4th Gen Did you think HGSS lived up to the reputations of GSC?

Oh, I loved HG/SS! I think Gamefreak did a great job on them. The one thing that bugged me about them (the same thing that I'm sure bothered everyone else) was that they made an entirely new female player character instead of bringing the female character back from Crystal. The female pc from Crystal is one of my all-time favorites and I was really upset to see a new character in her place.

Buuuuut on the bright side, I absolutely loved how Ecruteak City was redone. And Azalea Town and Goldenrod City and GAH ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING OKAY. I also loved the remixes of the old themes and the inclusion of the GB Player. That was a fantastic touch, that was.

Like Sakura Rain mentioned, the only "negative" aspect for me was that Lyra was designed quite differently from Kris. Still, I liked Lyra's design, Ethan, Silver's redesign...it was enough of an enhanced remake for me to get nostalgia pangs, but it also had enough new content for me to love it as a completely new game.
The Safari Zone was nice (and has what I believe to be some of the best music in all of the Pokemon games), there were so many legendaries to go out and catch, lots of "events" that happened even post-storyline...the list just goes on and on!

When Game Freak appears in-game in HGSS, one of the employees states that it's difficult to make a remake, because it needs to live up to the expectations of the long-time fans, but it also needs to have enough new content so that it's not just the same game being released again. I think they really lived up to this idea and exceeded it.

I definitely think that they did. Although the Pokemon didn't have the admittedly amazing and fluid sprite animations that Crystal had, the game featured the Pokewalker, which I actually liked, the Pokeathlon, which was probably the best in-game minigame from any of the games, and a bunch of conveniences such as the touch-screen running shoe toggle and the double-item register. I actually think that HG/SS might be the best of all the Pokemon games. Although it doesn't have that great classic, nostalgic feel that the originals have, it more than compensates with a ton of cool new features.

I think the games did. People will probably still prefer the older games because they're the first ones, but I think Game Freak remade the games perfectly, even adding features like Pokemon following you (YES!) and the Crystal storyline in both.

HGSS is the most refined game in the series. While I usually play b/w nowadays, my second runthrough has been very enjoyable. I think they are the highest quality games in the main series.

HGSS did everything right apart for the music, and surpass the originals overall.

Ever since i was 9, i was a Pokemon fan. My favorite gen is 2. The GSC games were my all time favorite games until HGSS. They did everything right. They captured the same nostalgic magic that was there in GSC. The things that impressed me were still intact. I remember the phone and day/night systems blowing my mind. The breeding was like an addicting little mini game to me. I actually put the story on hold to make a little Cyndaquil army with their dad up front in my team. I had a blast playing HGSS. The GB Player was also something that just brought back memories. I liked the new customizable Safari Zone, and Gym layouts. I was interested in the Pokeathlon, but i just said "Screw it." Game Freak did more then enough to make my favorite Gen come back to life. Simply put, HGSS is my favorite Pokemon game.

Hell yeah its live up and its even better.

I really enjoyed HG/SS. It was everything I expected it to be, really, and a bit more. The following Pokemon feature was nifty, I loved the Running Shoes toggle.

Overall, not much I can say. They just flat out did a good job in my opinion. Kept everything intact up until post-game, in which they added a bunch of new fun stuff to do. Nobody is really going to complain "Oh well G/S/C didn't have a huge battle frontier area!", adding anything post E-4 isn't really gonna get complaints IMO.

They were really thinking of the fans when they added the old music player as well.

This is an odd one for me.

I imported Gold and Silver from the States as soon as they were out, essentially 6 months before they were out in the UK (seems ridiculous doesn't it). Anyway, I came home from school on the Friday to be presented them by my Mummy and had the whole weekend to experience the first NEW generation which in a lot of ways to a kid like me was more exciting than Gen I itself. I was going to a new region to discover new Pokémon... DAY AND NIGHT PASSED LIKE IN REAL LIFE! And I could breed my Pokémon. And I could finally get Togepi and Marill in a game! New gyms! 16 gyms! I pulled my first ever all-nighter playing Gold. My mum would probably still kill me today if she realised! :P

So the nostalgia factor was pretty huge when I heard HGSS were coming. And yup, they looked great in the pre-release screenshots. I was finally going back to Johto!

I got there and I realised it just wasn't as interesting as it had been back then. I clocked up hundreds of hours on both Gold and Silver, and then even more on Crystal when it came out. Playing SoulSilver, I realised Johto was a bit small... and the story wasn't so great. And going back to Kanto?? Meh. It was over in a flash - the gyms really needed some sort of level scaling up. Plus I'd already had my fill of the Gen IV mechanics through playing Pearl and Platinum fiercely. And Sinnoh actually stands up as a more interesting region to me.

Still, there was a lot of nostalgia to be gleaned from playing, and the post game features were exceptional. But it never quite matched the feeling of playing the original Gold and Silver as that 10 year old. So in some ways the flaws of Johto and Kanto soiled that for me.

HGSS fell short of expectations in many ways, but it was still a treat to relive those countless hours I invested in catching 250 Pokémon (never got Celebi!) back in the day, the visuals were nice, the post game experience was brilliant and the games fit very well into Gen IV.

It goes without saying that the originals were better, but that is purely because of nostalgia. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get the same enjoyment and excitement the originals gave you because the adventure isn't a completely new and refreshing one and you're not the carefree kid that you once were.

However, I absolutely loved HG/SS. Although they were essentially just an updated G/S with Crystal mixed in, they were as good as they possibly could be, in my opinion.

The soundtrack blew me away too. I remember when I first heard the National Park theme after the soundtrack had leaked on the web, the hairs on my back actually stood up. Incredible stuff.

I started playing Pokémon when I was four years old. Christmas day, 2001. My first game was Gold, but I realised Silver was on the shelves, and after watching The Power Of One, I swiftly bought that and lent Gold to my brother, which I've never seen since.

To put it shortly, no. I will always prefer the originals. But that's not to say that HGSS weren't amazing. I loved them so much and I was so pleased that Nintendo recognised that (at the time) we had 3d cities whilst Johto was still stuck in 8-bit. The bar was too high for HGSS to reach, but it darn well came close.

But then again, even if Johto was featured in virtual reality games, I would play GSC every time.

The only thing I found lacking in HGSS was the removal of the Pokedolls and room decorations bought by your Mom. It was basically the only reason to ever let her save your money in the first place.

I don't really get why they weren't in there, especially considering they already had sprites of every single Pokemon in the game. Just place a static pokemon sprite on the desk or wherever and you're good to go.

I wish Kanto was improved, however. I mean, all the empty buildings and stuff from the original GSC were due to space constraints and time constraints, so if they had've kinda opened it all up and made it worthwhile to explore, it would've been brilliant. Visiting Kanto in the original GSC was brilliant because we were only on the second Gen, and we didn't need a lot of other stuff. Now the whole Kanto novelty's worn off and could've used a bit of extra spice.

Other than that, I loved it. I despecially liked how the Pokedex was designed, it was easier to see at a glance which pokemon you needed.