Does anyone else find this interesting?

[WaterLily]

Hi everyone. What I am talking about specifically is how only Gold, Silver, and Crystal offer a second region.
I don't recall any other game in the series that does that. If there was another place you could go it was something small but not nearly to the extent of G, S, and C.
I would take a guess and say that it's technological reasons they did away with that, but does anyone else find it interesting?

 

[Devalue]

Comes up with four reasons.

1. Simply ported over the map of Kanto. Required no new map graphics to look natural. May seem more jarring porting over a map like Diamond/Pearl's map over to Black/White. Demands more time to make something like Kanto look correct in Sword/Shield, even with primarily existing assets.
2. Development time. Updated trainers, Pokemon locations, and levels. Requires testing to avoid unfortunate bugs.
3. Sales. Becomes much harder to sell Diamond/Pearl remakes if you tear through Sinnoh in Sword/Shield.
4. Supposedly intended Gold/Silver to be the last game in the series. Probably wanted to make it special. Sees more effort and definitely callbacks in potential final games, such as Fire Emblem: Awakening.

 

[Sheep]

GSC were meant to be the last game in the Pokémon series like Devalue said, weren't they? In which case it made sense for them to also include Kanto so the games felt a complete experience, and just close the series off from there. But it became massively popular so there was a lot more demand for new games. The staff got into a tighter schedule to meet these demands and weren't able to make games with two regions anymore afterwards, since they needed all the time they had to complete the newer games' core/more important features. As much as I'd love to see double regions again they would probably rather split each region into its own game for timesaving + money. Maybe one day!

 

[Amore]

I would also point out that Kanto wasn't exactly complete, and even a complete Kanto is widely considered the least visually interesting region, with very few side-games. In games after that, there has generally been far more to do, maps have been larger, with more Pokémon, moves…just more.

Whereas Johto on its own - much as I love HGSS - would be incomplete. It doesn't even have its own Pokémon League (which makes sense).

 

[Megan]

Having two regions is also very hard to balance. That's especially so when you want both of them to offer a good experience to the player. In gen 2 Jotho was really well designed but Kanto just severely lacked in pretty much everything but size.

 

[soulzzii]

i think another factor is how some regions are made today, for me, regions like alola have already a lot to explore that it wouldnt make sense to have 2 regions on the same game, balacing its also another important factor, which is why a lot of rom hacks also tend to focus on only one region.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

Hi everyone. What I am talking about specifically is how only Gold, Silver, and Crystal offer a second region.
I don't recall any other game in the series that does that. If there was another place you could go it was something small but not nearly to the extent of G, S, and C.
I would take a guess and say that it's technological reasons they did away with that, but does anyone else find it interesting?

I find it very interesting actually.

 

[edyedy]

I would love to have multiple regions that we can visit in new Pokemon games. It doesn't have to add the entire 2nd region in, we could just visit landmarks from other regions like the Battle Frontier from Hoenn and other beautiful landmarks that are upscaled and touched up for the current generation.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

I would love to have multiple regions that we can visit in new Pokemon games. It doesn't have to add the entire 2nd region in, we could just visit landmarks from other regions like the Battle Frontier from Hoenn and other beautiful landmarks that are upscaled and touched up for the current generation.

That sounds like a great idea, actually.