Crystal was my favorite game by far... You had 16 gyms, 2 "champions",
Three champions. Blue was also a champion before Red came along :P
Errmmmm... So frog-dinosaur things and turtles with water cannons are dragons now?
I'm pretty sure he meant reptile-like creatures, which is a truth.
R/B/Y isn't as good as the more recent games (excluding D/P/Pt, they sucked) but it is a revolutionary generation (which is why I like it), contrary to what you say about it.
Explain? How is it more revolutionary when all it was, as one of the workers of the local Game Stop in my neighborhood summarizes it, was playing Final Fantasy only with summons.
Starting in R/S, new things like EV training and Natures came, which changed competitive (and in-game, at least how I play the Pokemon games) battling for the entire series. Now there came a way to make sure your Pokemon were their best: You could catch (or even better, breed) some until you got the nature you wanted, you could EV train a Pokemon in a particular stat, and you could come out with an unstoppable juggernaut which excelled in a certain stat.
Hate to break it to you, but effort values have been around since generation 1. And that breeding for the unstoppable juggernaut was a feature first brought to the player via GSC. :P I'll give you the breeding for Natures for RSE, but I personally don't like Natures anyways, or the abilities they tacked on.
Let's make a list of things GSC brought to the Pokemon gaming world;
Held items
A day & night cycle which also had a weekly calendar
Pokemon that could only be caught during certain days or time of day.
Breeding & by association egg moves as well as giving ditto a legitimate use.
A second region to explore after the E4. I believe FR and LG did expand on it by giving us those little islands to mess around with afterwards.
Roaming legendaries
Giving each trainer an individual name, save for the Rockets.
Backwards compatibility.
Separation of the item menu.
Female character
While Yellow introduced happiness, GSC havily expanded on it by having pokemon evolve through high happiness
Growing berries
Shiny Pokemon
Compare it to RSE, which is a generation I can barely get through the second city without feeling as though I've done this many times before. Seriously, I bought Emerald two months before Black & White hit stateside and I still have yet to leave the second town with my under level 10 team of three. :P
And what are the flaws? The levels in johto aren't as high as Kanto? Obviously since Kanto was the last third or so of the game. Otherwise Kanto would've felt as a waste of time and just more badge collecting.
Another flaw is that kanto is 'unfinished.' Sure this is true due to memory restraints. All the stuff mentioned above took its toll :P TMs suck? I never used TMs since the game's AI (this is also true for the newer generations too) are pants on head retarded and can be beaten easily by just picking strong attacks and going for type advantages. No need to really use moves like tailwhip unless you plan on fighting friends.