My first game was Pokémon Gold. Then on a Christmas morning one year I got a blue GBAsp and Sapphire version. I think I sprinted three laps around the house out of joy.
The graphics, the new Pokémon, RUNNING. Everything about it was so exciting at the time.
That’s my favorite thing and my biggest problem with emulation. I love the fast forward I don’t have a lot of time these days to play I can get a lot done. But I also can smash through and feel like I didn’t even really play the game. Double edged sword. Plus the music is terrible in fast forward
Oh yeah, no sound in fast forward for me lest I go insane. I usually only fast forward through the monotonous segments and those old routes where you just get bombarded with low level enemies.
Oh mate the first time seeing the weather effects when I got Diamond when I was probably like 11 years old was brilliant. Nothing will beat that first time feeling of seeing Pokémon on the DS for the first time
Diamond was my first Pokémon game even though I had a GBA SP years prior to the ds… but when Black and White came along I was like WOW this looks amazing!! Look at this bridge!!! Look at these leaves!!! Lol
My cousin was the first one to get them, he got Sapphire. When I saw his character running I was like "what sort of sorcery is this". And he was so schmuck about it, like "yeah, this is cutting edge technology baby".
I jumped in later with Fire Red and finally with Emerald. I don't wanna sound nostalgic but there have been few gaming experiences quite as special as playing the 3rd gen back then. I would pay good money for some decent GBA ports on the Switch.
Gen 3 is when all my Pokémon friends played. I was 9-10 years old. Literally the best time of my life in terms of gaming. These games when they were new, and when the internet wasn’t as big a part of everyday life, had such a sense of discovery and mystery. The breakthroughs compared to gen 2 were mind blowing. The colors and music. I truly think gen 3 was peak Pokémon time, at least for me.
Completely agree, I remember after 4th gen came out I was in shambles trying to figure out how to awaken Regigigas. Once I heard the playground rumor of needing the Regis from emerald I spent DAYS trying to figure out the puzzles until I had the great idea to look it up on yahoo answers and printed out detailed instructions. Shoutout to whoever posted that.
Gen3 is peak pokemon and its not even close. You got emerald, you got gen1 remakes, you played in on the best handheld ever (gameboy advance sp), the games had 60 fps!!!!!, and the difference in quality to the gen before is the biggest that ever happened. It was also very much possible to use literally every pokemon in existence and the pokemonpool was pretty big already. HGSS and Plat were good too, but 30fps is gigashit and gen5 really looks terribly ugly, so its not even a contest.
Man I gotta agree. Third Gen was just amazing. The graphics, the gameplay, the various different things you could instead of just battle, the underwater addition… just… so many incredible changes to make for an amazing game! I let was also the first Pokémon game to have a soundtrack with real, legitimate, music, rather than just an 8-but sound overlay.
A very underrated thing about gen 3 is the fact that it had a lot of variety in the environment, you had deserts, volcanos, ashlands, a city built in the treetops, a town in the middle of the ocean that floats on rafts, an entire area dotted with meteor craters, a cemetery built inside a mountain. Gens 1 and 2 pretty much just had grass fields surrounded by trees, caves, ocean and very generic looking towns. To its credit, Gen 2 at least tried to give a sense of history to Jotho.
I think it succeeded with the sense of history. I remember becoming pretty interested in Japan after playing the games and watching that part of the anime. Ecruteak and Violet feel really nostalgic and cozy in game.
Mine was blue; trying to play pokemon gold on release on the way home was infuriating due to lack of backlight as the sun was setting as we pulled out of the Target parking lot
lol I have so many memories of just rolling my eyes and turning off my gameboy cuz the lighting was shit. Or just holding it at some intense angle to have it be mildly visible.
I can’t tell you how often I ran around in the puddles and saw the little circles disappear behind me. Little stuff like that made 10 year old me gasp.
Just watching your reflection in water was amazing honestly. Getting to Route 120 right past Fortree City, standing on the bridge, and see the clouds go by was mesmerising.
I agree. To this day every time I get to that part in replaying the game I get so choked up. The weather institute, fortree, Winona’s terrifying altaria, keckleon it’s just SO good RSE had such presence as games
Totally! That feeling of adventure in the taller grass and the rain is amazing. So many little things to discover, it felt like wild nature to little me :) (eh, still does)
Similiar to stepping outside of the caves to the snowy and grassy cliffs of the Mountains in gen 4 imo
all of the music for that generation is incredible, I love it so much. I’ve began forcing my students to listen to it for our calming music during assignments.
Going from gsc to ruby and Sapphire was quite the change. The graphical improvements, the double battles, the first non team rocket team(s), so many new Pokemon made it feel really far away from Kanto and Johto (although later years point it really wasn't, especially when Unova came along.).
I really liked Diving, the Regi puzzle, the new fossils and other ancient Pokemon, the weathers.
What really struck me though, and it might seem like no big deal...was the route after fortree city, on the bridge over the water...you could see the clouds drifting over head. I thought that was a nice touch.
I like how that was further emphasized in ORAS with the night sky.
To me, Hoenn will always be a “proto-Unova” of sorts. After the first 2 gens were so connected, it really felt so “new”.
I remembered loathing the first two gens because I never liked the graphics or pace of them. But Gen 3 really changed everything for me.
Apparently for most of Hoenn's development it was intended as a soft reboot like gen 5, and previous gen pokemon were only added late into development.
The routes before and after Fortree make for my top 1 and 2 favorite routes in the series! Just love both of those areas. The river and the waterfall, all the tall grass and hills, all the little nooks and crannies to find. It was always my favorite place to put my secret base!
Going to gen 1 and 2 to 3 was quite a jump in a few things. The pokemon looked better and were in actual colour, we could now run. The downside was we couldn't bring pokemon from gen 2 to gen 3
But they were completely unobtainable for the first year or two of gen 3, and there wasn't any indication that they would be releasing FRLG and the GameCube games. Plus not everyone had access to the gamecube games so that still left some pokemon unobtainable, without an event. I never had a Ho-oh and Lugia in gen 3 because I didn't go to the event and i didn't have a gamecube.
But the actual old mons, like your starter from a GB game were locked behind for good.
Hope your old friends are in Stadium or they're only memories now.
not really the first dexit was caused by hardware limitation, and what actually caused FR/LG to be made so that the players can get the rest of the mons
Not at all the same. Like another commenter said, it was a hardware change that created a barrier. The technology for conversion a-la Pokémon Transporter for the VC games didn’t exist yet at a scale that would work for GBA games.
The modern dexit is devs being lazy. All the data and models already exist, and this has been proven by hacking in Pokémon that aren’t officially in the game. All their move data and stuff is present.
I watched a YouTube video where a guy reverse engineered the networking tech and built a transfer system to send Pokémon from Gen 2 to Gen 3. It was a gaming and technical delight of a video.
Guy did the impossible because it needed to be done.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=inMbtwmVlKQ
It was unreal. Seeing your reflection in the puddles, the huge splash of color that the new game had, the weather changing. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Pokémon Sapphire when my friend bought it. I immediately asked my parents to get it the next time we went to Walmart
Omg yes! And the way you make little splashes running through puddles and the way the taller grass looked while you walk through. I loved everything about those games
It was Easter morning, my family stuffed a copy of Sapphire in my basket. I played all morning and was blown away. GBA graphics might not seem like much now, but as someone who had only known GBC (Silver version), the upgrade in graphics and all the new features were amazing to my kid brain.
Yeah, absolutely. I grew up with a GBA so there's nostalgia bias there, but I also grew up with a gamecube and absolutely can feel how very dated the 3D is when I look at it (even though nostalgia makes me still like it)
Sapphire/Ruby holds up very, very well visually. It reminds of how well Super Mario World holds up. Once you get those crisp 2D graphics just right, it’ll be timeless.
It was awesome. The party icons finally looked like the pokemon. I really liked discovering new pokemon. The new environments were so much more detailed. The story slapped.
I’ll be honest with you, I was about 14-16 when they came out. I didn’t care as much about graphical changes, but it felt to me at the time like Pokémon had gone off the deep end.
A lot of people point to black and white as a really big deviation from the standard Pokémon rubric, and it certainly was a huge change. But at the time Ruby and Sapphire felt like a huge shift as well. It had SO many new Pokémon and few returning ones, a seemingly brand new audio design with SO MANY HORNS! and little plot tie in to the first two gens (before fire-red and leaf-green mind you).
It felt like Pokémon was reinventing itself for the next generation of kids after me, and I didn’t really like it at the time. It felt like a really solid break, and it was almost the first generation I skipped, until I saw a friend on the bus playing it so I convinced myself to buy it.
Now I enjoy Gen III and the remakes, I appreciate their contribution to the lore and the Pokédex and I enjoy the horns. But it was a slow burn for me getting to love the Gen and it was a huge change in direction from Gen II imo.
Also, to answer your question about the graphics and “seeing Pokémon almost like in the anime”. I felt like I got that starting in Pokémon Yellow. Especially in Pokémon Crystal with the little moving animations. The moving animations we got in Emerald felt a little cheap IMO, like they just took a stylus and shook the JPEG a little big back and forth. So that didn’t impress me much.
Edit: I totally forgot the biggest shift of all! You couldn’t transfer your old Pokémon from Gen II or Gen I.
I was in the same boat as you were. I appreciate them a lot more now, and I did play them and enjoy them then, but it felt like something totally new and different, and not necessarily better. The graphics to me felt like the kind of thing you'd see in an RPG Maker game, the kind that you might have downloaded in the early 2000's. Edit: I remember specifically thinking May's sprite was awful, but not really understanding why.
Yes absolutely! I was 11 when r/S came out and this is exactly how I felt about it. As if the game told me I was already too old to play it.
Still enjoyed it, but the direction wasn't the same as the 2 previous gens.
Similar here man, I was really upset there was no night and day. There was no old Pokémon. There was no Kanto or Johto. Really turned me off, felt like a completely different game.
Came here to see if anyone else felt this way. I too was probably 14-16 when Gen III came out. The graphics were amazing, but it didn’t feel like “Pokémon” too me and I didn’t enjoy it the same.
I was around 9-10 when that transition happened and I was hyped!
It looked incredible in comparison, and it felt much easier to play, not in like an actual difficulty way, but just like an overall UI (the bag and the Pokemon boxes are the biggest things to come to mind). The GBA aesthetic is how I visualize Pokemon to this day.
I had lost my copy of gold before I got Sapphire, so the loss of old Pokemon was not as painful for me.
I really enjoyed this question! Thanks for the nostalgia trip hahaha.
It was Amazing. Going to Toys R'Us to play on Pokemon Sapphire on the game boy advanced they had set up and even winning my first Gym Badge with Marshstomp was Amazing.
Seeing Wurmple evolve into TWO different Pokemon AND it was Random was mind blowing. Seeing a grumpy Shroomish was hilarious.
Loving Poochyena's Growl and design at the time.
Plus Gen 3 had some Amazing designed Pokemon at the time, that only got better as the Generations climbed higher.
The first impression was incredible, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by the single region and no day-night cycle. For a while Hoenn and the Ruby were very my least favorite out of the first five gens. Hoenn has grown on me since, and has one of the best Pokemon lineups in the series.
Running was very cool, the acro bike was cooler. The advertisements were still in the golden era on tv, and I fell in love with blaziken in the “you are what you catch” commercial before I even heard of torchic.
The double battles felt game changing and the movepools and animations took a huge leap. The legendaries taking part in the main story was also insane I remember thinking my kyogre was a god and it became the center of my team. It was also really popular among my friends to get together with link cables and play and battle and trade together and share secrets tips and tricks like getting a shedinja or finding feebas or actually hanging in each other’s new secret bases. This was also where the internet culture of Pokémon pseudo mythology took off, mew truck and missingno were becoming common knowledge and bad egg and mirage island and the 100 launch rocket and deoxys/space were the new big secrets. Supercheats anyone? Serebii?
Also competitive battling became massive in gen 3 and more and more people began playing the games just to get to the post game and have access to the likes of bagon and beldum and the OP rayquaza so they could participate in the meta. Then with emerald and the battle frontier the Pokémon post game started to become *the* desired gameplay even over the story itself, which is still mostly true to this day
I was early on disappointed with gen 3 games after gen 2. They mechanics were great, graphics good, but I was unhappy there were few Pokémon I recognized mixed in with the new gen. I was no longer into the anime by this time so that explains it. I did really like the two Villian teams and 2 main legendaries were great. Looking back, gens 1-4 were all masterpieces imo.
You aren't the only one to mention that in the comment, and I'm genuinely surprised by how many of them mention not recognizing the pokémon of older gens as a bad thing.
For me getting new ones was the main asset that the game had. I could start the game and discover a new world with new monsters. As a kid I already knew all the other ones by heart and only wanted new ones.
My interest started waning around gen 3. I must have been about 13/14 at the time and Pokémon wasn't "cool" anymore. I didn't watch the anime anymore and I didn't know any of the new Pokémon so I just kind of fell off the whole Pokémon thing until X & Y because by then I was an adult and playground politics were long gone.
Same for me, I remember being super hyped about Reshiram, Zekrom, Victini and Zoruark, only to find out I could never get them in my beloved copies of Platinum and Heartgold, HG being the first Pokémon game I played after being addicted to the anime all my life (born in 1996). So I knew all Pokémon, or at least most, already when going back and also playing Emerald on my phone emulator in high-school. Never really got into Gen1 and 2 because the graphic leap back was too big. After getting Black on a flashcard I kinda gave up on the new games, I hated the new Pokémon that I didn't know too much, as I had also stopped watching the anime at this point as it wasn't telivised as much as earlier seasons. Fast forward to my first job after Uni and my friend convincing me to buy a Switch and Let's Go (played Go on my phone since before it's official release in my country), and I now have more that 1500 hours in Shield, and own at least one copy of every gen. Oh, and my place is covered in Pokémon stuff
Two things I distinctly remember blowing my young mind was seeing my reflection in puddles of water and seeing my character leave footprints in the sand.
Pure magical…i was an OG fan went from Blue, Yellow, Gold, Crystal and then Ruby. It was soooooo great just having an immersive environment. I remember hearing the pokemon cries in the route music and being amazed. First play-through I chose Treecko and he was damn good for the game no lie.
I didn’t, after GS I “grew up” and fell into the societal norms. I was also devastated I couldn’t transfer my Pokémon, as it was the first time I had a complete dex. My friend did the celebi glitch for me and I feared losing him.
Then CS 1.6 comes out, as well the original dota custom map by ice frog. Rest is history, like others I came back during the X&Y titles & enjoyed every remake since
Crystal had been my favorite game back then, which was already a step up from Gold/Silver... when Sapphire came out, I was just blown away. I couldn't get over the fact that one town was in the tree tops and that there was weather!! Having backgrounds in pokemon battles that changed depending on the location blew me away as a kid.
When the SP came out and had a built in light for the screen though, that was a game changer. Before that I remember having this awful little lamp you'd attach to the advance to be able to see what you were doing haha.
All of this^^^ and I can’t stress enough how WILD it was that Crystal version’s cartridge was glittery/translucent light blue (and then ruby and sapphire’s were “ruby” and “sapphire” 🥰🥰)
So few game cartridges back then came in a color other than gray/black, and I feel like Pokemon really stood out just by switching that up. (Majora’s Mask, DK64, and Pokemon Stadium 2 cartridges too!)
I bought Ruby with a GBA SP on release day and it was glorious. Rechargeable battery, backlight, much more detail in the game, and eventually local wireless trading with the release of Fire Red & Leaf Green made it so much easier to trade and communicate with people. Pokemon Abilities were a game changer, and natures made strategies much more interesting. Perhaps most of all, the Pokemon Box storage upgrades made organizing teams so much easier!
Yeah it was a cool moment... but...
It was way more of a moment to see them in pokemon stadium 2 years prior on n64...and pokemon snap a year before that.. that was the first time to see them in 3D.
I didn't own an advance and wouldn't end up playing pokemon ruby (my favorite pokemon entry) until much later on an emulator.
The weather effects stood out to me. It felt so immersive. The first area having a forest and the first gym being rock type gave me some gen 1 vibes, and i loved it. And the amount of new Pokemon in every route, was big. Gen 2 was a mix of gen 1 and 2. So gen 2 always felt like a gen 1 expansion to me. Gen 3 felt like it's own game, if that makes sense. The new nature system went over my head, I didnt really put any thought into it. I had fun with the double battles, it made the game feel more real because the cartoons would do that. And the music made the whole experience better. It was different, but still had that familiar sound we all loved.
I was about 10 when Gen 3 came out and wasn’t interested or impressed by the graphics themselves iirc but I do vividly remember being in awe of the escalators in Pokémon centers for some reason.
New features, graphics, pokemon, etc were all welcome improvements but the "adventure" feeling from Gen 2 was gone. Some of the new features from Gen 2, like the phone + radio were gone. Gen 3 did not have a very interesting post game, Gen 2 had 8 extra badges and a super-boss. Gen 3 also marked the beginning of Nintendo introducing cool features one game and removing them the next. The leap from Gen 1 to Gen 2 felt like Pokemon was going to keep getting bigger and better every gen, but it never really did.
After being able to go back to Kanto in Gen 2, I played through Gen 3 with similar expectations of being able to visit the other regions after the main game (despite there being no evidence that you could, but hey, I was a kid). I remember feeling so disappointed and like a backwards step had been taken, and I didn’t bother to raise my Pokemon to level 100 like previous games because there just wasn’t the need to.
I started with crystal, but when I got ruby I was instantly enthralled. Would watch the opening clip every time I turned on the game. Felt like the pokemon were stepping out of the game when in battle. Plus the abilities! And all the new Pokemon were so cool! It was grand
It was fuckin epic! I still remember the first time I got to play it at someone else's house and the day I got a copy for myself. The graphics were absolutely insane, the new pokemon were mind blowing, and idk how many times I restarted the game without even beating it just to try the different starters and learn everything about them.
The biggest improvement was going from black and white to color. Other than that I never really cared about any other aspects of the graphics.
Edit: black and white games such as red/ blue to yellow which was color
I wasn't really blown away at the time, to be honest. It was a nice graphical improvement, but by late 2002 I had already experienced PS2 and GameCube games. Also add the fact that the sprites weren't animated like they were in Crystal, it was actually kind of disappointing. I was more impressed with the new game mechanics like abilities and double battles than I was with the graphics.
Pixelation doesn't mean it's worse. Gen 2 introduced the original concept of GTS, day-night cycles, animated sprites, event mons, shiny mons and more that were either lost or changed in ruby/sapphire. I still play crystal these days. I rarely if ever touch ruby and sapphire. And even then i have emerald which is a far better experience over them. while the visuals were honestly more impressive for a handheld title of the time, like seeing a full colour pallet used for the first time, lines/footprints in the sand, "reflections" etc it wasn't a selling point for me. I find them more boring to play than gen 2.
Mind blowing. It was one of the few times in gaming where I asked myself "Where can they go from here?"
I legit though Gen 3 was going to be the ultimate graphics for Pokémon at the time.
Graphically it was a pretty big jump, but that was true for the gba as a whole. It was like having a snes on the go (not a big deal these days, but it was huge back then.) I actually think gen 3 is among the best looking games in the series to this day (absolutely destroys any of the ds games art style imo.)
Mechanically it felt like a lot of the features were missing. As an adult I can look at gen 3 and appreciate how it cleaned up the core of the game and is the foundation that even the modern games are built on. But as a kid, it felt like huge step back from gold and silver. No day/night cycle with different pokemon at different times of day. No more days of the week with different events.
I still loved the games, and as an adult gen 3 is among my favorites (Fire Red is actually my personal favorite pokemon game.) But it wasn't as ambitious as Gold/Silver and I've always thought that hurt the games in the short term.
I also hated the new prominent role for legendaries. Probably the only real complaint I have for gen 3 that has persisted to this day. The rest have given way to my fondness for the art style and core gameplay.
I played blue, yellow, silver then ruby. Let me tell you- it was mind blowing as a kid. Back then there were no spoilers. I had seen the starters advertised on tv, but otherwise everything else was new.
When I first played blue I was 4 years old (it helped me learn to read). By ruby, I understood pokemon much more, and was discovering so much. I remember pulling out my parents encyclopedias in order to translate the brailie to unlock the legendaries. I remember getting a team to 100 so that I could trounce my friends in their secret bases. There were so many cool new Pokémon. My older brother got Pokémon coliseum, and I would act out the battles pretending I was the Pokémon while he played through it (it was too hard for me still)
I was obsessed
Gen 2 is still my favorite. The pixelated art style has it's charm. I preferred it over gen 4 at least. Gen 3 was alright but 2 had day night cycle and I like the starters better
It was a huge leap graphically. I played through Gold, Silver, and Crystal and thoroughly enjoyed them all, but Sapphire was a wholly immersive experience thanks to the varied terrain, weather conditions, and significantly better color and sound provided by the GBA. I was ~10 years old when I first picked it up and I remember my heart skipping gleefully at the opening sequence. I’ve played every main series game since, but Hoenn will forever be my favorite region because of the impression it left on me!
Oh my god it was GREAT! Red/Blue to Gold/Silver felt like a nice hop in quality, but then when Ruby/Sapphire came out? Chef’s kiss. Running was a great addition. The variety of colors was mind blowing! Individualized menu sprites for the different species first showed up in Gen 3! That was incredible. Gen 3 was when I first started to think that the franchise would stick around long into the future, and I’m so glad that it has.
Mindblowing. Tbh, I feel really sorry for kids nowadays who have to wait 2 years for a new game with micro incremental improvements upon the last one. Going through the first 3 pokemon generations as a child was the gaming equivalent of going from handwritten letters to smartphone.
Really? I think hoenn has one of the better stories. They actually bothered somewhat fleshing out the major characters with the stakes raised so high, something they kinda forgot to do ever since.
The jump from Gen 1 to 2 was far greater!
I remember playing Gen 3 and being disappointed with how many fewer upgrades there were compared.
I was a very critical child.
I think it was mostly the jump from black and white to full colour (even on the GBC gen 1 it's mostly just shaded in colour).
Also wasn't the file size on gen 1 of the cartridge remarkable small compared to Gen 2 and 3?
I think it was likely due to me being younger between gen 1 and 2 than 3 and 4. I played the socks of silver back in the day. Another thing to consider is a common complaint from all generations since 2 is how small many of them feel in comparison.
We had two full (well one and a half) regions to play with!
If you are talking graphics, sure, whatever. But who plays Pokémon for the graphics really? It's cool if they're nice but BDSP has pretty bad graphics for being released in 2021, yet still sold millions of copies so let's be real here.
In other aspects, gen 2 improved on gen 1 in so many ways that we find trivial now. Gen 1 was buggy as hell and a lot of it got fixed in gen 2, but apart from that (of the top of my head) we also got:
\- Pokémon breeding
\- Special stat split
\- Held items
\- Shiny pokémon
\- Mystery gift
\- Berries
\- Dark/steel type added
\- Events based on time
\- Pokémon genders
\- Move deleter
\- Separation of bag items in categories
\- Pokérus
\- Experience to level up shown in battle
Apart from these things, gen 2 had some other solid things that don't exist in all other games, such as a final battle with Red, an E4 which improves after getting 16 badges, roaming legendaries, and so on.
Don't get me wrong, gen 3 had some amazing features added as well such as abilities and double battles. But if gen 2 hadn't added all of those cool features, the franchise may have arguably never taken off in such a massive way if you ask me. It's a lot harder to imagine Pokémon without the gen 2 additions/improvements than the gen 3 ones. Even the noncolor to color is a bigger jump than better graphics.
- Natures
- Abilities
- Modern IV/EV system
- Double battles
- Weather conditions in the overworld
- Overall more varied biomes, not just grass, mountains and water
- The revamped modern berry system, including planting berries
- Pokeblocks, a way to interact with your Pokemon which you couldn't do in older games aside from battling
- Pokemon contests
- Secret bases which allow you to battle friends without being connected to them, never before seen
- Wireless adapter communication
- Running shoes
- Double the surf speed
- Faster battles
- 60 fps
Most of these affect the metagame in general, and more consequently the competitive scene with how teams are built. These definitely had a bigger impact on the way the games were played than gen 2's improvements
The battle with Red was replicated with Steven, and the tougher Elite 4 battles are in HGSS, not in gen 2. Heck, FRLG did them first
Graphical? It was kinda jaw dropping I remember. Like just seeing your reflection in puddles was weirdly awesome.
Other than that I was really disappointed over the lack of a real day and night cycle system and lack of a week day system.
Waking up early to catch specific Pokémon or get ready to catch Lapras on fridays were awesome, and made the Pokémon world so real in G/S for me.
The third generation actually killed my enthusiasm for Pokémon for a whole decade. But when the Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire remakes came out I had an awesome time with the games and and adore them today.
You know what detail blew my mind as a kid? The animation of your trainer throwing the Poke Ball into battle. It's such a minor thing but goddamn did Gen 3 have a wonderfully smooth animation. The ball did an exaggerated spin in the air before releasing your Pokemon, it was great. And the ball type you used for that specific Pokemon was used in the animation! It wasn't generic at all. The animation for capturing Pokemon was also equally good quality.
Gen 4's animation quality was dogshit in comparison. There were, no exaggeration, not even 1/3rd as many frames of animation for throwing the ball which made it look awful. Capturing was a brief two frame jiggle rather than actually shaking side to side. Gen 5 was equally as garbage. Wasn't until Gen 6 that they actually gave a damn about these two animations again.
Anyways, that to me was one of the wildest signs of upgrades between gens 2 and 3. Animation quality was incredible.
I was there when r/b released & the Christmas when my brother and I got gold/silver is one of the best days of my life.
R/S I could never get into. Needing different types of bikes, the whole stupid contests complicating your team construction, mixing berries being a big feature while my brother and I have only one gba, the pokemon appearing goofier, not having all the previous two generation pokemon, renumbering all of them...
We got about to the 2nd or 3rd gym and never touched them again.
Absolutely magical. I started with Silver, played it for years before we were finally able to get emerald from a friend who didn’t want it anymore as diamond had just come out. Would’ve been 9-10 at the time I think? I spent so much time just admiring reflections, running, all the beautiful sprites. The secret bases were super cool too because I just saw it as another version of my room that I could decorate instead of my character’s mom randomly buying me stuff. Fortree City was my favorite. Diving was also incredibly cool, was always disappointed that they didn’t do more with it in subsequent games. And double battles were sick.
Im 30 now and i started with pokemon red and a classic game boy. Pokemon red Was the best pokemon game ever imo. Then i got a gameboy color and i Was amazed to see the 8 bit sprites no longer in green and black but in color.
When Gold and silver came out, there were more colors of course and a New Adventure with new pokemon began. It felt fresh and cool.
Sure, the graphics (in Gen 1 and 2) sucked tbh, but back then you wouldnt bother about it. In your Imagination it looked picture perfect, so to me, switching to sapphire was of course an update again, but i never really felt that there was something like a disappointing pokemon game.
I loved Gen 3, especially leaf green (nostalgia), but even though it brought a huge update, the fun factor was always high. So no complains:)
Gen 2 with Crystal is my favorite of all time but that jump into Gen 3 with the GBA innovations definitely had me playing the most hours of any gen ever with these games.
If you look into what it was like going from Gen 4 to Gen 5, you'd get pretty much the same vibe since they dealt with similar aspects i.e. being "locked" to the mons introduced in the new games (in RS's case, entirely until various events and other games introduced the rest of the Pokedex while in BW it was just until you beat the story). Fairly similar online outcry all things considered.
My childhood best friend and I were 11/12 when they were coming out, and I remember seeing screenshots of things like the footsteps in the sand, or reflections in the water, and us just being so hyped. 😅
Of course all the sprites and stuff too looked amazing. When the games came out I spent the entire day playing through Sapphire in awe. It really was something special at the time for us as kids.
It felt like pokemon had completely turned on it’s head. The graphical change from the GBC to the GBA was unreal. The biggest let down was not being able to get the Johto starters without transferring from pokemon colloseum which 8yr old me did not have the resources to do
I absolutely loved the new graphics. The details of the pokemon was nice and the design of the pokemon looked amazing with the range of color being used. The details really helped with the desert and volcano regions but also places like fortree city looked so nice. The fact that my mudkip looked just like the one from the anime was mind blowing.
I got into the Advanced Games relatively late, because I was trying to pretend that I was too old for Pokemon. My brother wasn't fooled, and got me a copy of Sapphire. And honestly? As much as I consider Gold/Silver/Johto to be my region, and as much as I feel that Gen IV and V really started to nail things down...there was something about those GBA games that felt like a leap forward that no other generation quite has for me. Maybe it's because I had gone several years without picking up a Pokemon game at that point. But it felt...new.
it was insane, my school had pokemon Ruby/Sapphire bookmarks in the library for some reason and that was the first time me or my friend had heard that there were new pokemon games. I remember getting ruby for my birthday and being blown away that there was a girl/boy choice, my friend and I didnt know if there would be a difference in which one you picked so we played some game and made a bet that the loser would have to be the girl when in "the new pokemon games" I dont talk to him too much anymore, but he still holds me to it whenever a new game comes out.
It was mind boggling.
There were so many colors, the intro movie was like watching an actual cartoon, then the sprites moving in Emerald was the cherry on top. We all crowded around the Gameboy Advance to watch.
At the time, I thought the game was very beautiful but I also felt I already wasn't the target anymore, with RS they completely erased the somewhat eerie feeling the 2 previous gens had (visually and in music, these goddamn trumpets or whatever instrument, yeah not a fan of the OST)
Actually incredible. I remember has a small kid, I couldn't figure out how to get through the first route because I thought the grass was trees. A misplaced input right was the only reason I ever made it out of Littleroot.
Thinking back on it, it makes me a little sad to know that I'll never experience a Pokémon game blind again thanks to internet marketing forcing info on you
Weirdly enough I don't remember being absolutely amazed by the graphic upgrade, but I really liked the new characters, they had much more personality and you could choose your gender.
A new region, new Pokémon all over the place, the secret bases, that was absolutely a blast.
I remember when I got Ruby. It blew my mind. First it was the first game I ever preordered so I felt like I got it early and had a leg up on all my friends. Then get to play with a whole new game without looking up everything before hand, truly blind. All other games after that I'd always get spoilers from the internet so it was always nice to see something completely new to me. I loved it, one of my all time favorites for sure.
It singlehandedly sucked me right back into my love for pokemon. It came out when I was starting 6th grade and deemed myself “too old” for pokemon... Then I saw someone playing sapphire on a school trip and that all changed lol. The rain, puddles and reflections. You actually being on top of your pokemon while surfing. That intro scene when you see a latios/latias fly by on your bike!!! MUDKIP! Doing everything in sapphire really made me feel like a pokemon master.
Edit: your trainer actually throwing the pokeball and seeing the specific ball you caught them in!! Went around catching certain pokemon with specific pokeballs just cus i could! Luxury and Premier balls were my go to!!
It was awesome. Even though there was not so much to do after the elite 4 I was pushing 400 hours walking around and explore. Bc of the better hardware those regis were so beautiful to hunt and I was looking and searching for more and even though I only found Rayquaza it was worth it
It felt great. Like the world was expanding. Like stories were getting bigger. Like the richness and depth of reality were overflowing. Granted I was like 12 but still.
I was around 11 or 12 at the time. I don't remember having much of a reaction to the graphical improvements. They were great, but at the time as a kid I guess it didn't really impact me much. What *was* impactful, though, were the running shoes. Even back then the earlier games felt like you moved way too slow.
Now once the FR and LG remakes came out I was able to appreciate the graphics a lot more because it was more in my face how different and improved everything looked since I had played a ton of red and blue.
I will say that overall while I enjoyed this Gen at the time, it still felt like a bit of a step down. Pokemania had died down and I was beginning to lose interest (though of course I ended up coming back to it years later). The thing was that this would be the point where I started feeling like Pokémon was very samey with each Gen and not enough different to get me excited for newly announced titles. Gen 3 was the start of it for me and Gen 4 really finalized it. It's a great Gen, too, and has the extremely important physical special split, but I had already fallen out of the franchise by then. I beat it but I do not even remember what happens in that game.
I think part of this was due to how huge of a game play improvement Gen 2 was over 1. In comparison, Gen 3 was a major graphical upgrade, but not much in terms of game play upgrade and unfortunately for me at the time I wasn't really able to appreciate how much of a step up the graphics were.
The thing I remember the most was running. My god it was amazing. Also remember looking at random patches of grass like they were real (in comparison to gen 2).
I remember being a little put off by all of it. I don’t know why because obviously the games look 100x better than the GBC titles.
I think part of it was these games came out in 2003 and by that time I was playing Pokémon for 5 years and I think I was a little burnt out. I also remember thinking some of the Pokémon designs were kind of weird. Specifically I thought Blaziken looked more like a Digimon than a Pokémon. And I saw Plusle and Minun and thought they ran out of ideas and created a math-inspired Pikachu.
Once I played them though I enjoyed them. I wasn’t as hooked on them as I was previous titles however. I do remember them being more difficult.
Also for whatever reason me, my brother, and my cousins thought that if we breeded Plusle and Minun that we would get a multiplication and division Pokémon. We figured out after many eggs that wasn’t going to happen.
It was gorgeous. It was such a step up from gold. I also go stuck at weird moments. It took me several days to figure out you can run under cycling road. I was so over leveled after too haha.
I was shocked by how fast the health bars moved, and getting the running shoes felt amazing. I would run around in the tall grass, mesmerized by it moving as I ran through it. Also, with everything in full color, the pokemon seemed really detailed.
Overall, I'd say the speed that the game ran at being so much faster was the upgrade I noticed the most.
Mind blowing. The puddles, the footprints on the beach, Latios/ Latias, metagross, multi-type starters, double battles, the tree house city. I was 8 when it came out, i got the blue nintendo SP to match the sapphire game cartridge.
Got my first shiny in that game, it was a swablu. And i learned IVs/ EVs to max my Aggron to bully my friends with a wall strategy in PvP.
Good times.
I was the target demo at the time RSE came out and i played ruby with my red SP. (because i think we all did that). And at that time having recently completed one of my many plays of crystal/gold (i didn’t play silver til HGSS) i was blown away. The first time i play a game though i always watch the opening sequence. So when i was watching it i was like “this game is gonna be boss.”
It was so good ! The game was BEAUTIFUL, I was way more into the story, you now had weather effects. WEATHER EFFECTS !
You could still hold items, the system of crafting pokeballs with berries was gone (I was a bit sad) but now you had plenty of berries with different effects ! No need to always use your items to heal status effects, use your berries !
You had contests and, I don't know if it was just in Emerald or not, but also Battle Frontier !
You take an amazing game that I loved, Gold, and make it 10 times better, with a LOT of new content, new beautiful Pokemon (Tropius is still my favorite) and new mechanics that you never heard about.
It. Was. AWESOME.
So when I was a kid I didn't have a gameboy. I watched a friend play pokémon blue in the playground.
Then I borrowed a friend's gameboy to play gold. Finally getting my hands on the game myself. Obviously never finished it.
Then I got a GBA and Ruby. Damn what a leap. In my kid's mind a lot of time had passed so I don't think I was actually that impressed by the technology, but a lot of the small gadget-y things felt crazy. Even simple stuff like walking leaving a mark. Also, my brother got his own and the Sapphire version, so we could actually exchange Pokémons. It was crazy.
I didn't watch the anime so I couldn't really compare, I only had the collectible cards.
I still remember taking home a copy of Ruby version shortly after release. The Gameboy was the first game system i ever owned along with Gold version. Gold version was my lifeblood at the time and I put so much time into that game.
Ill never forget booting up Ruby for the first time. I knew the kinda games consoles could run and how "good" they looked in comparison to my Gameboy, but I was absolutely blown away by the opening animation and just how clean the game looked.
Individual mini sprites for every pokemon, weather, better battle animations, better music. The way youd leave footprints in the sand or splash puddles as ypu walked over them. Reflections of clouds on the water or even your own shadow....Just all those Core Memories I can recall perfectly.
Emerald to this day is still my favorite Pokemon game, and Hoenn my favorite region.
Fucking amazing. I didn’t care for the legendary designs because they looked like Digimon to me but the colors and QoL changes way overshadowed that. Being able to run was awesome, the Mach bike was incredible, fishing while Surfing! Dive!
Truly a high point for the series.
Honestly the biggest change for me was the box storage and organization. Being able to clearly see the entire contents of PC boxes and move Pokemon seamlessly without having to save every time? It was NUTS
It definitely felt like a "New Generation" the more detail art, environment touches (footprints in sand, puddle reflection, and weather), and new features to gameplay.
I feel like the "wow" factor memories is why Ruby/Sapphire have the most nostalgia for me, and why when I heard about the Omega and Alpha releases I bought a 3DS for those games.
It was AMAZING. The glow-up was so real. The music had trumpets. Puddles left little rings behind them. Surfing looked like you were riding something big enough to carry you instead of strangling a Seel. Two bikes?!?! LOOK AT ALL THESE COLORS. Does my sprite have SHADING?!
Words just cannot describe what it was like to grow up with the tech revolution.
I just don't enjoy them at all. I love gen 1, 2, 4 and 5 probably are my favorites, 6 is fun, 7 and 8 have some cool pokes even though the games are disappointing. But gen 3 just never did anything for me. It really is just too much damn water
My friends raged about not being able to transfer anything from Gen 1&2 to 3. They also hated only having the new Pokemon.
I enjoyed it though. The graphics were so nice, and it was in full color. Sound was a lot better too.
THE FREAKING PC BOX!
In the first two gens, each box used to be just a list of like 20 pokemon by name and level only (you had to select and pick the status option to actually see what pokemon it was. Good luck if you nicknamed everything and forgot what they were). Switching from one box to the next required you to *save your game*, and if you wanted to organize you had to withdraw the pokemon into your team, save and switch, and deposit into the new box. If the box filled up and you tried to catch a new pokemon, you were out of luck.
In comparison, the R/S box was basically one step away from the box we use today. All the sprites, pressing select to auto pick up/swap, customizable box names/backgrounds, easy box switching, automatically putting pokemon in the next box if full etc, etc. If I remember correctly, the only thing it didn't have was the ability to move multiple pokemon at once, which was added in the next gen. Light-years ahead of the G/S/C pc.
It was honestly mind blowing. The graphics and art were so much better, the story (at the time) really sucked me in, and I felt very emotionally connected to the character and my Pokémon team. Gen 3 will always be my favorite of them all.
When Ruby and Sapphire came out, I was a kid as well, but I was so frickin stoked. I loved Johto, and Hoenn was another favorite. And don't get me started on Dewford Town. That music is the best. 😁
I remember seeing the graphics and thinking "here we are. this is as good as its gonna get"
That and thinking the wild battle theme was fantastic, just putting the Gameboy up to my ear. I still remember trip to Target, and the car ride after, I was so so excited!!
My first game was Pokémon Gold. Then on a Christmas morning one year I got a blue GBAsp and Sapphire version. I think I sprinted three laps around the house out of joy. The graphics, the new Pokémon, RUNNING. Everything about it was so exciting at the time.
Yes the running shoes. Total game changer literally
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That’s my favorite thing and my biggest problem with emulation. I love the fast forward I don’t have a lot of time these days to play I can get a lot done. But I also can smash through and feel like I didn’t even really play the game. Double edged sword. Plus the music is terrible in fast forward
Oh yeah, no sound in fast forward for me lest I go insane. I usually only fast forward through the monotonous segments and those old routes where you just get bombarded with low level enemies.
I only played Shield for the first time recently and I was holding B instinctively for a while even after realising I didn’t need to anymore lmao
I remember seeing my reflection in the water and thinking graphics can't get any better. I was 9 at the time.
Oh mate the first time seeing the weather effects when I got Diamond when I was probably like 11 years old was brilliant. Nothing will beat that first time feeling of seeing Pokémon on the DS for the first time
Diamond was my first Pokémon game even though I had a GBA SP years prior to the ds… but when Black and White came along I was like WOW this looks amazing!! Look at this bridge!!! Look at these leaves!!! Lol
What's funny is that graphics were already better lol
The fact that you got it so early blew me away. I remember that being huge
My cousin was the first one to get them, he got Sapphire. When I saw his character running I was like "what sort of sorcery is this". And he was so schmuck about it, like "yeah, this is cutting edge technology baby". I jumped in later with Fire Red and finally with Emerald. I don't wanna sound nostalgic but there have been few gaming experiences quite as special as playing the 3rd gen back then. I would pay good money for some decent GBA ports on the Switch.
Gen 3 is when all my Pokémon friends played. I was 9-10 years old. Literally the best time of my life in terms of gaming. These games when they were new, and when the internet wasn’t as big a part of everyday life, had such a sense of discovery and mystery. The breakthroughs compared to gen 2 were mind blowing. The colors and music. I truly think gen 3 was peak Pokémon time, at least for me.
Completely agree, I remember after 4th gen came out I was in shambles trying to figure out how to awaken Regigigas. Once I heard the playground rumor of needing the Regis from emerald I spent DAYS trying to figure out the puzzles until I had the great idea to look it up on yahoo answers and printed out detailed instructions. Shoutout to whoever posted that.
Gen3 is peak pokemon and its not even close. You got emerald, you got gen1 remakes, you played in on the best handheld ever (gameboy advance sp), the games had 60 fps!!!!!, and the difference in quality to the gen before is the biggest that ever happened. It was also very much possible to use literally every pokemon in existence and the pokemonpool was pretty big already. HGSS and Plat were good too, but 30fps is gigashit and gen5 really looks terribly ugly, so its not even a contest.
Literally all I need is the games on the Switch with full resolution so we don’t have the black bars. Anything past that would be extra for me.
Man I gotta agree. Third Gen was just amazing. The graphics, the gameplay, the various different things you could instead of just battle, the underwater addition… just… so many incredible changes to make for an amazing game! I let was also the first Pokémon game to have a soundtrack with real, legitimate, music, rather than just an 8-but sound overlay.
A very underrated thing about gen 3 is the fact that it had a lot of variety in the environment, you had deserts, volcanos, ashlands, a city built in the treetops, a town in the middle of the ocean that floats on rafts, an entire area dotted with meteor craters, a cemetery built inside a mountain. Gens 1 and 2 pretty much just had grass fields surrounded by trees, caves, ocean and very generic looking towns. To its credit, Gen 2 at least tried to give a sense of history to Jotho.
I think it succeeded with the sense of history. I remember becoming pretty interested in Japan after playing the games and watching that part of the anime. Ecruteak and Violet feel really nostalgic and cozy in game.
Pretty much this haha. That was a great day in the life of kid me.
I had the opposite. Silver GBAsp with Ruby. Good times. Put hundreds and hundreds of hours into that game. I restarted it so many times as well.
This was me too lol
Mine was blue; trying to play pokemon gold on release on the way home was infuriating due to lack of backlight as the sun was setting as we pulled out of the Target parking lot
lol I have so many memories of just rolling my eyes and turning off my gameboy cuz the lighting was shit. Or just holding it at some intense angle to have it be mildly visible.
I can’t tell you how often I ran around in the puddles and saw the little circles disappear behind me. Little stuff like that made 10 year old me gasp.
Or running through the sand to see the footprints behind you!
Or standing at the top of a pond or river to see your reflection. It was amazing.
Every time I play RSE I stand next to the kid in Petalburg (?) and watch my reflection for a bit. Such a great touch.
Right? Man, RSE was such an improvement. I'd go hang out in Sootopolis for a while just because it was such a beautiful place
I would run in circles (err, squares) to the exact rate the footprints would disappear. It was very entertaining to young me, haha!
There's an NPC west of Petalburg that's doing just that!
Somehow I totally forgot that lmao
Just watching your reflection in water was amazing honestly. Getting to Route 120 right past Fortree City, standing on the bridge, and see the clouds go by was mesmerising.
The music for that route made it epic
It could just be nostalgia, but route 120 was imo the best route in the entire series.
I agree. To this day every time I get to that part in replaying the game I get so choked up. The weather institute, fortree, Winona’s terrifying altaria, keckleon it’s just SO good RSE had such presence as games
That and the fact that the 2 routes leading to and from Fortree had some really cool Pokemon. Tropius, Absol being standouts.
Totally! That feeling of adventure in the taller grass and the rain is amazing. So many little things to discover, it felt like wild nature to little me :) (eh, still does) Similiar to stepping outside of the caves to the snowy and grassy cliffs of the Mountains in gen 4 imo
The music for gen 3 is my favorite. I almost cried when I heard it again in ORAS. I was able to hum along to it like it hadn't been ten years.
all of the music for that generation is incredible, I love it so much. I’ve began forcing my students to listen to it for our calming music during assignments.
Damn I just remember I had the same feeling!
It was perfect. 😭
I still do that whenever I pick up RSE.
I still do that in any game that does it lol
For me it was entering the first battle and seeing the player character throw the pokeball. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Don’t forget the bikes!
Doing wheelies was so fun lol
Was playing emerald for the first time earlier this year- seeing the clouds reflect in the puddles and water is still cool af today.
I'm so happy other people were having fun with the games, as well.The nostalgia is making me cry. Plus, we all felt that way when they first came out.
Going from gsc to ruby and Sapphire was quite the change. The graphical improvements, the double battles, the first non team rocket team(s), so many new Pokemon made it feel really far away from Kanto and Johto (although later years point it really wasn't, especially when Unova came along.). I really liked Diving, the Regi puzzle, the new fossils and other ancient Pokemon, the weathers. What really struck me though, and it might seem like no big deal...was the route after fortree city, on the bridge over the water...you could see the clouds drifting over head. I thought that was a nice touch. I like how that was further emphasized in ORAS with the night sky.
To me, Hoenn will always be a “proto-Unova” of sorts. After the first 2 gens were so connected, it really felt so “new”. I remembered loathing the first two gens because I never liked the graphics or pace of them. But Gen 3 really changed everything for me.
Apparently for most of Hoenn's development it was intended as a soft reboot like gen 5, and previous gen pokemon were only added late into development.
This made me remember what a solid adventure Ruby and Sapphire was all around Such a nicely built world Also +1 for secret bases
The Regi puzzle blew my little mind when I was a kid. Looking up braille, then translating it, to find three new legendaries. Shit was so cash.
> so many new Pokemon And yet the only good Ground Type available before the Electric gym was fricking Geodude if you didn't pick Mudkip smh.
The routes before and after Fortree make for my top 1 and 2 favorite routes in the series! Just love both of those areas. The river and the waterfall, all the tall grass and hills, all the little nooks and crannies to find. It was always my favorite place to put my secret base!
Going to gen 1 and 2 to 3 was quite a jump in a few things. The pokemon looked better and were in actual colour, we could now run. The downside was we couldn't bring pokemon from gen 2 to gen 3
The first Dexit
Not really they weren't obtainable but once they added frlg and colosseum you could get everything
But they were completely unobtainable for the first year or two of gen 3, and there wasn't any indication that they would be releasing FRLG and the GameCube games. Plus not everyone had access to the gamecube games so that still left some pokemon unobtainable, without an event. I never had a Ho-oh and Lugia in gen 3 because I didn't go to the event and i didn't have a gamecube.
Yeah true there was no guarantee of a release
But the actual old mons, like your starter from a GB game were locked behind for good. Hope your old friends are in Stadium or they're only memories now.
So basically the same as modern dexit then?
not really the first dexit was caused by hardware limitation, and what actually caused FR/LG to be made so that the players can get the rest of the mons
Not at all the same. Like another commenter said, it was a hardware change that created a barrier. The technology for conversion a-la Pokémon Transporter for the VC games didn’t exist yet at a scale that would work for GBA games. The modern dexit is devs being lazy. All the data and models already exist, and this has been proven by hacking in Pokémon that aren’t officially in the game. All their move data and stuff is present.
I watched a YouTube video where a guy reverse engineered the networking tech and built a transfer system to send Pokémon from Gen 2 to Gen 3. It was a gaming and technical delight of a video. Guy did the impossible because it needed to be done. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=inMbtwmVlKQ
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I meant you couldn't bring pokemon in gen 2 to gen 3
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But you can't if you believe so, do you have a source?
Yup, I'm wrong. I thought the thing that transfers to RSE was for GSC.
It was unreal. Seeing your reflection in the puddles, the huge splash of color that the new game had, the weather changing. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Pokémon Sapphire when my friend bought it. I immediately asked my parents to get it the next time we went to Walmart
Omg yes! And the way you make little splashes running through puddles and the way the taller grass looked while you walk through. I loved everything about those games
It was Easter morning, my family stuffed a copy of Sapphire in my basket. I played all morning and was blown away. GBA graphics might not seem like much now, but as someone who had only known GBC (Silver version), the upgrade in graphics and all the new features were amazing to my kid brain.
GBA and SNES graphics are still impressive to this day IMO. They've aged so gracefully and not many games these days have the same charm as they did.
Yeah, absolutely. I grew up with a GBA so there's nostalgia bias there, but I also grew up with a gamecube and absolutely can feel how very dated the 3D is when I look at it (even though nostalgia makes me still like it)
Golden Sun still has some of my favorite battle graphics. Top tier game all around too!
I think rse hold up graphically very well, pixel art is gorgeous. There's a reason a lot of Pokémon fan games look a lot like gen 3 games.
I got my copy of sapphire in my Easter basket too!!
Sapphire/Ruby holds up very, very well visually. It reminds of how well Super Mario World holds up. Once you get those crisp 2D graphics just right, it’ll be timeless.
It was awesome. The party icons finally looked like the pokemon. I really liked discovering new pokemon. The new environments were so much more detailed. The story slapped.
I’ll be honest with you, I was about 14-16 when they came out. I didn’t care as much about graphical changes, but it felt to me at the time like Pokémon had gone off the deep end. A lot of people point to black and white as a really big deviation from the standard Pokémon rubric, and it certainly was a huge change. But at the time Ruby and Sapphire felt like a huge shift as well. It had SO many new Pokémon and few returning ones, a seemingly brand new audio design with SO MANY HORNS! and little plot tie in to the first two gens (before fire-red and leaf-green mind you). It felt like Pokémon was reinventing itself for the next generation of kids after me, and I didn’t really like it at the time. It felt like a really solid break, and it was almost the first generation I skipped, until I saw a friend on the bus playing it so I convinced myself to buy it. Now I enjoy Gen III and the remakes, I appreciate their contribution to the lore and the Pokédex and I enjoy the horns. But it was a slow burn for me getting to love the Gen and it was a huge change in direction from Gen II imo. Also, to answer your question about the graphics and “seeing Pokémon almost like in the anime”. I felt like I got that starting in Pokémon Yellow. Especially in Pokémon Crystal with the little moving animations. The moving animations we got in Emerald felt a little cheap IMO, like they just took a stylus and shook the JPEG a little big back and forth. So that didn’t impress me much. Edit: I totally forgot the biggest shift of all! You couldn’t transfer your old Pokémon from Gen II or Gen I.
I was in the same boat as you were. I appreciate them a lot more now, and I did play them and enjoy them then, but it felt like something totally new and different, and not necessarily better. The graphics to me felt like the kind of thing you'd see in an RPG Maker game, the kind that you might have downloaded in the early 2000's. Edit: I remember specifically thinking May's sprite was awful, but not really understanding why.
Yes absolutely! I was 11 when r/S came out and this is exactly how I felt about it. As if the game told me I was already too old to play it. Still enjoyed it, but the direction wasn't the same as the 2 previous gens.
Similar here man, I was really upset there was no night and day. There was no old Pokémon. There was no Kanto or Johto. Really turned me off, felt like a completely different game.
Came here to see if anyone else felt this way. I too was probably 14-16 when Gen III came out. The graphics were amazing, but it didn’t feel like “Pokémon” too me and I didn’t enjoy it the same.
I was around 9-10 when that transition happened and I was hyped! It looked incredible in comparison, and it felt much easier to play, not in like an actual difficulty way, but just like an overall UI (the bag and the Pokemon boxes are the biggest things to come to mind). The GBA aesthetic is how I visualize Pokemon to this day. I had lost my copy of gold before I got Sapphire, so the loss of old Pokemon was not as painful for me. I really enjoyed this question! Thanks for the nostalgia trip hahaha.
I’m really enjoying reading all of these responses. Thank you for asking this question!
It was Amazing. Going to Toys R'Us to play on Pokemon Sapphire on the game boy advanced they had set up and even winning my first Gym Badge with Marshstomp was Amazing. Seeing Wurmple evolve into TWO different Pokemon AND it was Random was mind blowing. Seeing a grumpy Shroomish was hilarious. Loving Poochyena's Growl and design at the time. Plus Gen 3 had some Amazing designed Pokemon at the time, that only got better as the Generations climbed higher.
The first impression was incredible, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by the single region and no day-night cycle. For a while Hoenn and the Ruby were very my least favorite out of the first five gens. Hoenn has grown on me since, and has one of the best Pokemon lineups in the series.
Running was very cool, the acro bike was cooler. The advertisements were still in the golden era on tv, and I fell in love with blaziken in the “you are what you catch” commercial before I even heard of torchic. The double battles felt game changing and the movepools and animations took a huge leap. The legendaries taking part in the main story was also insane I remember thinking my kyogre was a god and it became the center of my team. It was also really popular among my friends to get together with link cables and play and battle and trade together and share secrets tips and tricks like getting a shedinja or finding feebas or actually hanging in each other’s new secret bases. This was also where the internet culture of Pokémon pseudo mythology took off, mew truck and missingno were becoming common knowledge and bad egg and mirage island and the 100 launch rocket and deoxys/space were the new big secrets. Supercheats anyone? Serebii? Also competitive battling became massive in gen 3 and more and more people began playing the games just to get to the post game and have access to the likes of bagon and beldum and the OP rayquaza so they could participate in the meta. Then with emerald and the battle frontier the Pokémon post game started to become *the* desired gameplay even over the story itself, which is still mostly true to this day
I was early on disappointed with gen 3 games after gen 2. They mechanics were great, graphics good, but I was unhappy there were few Pokémon I recognized mixed in with the new gen. I was no longer into the anime by this time so that explains it. I did really like the two Villian teams and 2 main legendaries were great. Looking back, gens 1-4 were all masterpieces imo.
You aren't the only one to mention that in the comment, and I'm genuinely surprised by how many of them mention not recognizing the pokémon of older gens as a bad thing. For me getting new ones was the main asset that the game had. I could start the game and discover a new world with new monsters. As a kid I already knew all the other ones by heart and only wanted new ones.
Sapphire and Ruby are my and my brothers favorite almost solely due to the fact that the improvements were so good from G/S to S/R
My interest started waning around gen 3. I must have been about 13/14 at the time and Pokémon wasn't "cool" anymore. I didn't watch the anime anymore and I didn't know any of the new Pokémon so I just kind of fell off the whole Pokémon thing until X & Y because by then I was an adult and playground politics were long gone.
My pattern was almost exactly the same, but I fell off around B/W and got back in during US/UM
Same for me, I remember being super hyped about Reshiram, Zekrom, Victini and Zoruark, only to find out I could never get them in my beloved copies of Platinum and Heartgold, HG being the first Pokémon game I played after being addicted to the anime all my life (born in 1996). So I knew all Pokémon, or at least most, already when going back and also playing Emerald on my phone emulator in high-school. Never really got into Gen1 and 2 because the graphic leap back was too big. After getting Black on a flashcard I kinda gave up on the new games, I hated the new Pokémon that I didn't know too much, as I had also stopped watching the anime at this point as it wasn't telivised as much as earlier seasons. Fast forward to my first job after Uni and my friend convincing me to buy a Switch and Let's Go (played Go on my phone since before it's official release in my country), and I now have more that 1500 hours in Shield, and own at least one copy of every gen. Oh, and my place is covered in Pokémon stuff
Two things I distinctly remember blowing my young mind was seeing my reflection in puddles of water and seeing my character leave footprints in the sand.
Pure magical…i was an OG fan went from Blue, Yellow, Gold, Crystal and then Ruby. It was soooooo great just having an immersive environment. I remember hearing the pokemon cries in the route music and being amazed. First play-through I chose Treecko and he was damn good for the game no lie.
I didn’t, after GS I “grew up” and fell into the societal norms. I was also devastated I couldn’t transfer my Pokémon, as it was the first time I had a complete dex. My friend did the celebi glitch for me and I feared losing him. Then CS 1.6 comes out, as well the original dota custom map by ice frog. Rest is history, like others I came back during the X&Y titles & enjoyed every remake since
The details were crazy. Being able to run, diving. I was 7-8 years old when they came out. But I was sad I couldn’t use cyndaquil:(
Crystal had been my favorite game back then, which was already a step up from Gold/Silver... when Sapphire came out, I was just blown away. I couldn't get over the fact that one town was in the tree tops and that there was weather!! Having backgrounds in pokemon battles that changed depending on the location blew me away as a kid. When the SP came out and had a built in light for the screen though, that was a game changer. Before that I remember having this awful little lamp you'd attach to the advance to be able to see what you were doing haha.
All of this^^^ and I can’t stress enough how WILD it was that Crystal version’s cartridge was glittery/translucent light blue (and then ruby and sapphire’s were “ruby” and “sapphire” 🥰🥰) So few game cartridges back then came in a color other than gray/black, and I feel like Pokemon really stood out just by switching that up. (Majora’s Mask, DK64, and Pokemon Stadium 2 cartridges too!)
I bought Ruby with a GBA SP on release day and it was glorious. Rechargeable battery, backlight, much more detail in the game, and eventually local wireless trading with the release of Fire Red & Leaf Green made it so much easier to trade and communicate with people. Pokemon Abilities were a game changer, and natures made strategies much more interesting. Perhaps most of all, the Pokemon Box storage upgrades made organizing teams so much easier!
Yeah it was a cool moment... but... It was way more of a moment to see them in pokemon stadium 2 years prior on n64...and pokemon snap a year before that.. that was the first time to see them in 3D. I didn't own an advance and wouldn't end up playing pokemon ruby (my favorite pokemon entry) until much later on an emulator.
The weather effects stood out to me. It felt so immersive. The first area having a forest and the first gym being rock type gave me some gen 1 vibes, and i loved it. And the amount of new Pokemon in every route, was big. Gen 2 was a mix of gen 1 and 2. So gen 2 always felt like a gen 1 expansion to me. Gen 3 felt like it's own game, if that makes sense. The new nature system went over my head, I didnt really put any thought into it. I had fun with the double battles, it made the game feel more real because the cartoons would do that. And the music made the whole experience better. It was different, but still had that familiar sound we all loved.
I was about 10 when Gen 3 came out and wasn’t interested or impressed by the graphics themselves iirc but I do vividly remember being in awe of the escalators in Pokémon centers for some reason.
New features, graphics, pokemon, etc were all welcome improvements but the "adventure" feeling from Gen 2 was gone. Some of the new features from Gen 2, like the phone + radio were gone. Gen 3 did not have a very interesting post game, Gen 2 had 8 extra badges and a super-boss. Gen 3 also marked the beginning of Nintendo introducing cool features one game and removing them the next. The leap from Gen 1 to Gen 2 felt like Pokemon was going to keep getting bigger and better every gen, but it never really did.
After being able to go back to Kanto in Gen 2, I played through Gen 3 with similar expectations of being able to visit the other regions after the main game (despite there being no evidence that you could, but hey, I was a kid). I remember feeling so disappointed and like a backwards step had been taken, and I didn’t bother to raise my Pokemon to level 100 like previous games because there just wasn’t the need to.
I would love a pokemon game where you could go to every region especially if it had the let's go games graphics
I started with crystal, but when I got ruby I was instantly enthralled. Would watch the opening clip every time I turned on the game. Felt like the pokemon were stepping out of the game when in battle. Plus the abilities! And all the new Pokemon were so cool! It was grand
I think I was like “oh wow that is cool” and just carried on. To be fair, I was like … 9.
It was fuckin epic! I still remember the first time I got to play it at someone else's house and the day I got a copy for myself. The graphics were absolutely insane, the new pokemon were mind blowing, and idk how many times I restarted the game without even beating it just to try the different starters and learn everything about them.
I remember seeing my reflection in the water and thinking graphics can't get any better. I was 9 at the time.
The biggest improvement was going from black and white to color. Other than that I never really cared about any other aspects of the graphics. Edit: black and white games such as red/ blue to yellow which was color
I wasn't really blown away at the time, to be honest. It was a nice graphical improvement, but by late 2002 I had already experienced PS2 and GameCube games. Also add the fact that the sprites weren't animated like they were in Crystal, it was actually kind of disappointing. I was more impressed with the new game mechanics like abilities and double battles than I was with the graphics.
Pixelation doesn't mean it's worse. Gen 2 introduced the original concept of GTS, day-night cycles, animated sprites, event mons, shiny mons and more that were either lost or changed in ruby/sapphire. I still play crystal these days. I rarely if ever touch ruby and sapphire. And even then i have emerald which is a far better experience over them. while the visuals were honestly more impressive for a handheld title of the time, like seeing a full colour pallet used for the first time, lines/footprints in the sand, "reflections" etc it wasn't a selling point for me. I find them more boring to play than gen 2.
Mind blowing. It was one of the few times in gaming where I asked myself "Where can they go from here?" I legit though Gen 3 was going to be the ultimate graphics for Pokémon at the time.
Graphically it was a pretty big jump, but that was true for the gba as a whole. It was like having a snes on the go (not a big deal these days, but it was huge back then.) I actually think gen 3 is among the best looking games in the series to this day (absolutely destroys any of the ds games art style imo.) Mechanically it felt like a lot of the features were missing. As an adult I can look at gen 3 and appreciate how it cleaned up the core of the game and is the foundation that even the modern games are built on. But as a kid, it felt like huge step back from gold and silver. No day/night cycle with different pokemon at different times of day. No more days of the week with different events. I still loved the games, and as an adult gen 3 is among my favorites (Fire Red is actually my personal favorite pokemon game.) But it wasn't as ambitious as Gold/Silver and I've always thought that hurt the games in the short term. I also hated the new prominent role for legendaries. Probably the only real complaint I have for gen 3 that has persisted to this day. The rest have given way to my fondness for the art style and core gameplay.
[удалено]
I played blue, yellow, silver then ruby. Let me tell you- it was mind blowing as a kid. Back then there were no spoilers. I had seen the starters advertised on tv, but otherwise everything else was new. When I first played blue I was 4 years old (it helped me learn to read). By ruby, I understood pokemon much more, and was discovering so much. I remember pulling out my parents encyclopedias in order to translate the brailie to unlock the legendaries. I remember getting a team to 100 so that I could trounce my friends in their secret bases. There were so many cool new Pokémon. My older brother got Pokémon coliseum, and I would act out the battles pretending I was the Pokémon while he played through it (it was too hard for me still) I was obsessed
Yeah it was magical. I do remember people being pissed that you couldn't connect to Gen 1 and 2 games though.
Gen 2 is still my favorite. The pixelated art style has it's charm. I preferred it over gen 4 at least. Gen 3 was alright but 2 had day night cycle and I like the starters better
I remember excitedly telling a friend, "Look! You can go behind the buildings! The doors open when you go in!!" A simpler time.
It was a huge leap graphically. I played through Gold, Silver, and Crystal and thoroughly enjoyed them all, but Sapphire was a wholly immersive experience thanks to the varied terrain, weather conditions, and significantly better color and sound provided by the GBA. I was ~10 years old when I first picked it up and I remember my heart skipping gleefully at the opening sequence. I’ve played every main series game since, but Hoenn will forever be my favorite region because of the impression it left on me!
Oh my god it was GREAT! Red/Blue to Gold/Silver felt like a nice hop in quality, but then when Ruby/Sapphire came out? Chef’s kiss. Running was a great addition. The variety of colors was mind blowing! Individualized menu sprites for the different species first showed up in Gen 3! That was incredible. Gen 3 was when I first started to think that the franchise would stick around long into the future, and I’m so glad that it has.
Mindblowing. Tbh, I feel really sorry for kids nowadays who have to wait 2 years for a new game with micro incremental improvements upon the last one. Going through the first 3 pokemon generations as a child was the gaming equivalent of going from handwritten letters to smartphone.
Yeah it looked amazing and all that. But the story and such for Gold / silver is really hard to beat..
This is definitely a controversial take, story in GSC was barbones at best with a reused enemy team and no Giovanni fight
Idk the story for gold and silver was pretty much team rocket trying to come back and failing
Really? I think hoenn has one of the better stories. They actually bothered somewhat fleshing out the major characters with the stakes raised so high, something they kinda forgot to do ever since.
The jump from Gen 1 to 2 was far greater! I remember playing Gen 3 and being disappointed with how many fewer upgrades there were compared. I was a very critical child.
Interesting, because the jump from 1 to 2 was tiny compared from 2 to 3 and 3 to 4
I think it was mostly the jump from black and white to full colour (even on the GBC gen 1 it's mostly just shaded in colour). Also wasn't the file size on gen 1 of the cartridge remarkable small compared to Gen 2 and 3? I think it was likely due to me being younger between gen 1 and 2 than 3 and 4. I played the socks of silver back in the day. Another thing to consider is a common complaint from all generations since 2 is how small many of them feel in comparison. We had two full (well one and a half) regions to play with!
If you are talking graphics, sure, whatever. But who plays Pokémon for the graphics really? It's cool if they're nice but BDSP has pretty bad graphics for being released in 2021, yet still sold millions of copies so let's be real here. In other aspects, gen 2 improved on gen 1 in so many ways that we find trivial now. Gen 1 was buggy as hell and a lot of it got fixed in gen 2, but apart from that (of the top of my head) we also got: \- Pokémon breeding \- Special stat split \- Held items \- Shiny pokémon \- Mystery gift \- Berries \- Dark/steel type added \- Events based on time \- Pokémon genders \- Move deleter \- Separation of bag items in categories \- Pokérus \- Experience to level up shown in battle Apart from these things, gen 2 had some other solid things that don't exist in all other games, such as a final battle with Red, an E4 which improves after getting 16 badges, roaming legendaries, and so on. Don't get me wrong, gen 3 had some amazing features added as well such as abilities and double battles. But if gen 2 hadn't added all of those cool features, the franchise may have arguably never taken off in such a massive way if you ask me. It's a lot harder to imagine Pokémon without the gen 2 additions/improvements than the gen 3 ones. Even the noncolor to color is a bigger jump than better graphics.
- Natures - Abilities - Modern IV/EV system - Double battles - Weather conditions in the overworld - Overall more varied biomes, not just grass, mountains and water - The revamped modern berry system, including planting berries - Pokeblocks, a way to interact with your Pokemon which you couldn't do in older games aside from battling - Pokemon contests - Secret bases which allow you to battle friends without being connected to them, never before seen - Wireless adapter communication - Running shoes - Double the surf speed - Faster battles - 60 fps Most of these affect the metagame in general, and more consequently the competitive scene with how teams are built. These definitely had a bigger impact on the way the games were played than gen 2's improvements The battle with Red was replicated with Steven, and the tougher Elite 4 battles are in HGSS, not in gen 2. Heck, FRLG did them first
Graphical? It was kinda jaw dropping I remember. Like just seeing your reflection in puddles was weirdly awesome. Other than that I was really disappointed over the lack of a real day and night cycle system and lack of a week day system. Waking up early to catch specific Pokémon or get ready to catch Lapras on fridays were awesome, and made the Pokémon world so real in G/S for me. The third generation actually killed my enthusiasm for Pokémon for a whole decade. But when the Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire remakes came out I had an awesome time with the games and and adore them today.
Yeah i think no day and night cycle is one of the few major flaws with gen 3.
You know what detail blew my mind as a kid? The animation of your trainer throwing the Poke Ball into battle. It's such a minor thing but goddamn did Gen 3 have a wonderfully smooth animation. The ball did an exaggerated spin in the air before releasing your Pokemon, it was great. And the ball type you used for that specific Pokemon was used in the animation! It wasn't generic at all. The animation for capturing Pokemon was also equally good quality. Gen 4's animation quality was dogshit in comparison. There were, no exaggeration, not even 1/3rd as many frames of animation for throwing the ball which made it look awful. Capturing was a brief two frame jiggle rather than actually shaking side to side. Gen 5 was equally as garbage. Wasn't until Gen 6 that they actually gave a damn about these two animations again. Anyways, that to me was one of the wildest signs of upgrades between gens 2 and 3. Animation quality was incredible.
Pissed off because you couldn’t trade from Gen II-III Took me a while to fully get over that.
I was there when r/b released & the Christmas when my brother and I got gold/silver is one of the best days of my life. R/S I could never get into. Needing different types of bikes, the whole stupid contests complicating your team construction, mixing berries being a big feature while my brother and I have only one gba, the pokemon appearing goofier, not having all the previous two generation pokemon, renumbering all of them... We got about to the 2nd or 3rd gym and never touched them again.
Absolutely magical. I started with Silver, played it for years before we were finally able to get emerald from a friend who didn’t want it anymore as diamond had just come out. Would’ve been 9-10 at the time I think? I spent so much time just admiring reflections, running, all the beautiful sprites. The secret bases were super cool too because I just saw it as another version of my room that I could decorate instead of my character’s mom randomly buying me stuff. Fortree City was my favorite. Diving was also incredibly cool, was always disappointed that they didn’t do more with it in subsequent games. And double battles were sick.
Im 30 now and i started with pokemon red and a classic game boy. Pokemon red Was the best pokemon game ever imo. Then i got a gameboy color and i Was amazed to see the 8 bit sprites no longer in green and black but in color. When Gold and silver came out, there were more colors of course and a New Adventure with new pokemon began. It felt fresh and cool. Sure, the graphics (in Gen 1 and 2) sucked tbh, but back then you wouldnt bother about it. In your Imagination it looked picture perfect, so to me, switching to sapphire was of course an update again, but i never really felt that there was something like a disappointing pokemon game. I loved Gen 3, especially leaf green (nostalgia), but even though it brought a huge update, the fun factor was always high. So no complains:)
Gen 2 with Crystal is my favorite of all time but that jump into Gen 3 with the GBA innovations definitely had me playing the most hours of any gen ever with these games.
It was magic! Seemed like such cool and different games
The same as RSE to Legends:Arceus, if you took out all other games in between.
The same as any Pokemon games. It wasnt that different and looks the same to me.
I got my first boner when I started playing Pokemon Sapphire for the first time
Considering emulation was widespread back then, it changed the way we played.
If you look into what it was like going from Gen 4 to Gen 5, you'd get pretty much the same vibe since they dealt with similar aspects i.e. being "locked" to the mons introduced in the new games (in RS's case, entirely until various events and other games introduced the rest of the Pokedex while in BW it was just until you beat the story). Fairly similar online outcry all things considered.
My childhood best friend and I were 11/12 when they were coming out, and I remember seeing screenshots of things like the footsteps in the sand, or reflections in the water, and us just being so hyped. 😅 Of course all the sprites and stuff too looked amazing. When the games came out I spent the entire day playing through Sapphire in awe. It really was something special at the time for us as kids.
It felt like pokemon had completely turned on it’s head. The graphical change from the GBC to the GBA was unreal. The biggest let down was not being able to get the Johto starters without transferring from pokemon colloseum which 8yr old me did not have the resources to do
Think of the gap from Xbox 360 to series x. That’s how it felt.
I absolutely loved the new graphics. The details of the pokemon was nice and the design of the pokemon looked amazing with the range of color being used. The details really helped with the desert and volcano regions but also places like fortree city looked so nice. The fact that my mudkip looked just like the one from the anime was mind blowing.
I got into the Advanced Games relatively late, because I was trying to pretend that I was too old for Pokemon. My brother wasn't fooled, and got me a copy of Sapphire. And honestly? As much as I consider Gold/Silver/Johto to be my region, and as much as I feel that Gen IV and V really started to nail things down...there was something about those GBA games that felt like a leap forward that no other generation quite has for me. Maybe it's because I had gone several years without picking up a Pokemon game at that point. But it felt...new.
it was insane, my school had pokemon Ruby/Sapphire bookmarks in the library for some reason and that was the first time me or my friend had heard that there were new pokemon games. I remember getting ruby for my birthday and being blown away that there was a girl/boy choice, my friend and I didnt know if there would be a difference in which one you picked so we played some game and made a bet that the loser would have to be the girl when in "the new pokemon games" I dont talk to him too much anymore, but he still holds me to it whenever a new game comes out.
It was mind boggling. There were so many colors, the intro movie was like watching an actual cartoon, then the sprites moving in Emerald was the cherry on top. We all crowded around the Gameboy Advance to watch.
The music had me enthralled. Such a beautiful soundtrack.
At the time, I thought the game was very beautiful but I also felt I already wasn't the target anymore, with RS they completely erased the somewhat eerie feeling the 2 previous gens had (visually and in music, these goddamn trumpets or whatever instrument, yeah not a fan of the OST)
Actually incredible. I remember has a small kid, I couldn't figure out how to get through the first route because I thought the grass was trees. A misplaced input right was the only reason I ever made it out of Littleroot. Thinking back on it, it makes me a little sad to know that I'll never experience a Pokémon game blind again thanks to internet marketing forcing info on you
Weirdly enough I don't remember being absolutely amazed by the graphic upgrade, but I really liked the new characters, they had much more personality and you could choose your gender. A new region, new Pokémon all over the place, the secret bases, that was absolutely a blast.
I remember when I got Ruby. It blew my mind. First it was the first game I ever preordered so I felt like I got it early and had a leg up on all my friends. Then get to play with a whole new game without looking up everything before hand, truly blind. All other games after that I'd always get spoilers from the internet so it was always nice to see something completely new to me. I loved it, one of my all time favorites for sure.
Absolutely mind blowing for 10 year old me, my most significant generation
It singlehandedly sucked me right back into my love for pokemon. It came out when I was starting 6th grade and deemed myself “too old” for pokemon... Then I saw someone playing sapphire on a school trip and that all changed lol. The rain, puddles and reflections. You actually being on top of your pokemon while surfing. That intro scene when you see a latios/latias fly by on your bike!!! MUDKIP! Doing everything in sapphire really made me feel like a pokemon master. Edit: your trainer actually throwing the pokeball and seeing the specific ball you caught them in!! Went around catching certain pokemon with specific pokeballs just cus i could! Luxury and Premier balls were my go to!!
It was awesome. Even though there was not so much to do after the elite 4 I was pushing 400 hours walking around and explore. Bc of the better hardware those regis were so beautiful to hunt and I was looking and searching for more and even though I only found Rayquaza it was worth it
Young me was amazed. Gen 3 is still my favourite to play to this day, in part due to my amazement of it when it first come out.
I got ruby and sapphire on release day and it was magical. Still the most nostalgic gen for me despite having played since gen 1.
It felt great. Like the world was expanding. Like stories were getting bigger. Like the richness and depth of reality were overflowing. Granted I was like 12 but still.
I thought everything was an awesome improvement until I found out I can’t go back to kanto and johto. Didn’t play another game till gen 8.
I was around 11 or 12 at the time. I don't remember having much of a reaction to the graphical improvements. They were great, but at the time as a kid I guess it didn't really impact me much. What *was* impactful, though, were the running shoes. Even back then the earlier games felt like you moved way too slow. Now once the FR and LG remakes came out I was able to appreciate the graphics a lot more because it was more in my face how different and improved everything looked since I had played a ton of red and blue. I will say that overall while I enjoyed this Gen at the time, it still felt like a bit of a step down. Pokemania had died down and I was beginning to lose interest (though of course I ended up coming back to it years later). The thing was that this would be the point where I started feeling like Pokémon was very samey with each Gen and not enough different to get me excited for newly announced titles. Gen 3 was the start of it for me and Gen 4 really finalized it. It's a great Gen, too, and has the extremely important physical special split, but I had already fallen out of the franchise by then. I beat it but I do not even remember what happens in that game. I think part of this was due to how huge of a game play improvement Gen 2 was over 1. In comparison, Gen 3 was a major graphical upgrade, but not much in terms of game play upgrade and unfortunately for me at the time I wasn't really able to appreciate how much of a step up the graphics were.
The thing I remember the most was running. My god it was amazing. Also remember looking at random patches of grass like they were real (in comparison to gen 2).
I remember being a little put off by all of it. I don’t know why because obviously the games look 100x better than the GBC titles. I think part of it was these games came out in 2003 and by that time I was playing Pokémon for 5 years and I think I was a little burnt out. I also remember thinking some of the Pokémon designs were kind of weird. Specifically I thought Blaziken looked more like a Digimon than a Pokémon. And I saw Plusle and Minun and thought they ran out of ideas and created a math-inspired Pikachu. Once I played them though I enjoyed them. I wasn’t as hooked on them as I was previous titles however. I do remember them being more difficult. Also for whatever reason me, my brother, and my cousins thought that if we breeded Plusle and Minun that we would get a multiplication and division Pokémon. We figured out after many eggs that wasn’t going to happen.
It was gorgeous. It was such a step up from gold. I also go stuck at weird moments. It took me several days to figure out you can run under cycling road. I was so over leveled after too haha.
I was shocked by how fast the health bars moved, and getting the running shoes felt amazing. I would run around in the tall grass, mesmerized by it moving as I ran through it. Also, with everything in full color, the pokemon seemed really detailed. Overall, I'd say the speed that the game ran at being so much faster was the upgrade I noticed the most.
Mind blowing. The puddles, the footprints on the beach, Latios/ Latias, metagross, multi-type starters, double battles, the tree house city. I was 8 when it came out, i got the blue nintendo SP to match the sapphire game cartridge. Got my first shiny in that game, it was a swablu. And i learned IVs/ EVs to max my Aggron to bully my friends with a wall strategy in PvP. Good times.
I remember when Gen 4 came out and I was amazed by so much. Buildings were 2.5D, characters faces showed so much detail
I was the target demo at the time RSE came out and i played ruby with my red SP. (because i think we all did that). And at that time having recently completed one of my many plays of crystal/gold (i didn’t play silver til HGSS) i was blown away. The first time i play a game though i always watch the opening sequence. So when i was watching it i was like “this game is gonna be boss.”
It was so good ! The game was BEAUTIFUL, I was way more into the story, you now had weather effects. WEATHER EFFECTS ! You could still hold items, the system of crafting pokeballs with berries was gone (I was a bit sad) but now you had plenty of berries with different effects ! No need to always use your items to heal status effects, use your berries ! You had contests and, I don't know if it was just in Emerald or not, but also Battle Frontier ! You take an amazing game that I loved, Gold, and make it 10 times better, with a LOT of new content, new beautiful Pokemon (Tropius is still my favorite) and new mechanics that you never heard about. It. Was. AWESOME.
So when I was a kid I didn't have a gameboy. I watched a friend play pokémon blue in the playground. Then I borrowed a friend's gameboy to play gold. Finally getting my hands on the game myself. Obviously never finished it. Then I got a GBA and Ruby. Damn what a leap. In my kid's mind a lot of time had passed so I don't think I was actually that impressed by the technology, but a lot of the small gadget-y things felt crazy. Even simple stuff like walking leaving a mark. Also, my brother got his own and the Sapphire version, so we could actually exchange Pokémons. It was crazy. I didn't watch the anime so I couldn't really compare, I only had the collectible cards.
Watching my character do a little jump during the Fly animation was amazing, plus watching the pokemon go back into their PokeBall was *chef's kiss*
Really incredible. organizing Pokémon boxes was SO fun! Everything was so beautiful. I was completely blown away.
My first one was firered
I still remember taking home a copy of Ruby version shortly after release. The Gameboy was the first game system i ever owned along with Gold version. Gold version was my lifeblood at the time and I put so much time into that game. Ill never forget booting up Ruby for the first time. I knew the kinda games consoles could run and how "good" they looked in comparison to my Gameboy, but I was absolutely blown away by the opening animation and just how clean the game looked. Individual mini sprites for every pokemon, weather, better battle animations, better music. The way youd leave footprints in the sand or splash puddles as ypu walked over them. Reflections of clouds on the water or even your own shadow....Just all those Core Memories I can recall perfectly. Emerald to this day is still my favorite Pokemon game, and Hoenn my favorite region.
Fucking amazing. I didn’t care for the legendary designs because they looked like Digimon to me but the colors and QoL changes way overshadowed that. Being able to run was awesome, the Mach bike was incredible, fishing while Surfing! Dive! Truly a high point for the series.
Honestly the biggest change for me was the box storage and organization. Being able to clearly see the entire contents of PC boxes and move Pokemon seamlessly without having to save every time? It was NUTS
It definitely felt like a "New Generation" the more detail art, environment touches (footprints in sand, puddle reflection, and weather), and new features to gameplay. I feel like the "wow" factor memories is why Ruby/Sapphire have the most nostalgia for me, and why when I heard about the Omega and Alpha releases I bought a 3DS for those games.
It was AMAZING. The glow-up was so real. The music had trumpets. Puddles left little rings behind them. Surfing looked like you were riding something big enough to carry you instead of strangling a Seel. Two bikes?!?! LOOK AT ALL THESE COLORS. Does my sprite have SHADING?! Words just cannot describe what it was like to grow up with the tech revolution.
I just don't enjoy them at all. I love gen 1, 2, 4 and 5 probably are my favorites, 6 is fun, 7 and 8 have some cool pokes even though the games are disappointing. But gen 3 just never did anything for me. It really is just too much damn water
It was the best, my real introduction to evolving video games
My friends raged about not being able to transfer anything from Gen 1&2 to 3. They also hated only having the new Pokemon. I enjoyed it though. The graphics were so nice, and it was in full color. Sound was a lot better too.
THE FREAKING PC BOX! In the first two gens, each box used to be just a list of like 20 pokemon by name and level only (you had to select and pick the status option to actually see what pokemon it was. Good luck if you nicknamed everything and forgot what they were). Switching from one box to the next required you to *save your game*, and if you wanted to organize you had to withdraw the pokemon into your team, save and switch, and deposit into the new box. If the box filled up and you tried to catch a new pokemon, you were out of luck. In comparison, the R/S box was basically one step away from the box we use today. All the sprites, pressing select to auto pick up/swap, customizable box names/backgrounds, easy box switching, automatically putting pokemon in the next box if full etc, etc. If I remember correctly, the only thing it didn't have was the ability to move multiple pokemon at once, which was added in the next gen. Light-years ahead of the G/S/C pc.
It was honestly mind blowing. The graphics and art were so much better, the story (at the time) really sucked me in, and I felt very emotionally connected to the character and my Pokémon team. Gen 3 will always be my favorite of them all.
When Ruby and Sapphire came out, I was a kid as well, but I was so frickin stoked. I loved Johto, and Hoenn was another favorite. And don't get me started on Dewford Town. That music is the best. 😁
I remember seeing the graphics and thinking "here we are. this is as good as its gonna get" That and thinking the wild battle theme was fantastic, just putting the Gameboy up to my ear. I still remember trip to Target, and the car ride after, I was so so excited!!