6th Gen Running out of room for continents?

[CourageHound]

well, considering with the walk though walls cheat you can bike across sinnoh in a matter of minutes, i'd say they have plenty of room left on the planet. there could be a second planet in the future too.

Besides if you were to straight up map the game regions to the real world, they would be woefully small in comparison. How long does it take you to run from one end of Unova to the other?

I really dont think we should base this comparison with experiences on the handheld, as their locations arnt realisticly sized....at all.

But I do agree there is loads of sapce left due to the size of each region being comparable to countries.

 

[MantisboyN]

but they're not continents, they're countries, with cities. We only have 6 countries in the pokemon world, compared with over 200 in the real world, so there's at least room for 104 more :)

Where did you get that number from? 104 seems pretty obscure to me.

 

[Esper]

We'll always have space. Even the first four games based off of regions of Japan didn't use all of Japan. There are still parts that could have been used, and which I figured would be used for Gen V before they revealed it would be based on NYC.

Now, as much as there is a lot of world out there, a lot of it is really unsuitable. Kansas wouldn't really work because there are no features. Every large, landlocked area is going to be skipped over, most like, in any future games if they stick to the pattern they've established. Still, that leaves lots of potential places to work with. Nothing to worry about.

 

[Ammako]

^ I feel 104 was just an example.

 

[droomph]

But just how big is each region? It seems like they're basically continents. They may look small in the games, but the anime shows just how large they really are.

Walk across town. How long did it take? An hour, at least. Now walk around a large town, like San Francisco. That's big, isn't it?

Now think of that "large" area this way; in the scale of the world, that's about an area what we would see as a room in a house.

And besides - a continent isn't a definite thing. It could be as small as an island (eg Antarctica, Australia), or as big as a whole landmass, with multiple tectonic plates and all, like Asia.

Same with regions. How small is Rhode Island? Very small. Now compare that with Alaska, the biggest state. Is Rhode Island any less fit to be a "state" than Alaska? No. Same here - Gen VI could be as big as France, while Gen I might be as big as Tokyo.

And considering we don't know anything about the planet's dimensions and characteristics, there could be a galaxy smaller than the planet for all we know.

 

[Platinum Lucario]

I think introducing the new lands is just as natural as coming up with a new idea for a new area. Technically, I think of the Pokémon world as a "parallel universe" to our universe in the Pokémon storyline. So basically all those regions based off the different areas in the world would be identical to the size they are in the real world.

So I highly doubt they would be running out of room for new regions. xD

 

[pikakitten]

Hmm well when you think about how many animals there are in our planet, I think it's reasonable size xD

 

[Elite Four Lucian]

There are millions of places on the planet, it's a huge place, so I don't think they will run out of room.

 

[U.Flame]

I wasn't aware that the first couple regions were based on parts of Japan. That changes my perspective. Though we can't really be sure if the size of those regions are the same size as the places they're based on relative to the size of the planet. Then there's the issue of just how big the Pokemon planet is. Has there even been a good, accurate view to judge?

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

Tnere's plenty of space left. There's over 200 countries in tne world and thus far they've based the regions off 3 of them and 3 of the six inhabited countinents (4 for Japan/Asia, 1 US/North America, 1 France/Europe) Leaving at least 3 generations for all six continents which I'm guessing they'll use Brazil (Rio de Jaineiro) or Columbia (Bogota), South Africa (cape town)or Egypt (Cairo), and Sydney,Australia.

 

[Raichupacabra]

The size of all five regions is smaller than the US, considering the first four are each only the size of small regions in Japan, and Japan isn't even that big to begin with.

 

[tente2]

I wasn't aware that the first couple regions were based on parts of Japan. That changes my perspective. Though we can't really be sure if the size of those regions are the same size as the places they're based on relative to the size of the planet. Then there's the issue of just how big the Pokemon planet is. Has there even been a good, accurate view to judge?

Spoiler:

Somebody else said it really well, but honestly, how long does it take you to walk across town (the nearest town, if you don't live in one)? And then imagine that your town might not even appear as a dot on a map. The world is huge.

And because you asked, here is Unova in relation to the rest of the world:

Does it look like we're running out of space? Although, to be honest, I wouldn't take these maps too seriously anyway. Gamefreak has literally taken parts of the real world and stuck them on Planet Pokemon because they were too lazy to design new landmasses for areas that we have never even seen, on other maps and I know that as they add new regions they will add on brand new landmasses and pretend they were always there, if they have to.

Bulbapedia even says "Note the obvious similarities to Europe at the bottom of the picture; Scandinavia looks practically unchanged". I don't actually see it, but I have noted it in other maps, though I haven't been able to find them via Google in order to post them here.

Anyway, here is another picture of Planet Pokemon:

Looks similar to Earth, doesn't it? This has been this way for quite a while.

As a little side note, although I'm not sure how relevant it is, several real world countries have been mentioned within Pokemon canon, since the beginning of the franchise. For example, China is mentioned in Parasect's Stadium Pokedex entry from Generation I. Although it is true Generation I has tons of quirks that have never been seen again, and you might think "but Stadium is just a side game", this was once again mentioned in Pokemon Firered, a more recent mainstream game, and was in fact reworded which proves that the localizers (at least, maybe the original Japanese Pokedex entry writer(s) too) didn't just copy + paste (or they re-translated the Stadium entry, or something). There are a couple other examples, as well.

I'm just going to quote Bulbapedia real quick:

Arcanine's Pokédex entry states that it is considered legendary in China; in the anime, Jessie's mother was said to have been lost in an expedition in the Andes; and lab reports in Pokémon Mansion state that Mew was discovered in Guyana, South America. These observations imply some possibility of the Pokémon world being the same as the "real world", only with extra regions.

So, maybe that helps you ponder about the size comparison between regions on Pokemon and on Earth...?

 

[U.Flame]

Okay, after seeing map comparisons, I really see just how small regions are. Though like I said, we don't know if the same shape means same size.

Assuming it is, I wonder how much of the planet would be covered if all hacks' regions were taken into the equation?

 

[pokewalker]

I don't blaim you for criticizing the size of Europe, but since it was known X&Y would be in Europe I've met a lot of people who do. In fact, some people thought Europe would be one region, because the thought it was as big as the state New York. I mean, seriously? Europe is big, and it has a really really varied landscape. For the sake of this thread, I'll answer your question: no. The world is a big place. Hundreds of regions could fit in it, and might they ever run out of it, they'd just go to outer space, I mean, Deoxys and Clefairy came from there too, didn't they?

 

[Deokishisu]

It wouldn't even matter if the Pokemon planet runs out of space, as long as they don't clearly define how big it, or for that matter the regions, are, they will never have to do something absurd like a region on the moon or whatever. They'll just plop the region down wherever and call it a day.

These space concerns don't matter as long as Game Freak doesn't say something that they have to retcon later.

 

[tente2]

It wouldn't even matter if the Pokemon planet runs out of space, as long as they don't clearly define how big it, or for that matter the regions, are, they will never have to do something absurd like a region on the moon or whatever. They'll just plop the region down wherever and call it a day.

This is getting a little irrelevant, but I'd like to chime in that I don't think it's "absurd" to have a region away from Planet Pokemon! I think it'd be exciting.

But like you said and I 100% agree, Gamefreak doesn't really care about stuff like running out of room for regions. Even though, I believe that regions are very small and we are nowhere close to running out of room, anyway.

 

[Zeturic]

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_world_in_relation_to_the_real_world

Assuming the Pokemon World is approximately the same size as Earth, they're nowhere close to running out of space. It took them four generations to get out of Japan, which is a small country comprising only about .25% of the world's landmass. If you factor in the fact that they didn't use all of Japan's landmass, which could easily fit three more regions (bringing the total to seven regions composing .25% of the world's land). If we assume that all regions are roughly the same size, which, due to the fact that it's never been established what, exactly, a 'region' is, this may be the case, that means that the Pokemon world can hold about 2800 regions.

If you add in the fact that it is a fictional world that they've never really defined the size of, if they wanted to, they could add landmasses - islands, archipelagos, even continents, and they'd be perfectly justified in doing so.

Of course, the chance that we'd ever even get close to that many regions is infinitesimal, to say the least.