what would you prefer to have on the bottom screen?

[Mab]

I've discussed this a bit before, but I'd like to hear a few more opinions. Game Freak has tried a ton of different things for the Overworld bottom screen, seemingly never having settled on a good one. They've all been similar, but there are a couple feature changes/removals each generation.

Personally, I liked their first try best - the Pokétch. Mainly just because I loved the marking map. The fact that in the later generations you can't always have your region map out while walking is a bit annoying to me. The step counter is also kinda nice, especially if you want to exploit the Gen IV tweaking glitches to get Darkrai/Shaymin.

Which one did you like best? And why?

What else would you add?

 

[Altairis]

The DexNav is my favorite. As well as the opportunity to switch back and forth between apps like in ORAS and XY, but I guess that's cheating, maybe? So if I had to pick one app, I'd be the DexNav. Definitely the most useful in my opinion

 

[Lunar]

The Pokétch is probably my favourite too, it had some simply and efficient apps such as the map and the Pokemon party list that displayed your team's HP and so on. It made sense to have useful apps on the bottom screen and for the most part they were pretty good.

 

[dudealmighty]

HG/SS nailed the touch screen. When I first heard of Pokemon on the Nintendo DS back when Diamond and Pearl were coming out, this is what I expected. I suppose they kind of integrated it into the games afterward but HG/SS really did the whole menu interface the best.

 

[Mister Coffee]

I think I actually talked about this in a different thread, but I can't remember where I posted it.

What I have wanted to see the bottom screen used for is more over world interactions. I think it would be really neat if there was a screen where it displayed all of your obtained and usable HM's and when you would select any particular HM you would hop into a sort of mini game on the bottom screen that would be the action of using an HM move.

The example I've thought about the most is that "Strength" would be a mini game based on lifting and tossing boulders with your pokemon. You would tap and hold the boulder on the bottom screen to make your pokemon lift the boulder and then a charge meter would appear that fluctuates in power level (think of the charge meter in the "Super Training" mini games) and the amount of charge inside the meter dictates whether you fail to toss the boulder out of your way or not. There could even be a score tracker that shows how fast your pokemon was able to lift it and the distance you were able to toss it based on how full the charge meter was when you tossed the boulder out of the way.

I could imagine something similar with Rock Smash as well.

I was thinking maybe Surf would have directional control on the bottom screen as well as maybe a way of gaining a score boost that could allow you to move faster.

Fly would basically become Soaring that is triggered and controlled on the bottom screen maybe with a way of doing some flying tricks triggered on the bottom screen that would rack up points, maybe it would even time you on how fast you could move from point a to point b.

Flash might be a neat mini game that you use to scare away wild pokemon in dark areas to lower encounter rates by tapping the touch screen to light up one particular direction so wild encounters could sneak up on you based on which areas are not lit up, maybe flash could also make hidden items "sparkle" in the light

These are just a few of HM's that could have touch screen mini games. I just overall want to see the touch screen be used to affect the players physical environment rather than just being menus and features that are completely outside of the player character's control.