easy way to watch the full anime online.

Thanks for replying, I really enjoyed reading your experiences ^w^

OK I already talked in the other thread about how much I love Platinum and Soulsilver so I'm gonna use THIS thread to soapbox about my favourite pokemon game ever.... Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky.

As a kid I was totally enchanted with the idea of getting to BE a Pokemon, which was draw enough to the Mystery Dungeon games as it was, I found the dungeon crawling, missions, and recruiting other pokemon super addictive and rewarding. So I loved my first, Blue Rescue Team, plenty, and it helped that the story was just really good and cute with a really touching ending.

IMO, Explorers took all of that and made it better. I missed the chance to play Time/Darkness, and I don't really regret it at all because I ended up getting Sky for Christmas at some point and it had added content about one of my absolute favourite legendaries, Shaymin.

I loved everything about this game. I loved the story and characters/guild members, and how it incorporated side stories about each of them. I loved the dungeons, both the main story ones and the bonus ones and the thrill of finding rare items, recruiting pokemon, hunting down criminals, and making it out of monster houses alive, lol. It was SO fun, and the story was amazing, this game made me absolutely love Grovyle as a pokemon lol. Also the art and music are so cute. It's a perfect game, one of my favs of all time. 1000/10.

pokemon x and pokemon violet! ingame interaction with pokemon is always my favorite part of playing, and these were both great for that :3 (despite x's various shortcomings lol)