New vs Old

[Sydian]

It seems that older spin offs have more of a charm than the newer ones. Most newer spin offs don't do as well as older ones in the eyes of most players, especially the older players. There's occasionally a gem in a pile of rocks, but for the most part, people seem to prefer older spin offs than newer and/or don't even touch newer ones.

To clarify, I'm referring to all gen I-III spin offs as the "older" and the gen IV-V as the newer. However, one might argue gen III, being in the middle, is still old. So that might be personal preference.

So what do you think? Are older spin offs really better? Are they running out of ideas when it comes to spin offs these days? Are there too many spin offs (obviously there are more cranked out with each generation than there was in the generations before)? Feel free to add in anything else you see fit.

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

Certainly, in the 'old days', the idea of spin-offs was a more novel concept and the fact that there were comparatively fewer of them meant they were always going to be looked at more favourably. That there wasn't a glut of them in comparison to nowadays, and that each one felt like a sort-of mini-event (at least from my recollection of their releases) is also in the favour of older games. As well as this, the older spin-offs felt less like money-printing exercises for Nintendo and actual games in and of themselves; while Syd classes the Gen III spin-offs as 'older', I'd actually argue that the dreck of 'Pokemon Dash' onwards marked a decisive tipping-point in the perceived quality of spin-off games.

However, in spite of all of this, I imagine that nostalgia plays a large role in my opinion. While I haven't shut up recently about my love for Pokemon Snap, I'm aware it's not the greatest game ever made or anything like that. Part of my affection is sheer nostalgia value, and the fact that I haven't played it in many, many years. Newer games - whatever I may think of them - haven't had the years of non-playing to build up that level of nostalgia. Who knows... in many years, we could have lots of fans reminiscing fondly about Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky!

 

[mikey]

Older ones were better. They were more creative than they are now, although Mystery Dungeon was pretty creative. But yeah, old ones like Snap and Stadium will always be the best.

 

[The Doctor]

I have never played Stadium or XD or Colluseum, and I feel like crap cause I won't ever be able to play it saying, I played it when it was new. But I still love the games but the new ones are good. I love the Mystery Dungeon, My Pokemon Ranch and Ranger series. Rumble and Scramble, not so much.

 

[blue]

For me it's older, I prefer Ranger 2, Pokémon Colosseum, XD etc. The new are okay but not as good IMO.

 

[Cherrim]

I've never played Colosseum or XD but honestly, those (and maybe Snap) are the only early spinoffs I can think of that had any "depth". o_O The puzzle games never really had any plot and Stadium was just battles and minigames. I guess the TCG game was a lot of fun but I feel like that's just because I was so into the series. At least it had a story, but it was so obviously a cash grab now that I look back on it. :P Hey You, Pikachu wasn't bad--it was innovative at the very least--but SO repetitive and I don't think a lot of people ever realized it had an "end". (I certainly didn't.) This section of games even had Pokemon Channel where the whole point of the game was to watch fictional TV channels with Pikachu in the way.

More recently, we have the Mystery Dungeon series (amazing story/music, though you either like the gameplay or hate it) and the Ranger series (decent story, interesting setup). I always hear people raving about PMD and I've immensely enjoyed the series myself. Ranger is pretty mixed but I always liked it and the story's pretty solid in them, iirc. There are some bad ones like Dash or Battle Revolution, and I can't say anything about the Pokepark series or Rumble but again, I've heard good things about the second series at least. (I have heard *nothing* about Pokepark--how did it get a sequel? Did anyone even play the first one??) We're also going into interesting new territory with Conquest, opening up new genres to the series which is exciting.

Honestly, I like a lot of the spinoffs because the franchise is so varied that it's fun to see how many genres it can span. With spinoffs, they can experiment with all sorts of things and since they tack the Pokemon brand on it, people will buy it and try it out. Sometimes that results in a flop and sometimes you get gems like Mystery Dungeon that would never have been a popular genre in the West without the brand power. (Every other MD game--not Pokemon, but the genre--has failed in the West, iirc.) I don't think it's necessarily a matter of when the games were released. There's always some good ones and there are always some bad ones. I like the new and the old spinoffs equally, but I think people are brushing off the new ones too quickly in favour of the nostalgia of the earlier games. :x

 

[TheSuccessfulGamer]

For me it is the older ones.
Games like Pokemon Coliseum and Pokemon Stadium I could sit and play for hours.
The last Spin-off I got was the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.
Even though I really enjoyed it, I didn't even know a second one had been released until my friend bought it 7 months after it was out.

 

[Obix]

I enjoy the older ones they had me playing for hrs but the new ones are soo repetitive

 

[Ephemeral Euphoria]

Gotta say I enjoy both for different reasons but the older ones do tend to interest me more than the newer entries nowadays, can't say I like 5th gen as much now tbh due to having certain movesets on older Pokes being next to impossible to obtain sometimes so I've started to go back to the older generations as a result as I now find raising the perfect in-game team to be too much of a chore if anything. At the very least I got to be flexible yet creative with the 3rd and 4th gens respectively as far as team making went.

 

[Alphos]

I like both of the Rumbles, XD & Colluseum, Pinball, and (of course) the mainstream game. They need to make another series like XD and Colluseum. Those games were the best graphics still to this day (it and Rumble 2) and it still had the most captivating story yet.

 

[miltankRancher]

I think, like the core games, the first games always have this certain kind of charm to them. I myself sees PMD 1 and Colosseum more inviting than Conquest and Rumble. It is not that the games have dwindled in quality over the years; no. in fact, I could say that the games improved, being more diverse in their definition of spin-off. However, they lack the charm of the older ones. Look at Super Smash Bros. Look at PMD 1 and Ranger. They have this... cuteness and life that the newer ones can't just give older players.

 

[Paulo27ms]

I haven't played any of the "new" ones and won't play them, simply because they don't call me anymore, but if I look into the "old" ones I don't know I have that will to them again, because at least to me the "old" ones were pretty much my childhood (not that I'm that old but I mean a few years back).
And when I see a game that was made for Wii ends up getting a sequel I just die a little.