Honestly, I'd rather see another studio take a crack at the franchise. I don't know whether Gamefreak have lost a lot of important talent over the years or if they just got lazy because their games are guaranteed to sell no matter how poorly they're produced, but they do not know how to make games in the current era. Full stop. The last handful of mainline Pokemon titles have been unacceptably poor quality, and Nintendo won't light a fire under their ass because... why would they, when they're already printing money?

I think it would be wildly beneficial to the health of the franchise if a completely new studio took the wheel for a minute. They don't have to reinvent the game mechanics or take the story in some dark and gritty direction or anything like that, but if they just made it functional that'd already be a huge step up over Gamefreak's last few releases.

Personally, I'd love to see Retro Studios take a crack at a mainline Pokemon title. They've already got a very close relationship with Nintendo, and have released nothing but bangers.

Just go play pokemon unbound. It's better than anything nintendo would come up with.

I mean, this is just Cassette Beasts, and it is indeed a damn good game.

I want a Pokémon MMO

I want a real 3rd person open world coop Pokémon game, instead of Nintendo attacking indie devs that are eating their 30 year old lunch Nintendo never felt like eating.

Old mechanics? No. Old aesthetics? Yes. Pixel graphics are best.

I want to see pokemon red/blue/yellow absolutely fully maximum modernised. I want to go through the world in VR. I want to throw the poke balls into battle for real stashed on my belt. I want to be able to yell commands to a living, breathing pokemon dancing around in the arena.

An old style game would be perfect for mobile. Not too graphically intensive so battery won't drain as fast as Pokémon Go and should run on even budget phones.

They could then keep the 3D games for consoles.

Absolutely yes. I much prefer the 2D Pokémon artstyle to the 3D models.

Also !pokemon@lemm.ee might like this question—kind of saddened to see things that would fit in active niche communities only ever get posted in a giant Games community, but it is also very unfair of me to expect everyone to know every community ever, and you generally get rewarded with more engagement in the big tent communities. Went and crossposted it myself, people answered

That's called corromon. But yes in several ways the old sprites were better

3D was a mistake. Gen 5 is peak graphics

Old graphics sure but mechanically Pokémon games kinda suck, especially the older ones. I'll be honest I love the collection and monster part of the game but everything else is simply bad and I usually give up after 10 hours. It's such a pointless slog.

I really stopped caring for Pokemon after X and Y, and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. The switch games were big misses. I kinda liked Sword and Shield, but they had no lasting power on me. Scarlet and Violet are by far the worst Pokemon games to have ever come out of mainline Pokemon.

I didn't play through ~~Marcus~~ Arceus at all, even though I own it. Maybe I will give that a shot.

If you would like to see something just like it, https://store.steampowered.com/app/1218210/Coromon/ scratches that itch.

I’m not totally sure what that would add to the experience. The core battles are still the same, just with more added on. I like pixel graphics and old gameboy music, but I don’t see why people would buy it. It’s seems strange considering it would be the same game as before, but less.

Pokémon: Violet except: it’s 2D, scarcely animated, without double-battles, without shinies, without several types, without terastallizing, without the open world, without the rideable legendary, and so on.

That was me imagining it if it were limited to gen 1 gameplay. Maybe there’s a case to remake regions in like a style like emerald, but I still think it’s just a game that already exists but with less.

If you don’t know about them already, you should look into pokémon rom-hacks. Some are kinda like what you described, but they add their own twist like changing the story, adding new types, or adding newer pokémon or mechanics. A lot of them are really well made too.

HD/2D Johto remake let’s fucking goooooooo

If it means a return to random encounters, no absolutely not. There's a reason I don't go back and replay the older games even though I have fond memories of them. That reason is largely Zubat. Fuck you Zubat.

But also, aside from a handful of bugs and performance problems Scarlet/Violet and Legends: Arceus are the best the franchise has ever been. I'd rather they refine what they're already doing and keep making things better rather then regress purely to appease someone's misguided nostalgia.

I would call the new ones not even interesting enough to pirate, so yes.

Something like sword/arceus style but not garbage with mechanics around the gba era.

So no giga dumbshit or similar but still special/physical change.

Also if we're requesting unicorns be brought to reality, more options. I wouldn't hate the all the new giga shit if I could disable its cutscenes. It wasn't even cool the first time.

How old is "old" for this purpose?

A return to basics would be so much better than the rushed messes Game Freak puts out today.

Ever since the switch to 3D, I knew they would never look back. Biggest reason why fan games are so valuable to me. The only thing I like about the upper half gens (not including 5) are the pokemon (case by case and not including regionals) and the terastal mechanic, in terms of the games and their mechanics. Gens 6-9 I really don't have almost any care for any of the important characters outside of the designs for characters/character art for characters like Geeta, Diantha, Brasius, Kiawe, and Rika. Those are pretty much the only characters who's names I could even remember.

That's mostly due to, in my opinion, when I think they started absolutely dumbing and watering down the story and characters so they could start focusing on nostalgia baiting people to keep them coming back while also completely dumbing down exploration as well. I think two of the only characters from gens 6-9 I really care about were Lysander and Kiawe because I thought Lysander's genocide plot was interesting enough and Kiawe only because of the episodes of the anime I saw (which is kinda cheating since the anime is where they put every ounce of character into 99.99% of all important NPCs).

Pretty sure a large amount of fans would absolutely love returning to an older form, at least aesthetically, myself included, but good luck convincing Sintendo of anything without getting their corporate legal open secret stasi (lawyers) getting involved.

Bro what do you mean, if there’s a single franchise that has not changed its mechanics is Pokémon. Maybe you mean a game absent the gimmick mechanic they put in every gen? Or are you crazy enough to suggest we go back to the days before physical/special split?