OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire

that time of the year again! happy birthday ^^

However, Red's NPC team was based on Yellow version, which was inspired by Ash's show. :P He even uses nearly the exact same Pokémon Ash had in the Orange Islands arc, only with Venusaur/Blastoise instead of Bulbasaur/Squirtle (and an Espeon in GSC).

Although the Adventures version certainly has his fans, most of the Red worship I see online is mainly about the game version, and game Red hardly counts as a character, IMO. He doesn't even speak, let alone have any defined personality or backstory beyond what you do while playing as him. Yet, the fandom worships him and treats him like this cool/mysterious/powerful/edgy trainer that no one else can top (except possibly a certain blonde woman from Sinnoh who's similarly worshiped).

And, at least part of this Red worship comes at poor Lance's expense. :( Red is seen as being more of a "real" Champion than Lance (especially since he's higher leveled in GSC/HGSS), and he accordingly gets far more love and attention from the franchise than Lance.

At least Iris was a main character in the anime for an entire arc, although she wasn't a Champion there. (And, a lot of fans hated her, ie. "You're such a kid!" )

The sad thing about Lance is that he's not only neglected, but also gets routinely bashed by the fandom. :( Fans like to twist him into being some evil hypocrite who cheats and hacks his Pokémon, completely ignoring his acts of kindness and heroism. Or worse, they equate him with his wildly OOC Adventures counterpart and paint him has some angsty, murderous villain.

Meanwhile, these same fans hold up a blank, personality-free player avatar as the Greatest Trainer Who Ever Lived. :rolleyes2:

(And, last I checked, this girl kicked his butt at Mt. Silver. Who's the strongest trainer now? At least she doesn't resemble a certain eternal 10 year old twerp with a non-evolving yellow rat.)

HGSS releasing on GS' 10th anniversary was mostly just a lucky coincidence, IMO, as neither FRLG or ORAS came out in big anniversary years for their respective originals. HGSS also came out at the very tail end of Gen 4 and ended up getting badly overshadowed by BW shortly after release.

Also, the number of references and callbacks to Gen 2/Johto in SM is paltry compared to other gens, especially since the gen doesn't even have a single returning character. And, out of all the Champions, Lance is one of the most neglected and ignored. (Only Wallace and possibly Alder have it worse than him.)

They didn't give RS any special treatment for its 10th anniversary (2012), so why do it for DP? Especially at a time when the focus is meant to be on Kanto (and Johto, to a lesser extent)?

Sinnoh will eventually get its time, but it just doesn't feel like it's been long enough yet. Platinum still holds up fairly well by modern Pokémon game standards, and it's not even as expensive or difficult to find as HGSS.

It's no more of a remake hint than her appearance in BW was. This franchise just really loves Cynthia and is determined to shoehorn her into everything possible, even if it comes at the expense of other (and often more interesting) characters. That is also why Piplup and Lucario are in this movie (and rather insultingly, have more prominence than Bulbasaur and Squirtle). Those Pokémon are extremely popular, and the franchise loves to shove them into everything, especially the blue jackal.

Piplup Girl reminds me a bit of this franchise's other extremely overused Sinnoh character (Looker), so maybe he's the father. It completely infuriates me that they dumped an iconic Kanto character (Misty) just to find a way to shoehorn two overrated Sinnoh characters into a Kanto/Johto-based movie. It's also infuriating that said Sinnoh characters have had more prominence in this franchise's 20th anniversary, as a whole, than characters like Brock, Misty, and Lance who have actually been a part of the franchise for the full 20 years. >:(

Here's a hint: It's a certain blonde Champion who appears in WAY too many things as it is and has no business being in a movie that should be all about Kanto, Johto, and the OS era.

:rolleyes2::rolleyes2::rolleyes2::rolleyes2:

And, seeing as you ship her with Steven (as I remember you telling me years ago), you shouldn't be happy about this either. Unless Piplup Girl's adopted, no way could her father be a pale, blue-haired man.

The anniversary movie is a giant punch in the face, that's what it is. >:( After reading the spoilers about the Piplup girl and who her mother is, I'm completely disgusted with this movie and everything about this franchise's "20th anniversary celebration."

If characters like Brock, Misty, and Lance can't even get the spotlight in an anniversary that should be theirs, then when will they ever?

As I said, I don't count re-releases of old games. (Even if it's better than nothing.)

Unfortunately, Red and Blue are probably the most boring Gen 1 characters they could've brought back (especially Red -- he's just a blank player avatar and barely even counts as a character). I'd much rather see Brock, Misty, Lorelei, and Lance, especially with the former two getting screwed out of a movie that should've been 100% theirs.

Some Gen 2 characters would've been nice as well. I want to see Clair, Karen, Morty, and Eusine again. :(

I miss Johto. :(

HGSS are now 8 years old and counting. Never before have we gone this long without seeing Kanto, with the 5 years between FRLG and HGSS being the next-longest gap between Kanto appearances.

Furthermore, Gen 5 was the first gen to not include Kanto in any game, and Gen 6 was the first gen to not have a single returning character from Gen 1 in any capacity. The 3DS will also likely go down as the first handheld to not include any games with Kanto.

While Gen 1's Pokémon still get a lot of attention (particularly the usual suspects like Pikachu, Charizard, and Mewtwo), the Kanto region and its characters have largely been forgotten. Yes, we've gotten VC re-releases and specials like Origins/Generations to sort-of deal with this, but that's far from enough when Kanto and its characters continue to not exist in the actual current games.

I can see GF taking the lazy way out (as always) and just making more remakes, but I'd like to see past regions revisited in more interesting ways.

I dislike it when people claim that Kanto is "overdone" because it was in "four gens in a row." Kanto was only in Gens 3 and 4 because of remakes, and in one of those remakes it was merely a (watered-down) postgame region.

This argument also carries the assumption that every single fan stuck with the series all the way through and never fell out of it for a gen or two. For example, there are loads of fans who left after Gen 2 and didn't come back until the Pokémon Go craze years later. These people completely missed FRLG and HGSS, so Kanto is far from "overdone" for them.

There's also the simple fact that the old games aren't easy to find anymore. The VC re-releases alleviate this for RBY and GS, but good luck finding a working copy of Crystal, or copies of FRLG that aren't bootlegged. Even HGSS, the most "recent" of the Kanto/Johto games, are out of print and are notoriously expensive and difficult to find. And, playing either Crystal or FRLG requires finding a handheld that hasn't been made since 2008 (GBA SP), while playing HGSS means playing a game with many of its features no longer functional because DS wifi no longer works. And, none of these games are playable on the next gen handheld, the Switch.

SM aren't sequels to BW/B2W2, though. Colress, Burnet, and Grimsley are in the games, but the Team Skull/Aether Foundation plot isn't directly connected to the Team Plasma plot.

I have a feeling that GF is just going to leave Kalos as it is and let it rot. :( Why else would they have shoehorned Zygarde and its forms into Alola without any context or story relevance? And, waiting until Gen 8 makes Kalos sequels even less likely as the region will be completely irrelevant and old news by then -- too old to be current, but not old enough to be nostalgic.

Unless they re-remake RBY, I don't see Kanto and Johto being separated. The two are far too closely-connected, especially since they share a League.

(And, even in the case of remakes, many fans disliked FRLG for not even acknowledging Johto's existence, let alone letting you travel there in the postgame. If even RB remakes made people wonder "where's Johto," then new sequels would definitely be expected to have Johto in the postgame.)

Ideally, we'd see VC re-releases of each gen followed by new sequels. So, the RBY/GS re-releases would be followed by Kanto/Johto sequels in 2018. Then, later on RSE would be re-released on the Switch VC, and that could be followed by Hoenn sequels, and rinse/repeat with the other regions.

I've been reading on another site that the upcoming Switch game may actually be Kanto/Johto sequels instead of Gen 8, and that USUM are little more than a stopgap being put out to avoid another break year.

It seems odd that GF would leap to a new console midway through a gen, but it would also be odd for Gen 7 to suddenly end so soon. Plus, I could see GF wanting the original two regions to make their long-awaited return on a more powerful system than the 3DS, and it would also be stupid of them to not capitalize on the Pokémon Go/20th anniversary hype by not returning to Kanto/Johto.

Yeah, I'm definitely clinging on to a long shot here, but I still want to dream. :(

I don't know why they threw in references like that when GF clearly has no intention of ever bringing back Emerald's Battle Frontier. :(

HGSS had Platinum's Battle Frontier in place of Crystal's Battle Tower, so there was somewhat of a precedent for remakes recycling the battle facility of the previous game. However, Hoenn was the first region to have a full Battle Frontier rather than just a Battle Tower, so most fans thought this would've been a different case.

Really, I think most fans thought ORAS were going to follow HGSS' lead and incorporate third version content. Emerald was a significantly better game than RS, too.

Brendan is the male protagonist (and your avatar, lol), while Brandon is the Frontier Brain. Not sure why they gave him an English name so similar to the male PC from the same game. Googling him even brings up pictures of Brendan.

I always thought Lucy was the most popular of the Hoenn Frontier Brains because she was one of the few women who actually reciprocated Brock's crushing and ogling:



Of course, Anabel was also shown crushing on Ash, and I guess I should know by now that crush on Ash = instant popularity, no matter how boring or useless a character is (step forward, Serena):

[IMG]

I still don't get why she was ever brought back. She's never been seen outside of Emerald, which came out 12 years before SM, and the most recent version of Hoenn (ORAS) ignored her and the rest of the Emerald stuff. She's never seemed like an especially popular character either, even among other Frontier Brains.

I'm just frustrated after two gens in a row (XY, SM) of referencing and teasing Gen 1/Kanto and not following through with any of it. What's the point if GF has no intention of ever actually returning to the region?

At least Gen 5 didn't constantly bait/tease/reference Hoenn, although (ironically) ORAS pulled a similar trick in regards to Emerald exclusives (like the Battle Frontier).

I'm trying not to lose hope, but it's hard not to feel burned out. :(


GF's entire design philosophy needs to change with the Switch. The series will no longer be on an underpowered handheld, so empty, barren regions with minimal content need to go the way of the dodo.

Probably the same shallow teasing and monster marketing they've done for the 20th. :rolleyes2: This entire "anniversary" has done nothing but tell me that this franchise sucks at acknowledging its past and revisiting its roots.

The games refuse to revisit past regions outside of remakes, of which they only get one each. Meanwhile, the anime refuses to acknowledge Ash's past companions, with XY not even having a *single* returning character. It should speak volumes that the old characters can't even be in a movie set during OS-era Kanto.

I'm over it. So tired of seeing the franchise tease superficial elements of Gen 1 (references and old Pokémon in XY/SM, Pokémon Go focusing on old monsters, Movie 20), yet refusing to give us anything substantial or meaningful (no new games set in Kanto, no returning characters besides Red/Blue in SM, Movie 20 not having any of the OS-era characters). Tired of being told that I should be happy with re-releases of ancient games and other table scraps, while the things I actually care about (main games, anime) willingly ignore and sideline fans like me.