Which Pokemon Game/Gen is your favorite?

[Pike]

Gold/Silver for me! It took just the right amount of things that made the original great and added just the right amount of new stuff. I also loved the introduced day/night cycles.

[Jiro]

Gold/Silver is as far as I will really go. I mean, I will play the other games, sure, but everything past the Pokémon introduced in Gold/Silver is just false.

The original is still the best though.

[Del Murder]

Pokemon Yellow is the best Pokemon game and will continue to be so until they remake it.

Second: HeartGold

[Raistlin]

Red forever!

(I haven't actually played any other Pokemon game)

[Denmark]

Gold/Silver are the best and will continue to be the best.

[Aulayna]

Fire Red/Leaf Green

Combining the awesomeness of the first gen with the lessons they learned between G/S/D and R/S/E.

Second would be Heart Gold and Soul Silver for similar reasons.

[Skyblade]

Pokemon Yellow is the best Pokemon game and will continue to be so until they remake it.

Second: HeartGold

Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness is superior.

If we're going for handhelds, I'd probably say that Platinum is my favorite. The Sinnoh era just did a ton of stuff really, really well. After that, probably Yellow, then Crystal.

[Bolivar]

I'm gonna go with Gen 2 although I never beat 'em. Pike gave the correct rationale, plus I love walking around with my top Poke and talking to them!!!

[Quindiana Jones]

Adding my voice to the crowd here and saying that the second generation is the best. It actually added to the first generation, and improved the game in many ways, rather than just replacing everything with an inferior copy. SoulSilver remains the best Pokémon game.

Yellow is a close second, however.

[Del Murder]

I will say the last fight of G/S when you face your R/B character is epic and they have yet to top this in a subsequent Pokemon game.

[Tigmafuzz]

tl;drG/S/C

I beat Red and Blue at the same time, trying really hard to get all the pokemon I needed to complete my pokedex (the first time I beat the elite four I had 142 caught, and I was really proud of myself for almost having it finished, just hoping that the game wouldn't end after I beat them) and didn't actually end up completing my pokedex until Yellow came out, because then I could get Vaporeon and I also learned about the Mew trick which I was lucky enough to be able to do in Red since I had missed a trainer. It was a glorious adventure and honestly one of the best worlds a person can be introduced to in a game. I finally got all 151 on my pokedex for each of the games, and I was so proud of myself I could barely contain my excitement. I wasted a bunch of time on Pokemon Pinball and the GBC version of the Trading Card Game, trying to complete all I could manage in those games (never did get all the cards or catch Mew in the pinball game though) and when I found out there a whole new set of pokemon I was practically bouncing off the asylum walls.

But when I first started Silver, it was... meh. It seemed odd. I preferred the games of the first gen by a wide margin. It wasn't until I got really far into it that it started to grow on me at all. I had all battle animations set to off in order to save time because the game was really slow and I wasn't good with batteries then, so when I finally started Gold I put it down and started the same adventure on the other cartridge in order to catch up and beat them at the same time like I did with Red and Blue. I left the battle animations on this time, and the world grew on me even more. It became more familiar to me than the original since I was spending much more time on it, and it felt even better to play it. I beat both games, and then finally saved up enough to get Crystal on ebay (I was like 14 when I started pokemon, ~17 I think when I got Gold and Silver). And Crystal was the best of the three. I accomplished everything I possibly could in that game aside from getting Celebi. I've probably spent more time investigating everything you could possibly do in Crystal than in any other pokemon game, and probably more than most other games I've ever played. I got my pokedex filled out to 250 in all three games, and even...

I will say the last fight of G/S when you face your R/B character is epic and they have yet to top this in a subsequent Pokemon game.

I will agree with this. Never before have I felt so scared and excited at the same time. I got to fight the ultimate trainer I had created in the first game. I got to take down myself. Easily one of the top ten greatest video game moments for me.

Then the third gen happened. Now, I'm not saying Emerald isn't a great game, but Ruby and Sapphire both leave a little something to be desired. Not to mention the fact that all three have a ridiculous water:land ratio compared to the previous maps, and ALL THE MUSIC IS TRUMPETS. (SPOILER)


I did enjoy the third gen a lot, and it was a grand adventure... but come on. The trend seems to be that anyone who started with the third gen main games loved it, but anyone who started earlier just couldn't get into it properly because it didn't feel right. FR/LG were really good games as others have mentioned by being wonderful remakes, but they were still remakes. So I can't in good consciousness call them separate games within the generation.

Black and White seemed pretty lame as far as the adventure and "exploring the new world" go. HG/SS weren't bad, but I still prefer the originals for the fact that they were just more fun and immersive as an adventure, as well as not being able to fully appreciate the journey when you've already been through it. Plus, again, remakes.

However, you can't overlook the inclusion of the Mystery Dungeon series, which are really great because turn-based dungeon crawler things like Azure Dreams and Chocobo's Dungeon have always been stupidly fun and can take up a lot of time trying to work your way slowly towards become powerful enough to take on anything that comes your way. And there's Pokemon Conquest on the DS, which is even more wonderful because FFT/Nobunaga's Ambition/Tactics Ogre/etc. combined with pokemon is quite possibly the greatest idea for a game anyone has ever had (even though it could have been done better).

So even though it would probably be easy for me to rank my favorite pokemon games throughout the entire series, ranking the collective games of each generation would be very difficult. I'll just stick with what I enjoyed the most as a classic pokemon game, and say the second gen was the best, which also seems to be the majority opinion so far.

[Pete for President]

Reb/Blue for sure!

[Night Fury]

Gold and Silver. It had improved graphics, better music, MORE POKEMON WHICH WERE ALL AWESOME AS trout. There was the day to night thing, breeding features and loads more.

Also, it has these bad boys!

Man the moment when me and my Uncle were playing this game (My uncle is only 1 year older than me, so we both grew up with pokemon together) and we were like OMG WHAT IS A RAIKOU?! and we spent the rest of that day tracking him down!!!

[Bubba]

I really enjoyed Gold/Silver but Yellow still has the edge for me. I liked how it tied in with the series and the fact that Pikachu was knob and wouldn't go in his pokeball.

I also remember having a legendary fight with Lt. Surge. He annihilated all my effective Pokemon then I managed to take off the final half of his energy with Pikachu... good times

[Yar]

Fire Red and Leaf Green are my favorite! I just LOVE that story. The GBA remakes were such an improvement.

I also have an affinity for the first 151 Pokemon. I think anything more is sacrilege. Although I will play the Gold/Silver/Crystal games just fine.