Safari Zones

Most main series Pokémon games have a Safari Zone, an area home to many Pokémon that you can enter for a small fee. You're limited to how much time you can spend there, as well as how many capture items (Safari Balls) you can use.

Currently, the following regions have a Safari Zone:

Kanto
Johto (HeartGold and SoulSilver only)
Hoenn
Sinnoh (Great Marsh)

The Friend Safari in Kalos is also similar to a Safari Zone, but not exactly the same thing.

Which of these Safari Zones did you like to explore most? Any fond memories in any of them?

I've always been a huge fan of HGSS' Safari Zone, and believe that it should be kind of the gold standard of sorts in which every single Safari Zone afterwards should follow. The reason being is because of how, for a lack of a better word, customizable it is. You can just switch the different areas around so it's much less of a pain to get to one area than another.

You can customize the layout to your hearts content to basically draw out the Pokemon that you need to. It's this kind of efficiency that I wish other games' Safari Zones would follow.

I think a simple Safari Zone (Kanto/Hoenn) is fine for me. Just go in with a bunch of balls and catch stuff that may run away. No time/step limit like Johto's would be good as well.

The Johto one, while customizing was fun, is terrible for its flaw in how pokemon become available. The fact that you have to put in specific blocks in specific areas and wait an extremely long amount of time for some pokemon to appear is ridiculous, especially considering almost nothing hints that these pokemon are available.

The Sinnoh one is slightly better, but still kind of bad due to the daily binocular pokemon. It's tedious trying to get all of them but at least it doesn't literally take months.

I remember Hoenn the most, me and my friends with our game boys would come into school with our copies of Ruby and Sapphire and see what we could find, how many of each Pokemon we could catch etc, it was fun.

I've never been a great fan of the concept and I don't miss it in newer regions. However, I didn't mind the step limit and my favourite one was the Kanto one, followed by the Great Marsh. The Hoenn one felt to me more boring than the others, also because it lacked the special tree tiles of the Kanto one.
But anyway I just tried to catch all area-specific pokémon the first few times I was there and barely ever visit it again - which made the long waiting times of the Johto one the reason I didn't really like that, even if the concept was nice.

I liked the idea of the Johto Safari Zone, but felt that it could've been executed better. To be honest, I almost would've been happier if they had used an expanded Pal Park layout for the Safari Zone, and maybe just added a Pokemon transfer building or something at the end of Route 48.

On a side note, the worst memory of a Safari Zone that I've ever had was back in FireRed. I was screwing around, maybe looking for a Chansey or something. Anyway, I worked my way down to just one step and one Safari Ball, and used the trick where if you just spin around the same grass tile in a circle, Pokemon still show up without wasting any steps. I did this for a few minutes and was about to give up, only to run into a Shiny Paras. I was freaking out a bit, since it was only the second or third shiny I'd ever run into, and threw my ball right away without thinking. It ended up breaking out after two shakes, and it ended up being the last shiny Pokemon I would see for the next 4 years.

HGSS is probably the one I spent the most time in. There's a lot of interesting Pokémon you can only find there (or find more easily), like Murkrow, Cubone, Kangaskhan, Mr. Mime, etc. It also has an interesting mechanic of moving areas around (even if it sounds physically impossible), differently from any other Safari Zone introduced before.

I was never really invested in the Hoenn's Safari Zone that much, probably because I don't play the Hoenn games at all anymore (This should probably change). Kanto's Safari Zone is kinda mandatory to get Surf, but has good Pokémon in it. The Great Marsh is probably between Kanto's and Johto's Safari Zone: has good Pokémon, but the gimmick is bad.

HGSS' was the best imo. It did have downsides like the long wait times for a few Pokemon, but it encouraged progression, was interactive and removed some tedious aspects like the step limit, iirc. It felt like you were upgrading the place, and it also stood out from other Safari Zones beyond "it has mud in it that you can be stuck in".

Brendino said:

On a side note, the worst memory of a Safari Zone that I've ever had was back in FireRed. I was screwing around, maybe looking for a Chansey or something. Anyway, I worked my way down to just one step and one Safari Ball, and used the trick where if you just spin around the same grass tile in a circle, Pokemon still show up without wasting any steps. I did this for a few minutes and was about to give up, only to run into a Shiny Paras. I was freaking out a bit, since it was only the second or third shiny I'd ever run into, and threw my ball right away without thinking. It ended up breaking out after two shakes, and it ended up being the last shiny Pokemon I would see for the next 4 years.

Click to expand...

Ouch, that sucks. I was lucky to find a Shiny Exeggcute and catch it in FRLG's Safari Zone.

The Kanto safari zone is my favourite for reasons already mentioned above. It's raw, basic and simple, what you see is what you get.

I actually really enjoyed the design of the Great Marsh and the unique Pokemon you can find there. I'm pretty sure I got a super good Carnivine for my first playthrough of Diamond from there.