Research Does anyone in the world play any Pokemon game older than Pokemon sword and shield?

Do you still play any Generation VII Pokemon games or older?


  • Total voters
    105

Mario60866iPod13

Banned deucer.
I've been playing my older games a lot recently. I've been playing my old save files on Sapphire and Platinum, and recently I tried Let's go Eevee. I also want to replay Pokemon Black 2 this Saturday.

Let's Go Eevee is too cute
I got a heart tailed Eevee at the beginning of the game, and I named her Cupcake. I love my Eevee! She is so sweet and cuddly and cute!
Don't worry, since I beat the game, I did get some decently strong Pokemon too. I have a Melmetal, a Charizard, and a Dragonite for good measure. My Charizard is my ace; he can probably wreck most of the trainers in the entire game!
I also caught a Mewtwo in Cerulean Cave.
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
I think all of the games have their upsides and their downsides. Sword & Shield in particular was in its prime during a key transition point during my life where I was rapidly losing interest in Pokémon for the first time, and as a result I never really gave the game a fair shot at first, and still struggle to do so to this day. I've had a high outlook for 2022's Pokémon lineup for reasons of my own, but until that time came I've been keeping myself busy with other game series, primarily. Notably, my main focus this year has been for Mario Kart's 30th anniversary, but as far as Pokémon is concerned, I find myself wanting to play the old spinoffs more (including the Ranger trilogy, gee who would've guessed that?) but not having the time to do so. I own a good selection of them and tend to be of the belief that the increase in freedom spinoff developers had led to better products than your average main series title. I say "HAD led" because spinoff games have taken an absolute dumpster dive within the past five years ever since the Nintendo Switch launched and all we've gotten since then that's even remotely close to the glory days was the Pokémon Snap reboot and a Mystery Dungeon remake.

Certainly a good start, but we need more of those games. And I do mean "need". Series like Pinball, Colloseum, Ranger, even one-off games like 2012's Conquest for the DS, all of these are a part of the franchise's history that may have brought other fans closer to the core series and as such should be preserved as best as possible.
 
I've been playing my way through every main series title, starting with Red and Blue (well, actually I started with Yellow because I was intending to Nuzlocke them and I put Red down after losing a mon to the Rocket with the level 16 Raticate). Have cleared Yellow, Crystal (including Red), Emerald (not including Steven because I got tired of grinding), and FireRed (including the Elite Four rematches). Currently in the Platinum postgame intending to beat the Elite Four rematches there.
 
I have emulators for gens 2-5 and Pokemon Stadium 1 on my phone. Imo it's the best way to play. Free and doesn't require any equipment that you wouldn't have on you at all times anyway. I also have a gen 4 emulator with a randomizer on my PC to do challenge runs. The 2x speed options on emulators make the slow pace of older games more tolerable while rom hacks like Crystal Clear and Blaze Black reinvigorate single player mode in ways that Gamefreak would never dare try.

Occasionally I boot up my Game Boy Color and play Red a little just for the childhood nostalgia.
 

ScraftyIsTheBest

On to new Horizons!
is a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
I do occasionally when I feel like it because I enjoy reliving the good ol' days.

Right now I am making it one of my current projects to revisit just about every old Pokemon game that I own pre-Gen 8 and building teams with them, and in doing so I also currently take interest in studying the game design and structure of each Pokemon game that has existed thus far, down to the level curve, what the game wants me to do and where to go, and whatnot, and it's incredibly interesting to me to see to study what each game was trying to do and how Pokemon game design philosophy has changed over the years and across the games, and in some ways by revisiting many of them in hindsight I have newfound appreciation for many older Pokemon games and like them more when playing them in retrospect than I did when I played them when they were new.

A big thing I am trying now is to use rotating teams of more than six in many of these games, even in games where the EXP All wasn't a thing. Sometimes it's a semi-rotational team where my early team composition is built of early game crutches such as the early bugs and the mammal, which I eventually ditch and replace with later game mons who evolve later as the game goes on, and rinse and repeat. Sometimes it takes grinding, which I feel is particularly a pain in RBY, but fortunately Gens 3, 4, and 5 are very generous with making grinding both easier and more fun thanks to either Trainer rematches in Hoenn and Sinnoh or great training spots in Unova, which is a wonderful treat. It's interesting to look at these games with the intention of studying them and how they were designed, which allowed me to look at them through a different perspective and see how the design philosophy of Pokemon games has changed over the years.

Also with these new playthroughs I have also made efforts to use mons I had never used previously. But most of all is actually trying to integrate the region's pseudo-legendary into my team each and every time. As much as I adore the pseudo-legendary group, until recently I never actually used the pseudo-legendary on my in-game team because I never had the guts or the patience to train one, but now I am repeatedly making it a personal goal to try to get the generation's pseudo-legendary in each game and reap the benefits of it in the end-game. I do not use "old-gen" pseudos in said games though: so in other words, I stick specifically to Garchomp in Diamond and Platinum, Hydreigon in BW and BW2, Goodra in XY, Kommo-o in SM and USUM, and whatnot. For remakes I use the main pseudo of the generation of the game they originated from: so my current HeartGold team has Tyranitar, while my Alpha Sapphire team has a Salamence and Metagross at present. It is quite fun to actually give myself the additional challenge of attempting to raise the pseudo-legendary from their weak base forms and middle forms, and then get the rush of excitement of having their awesome final forms to kick butt in the late game and post game. It's a nice way to give myself a bit of an additional challenge during these playthroughs imo.
 
I go back and play older games fairly often. I rarely replay the main story of the games, but I often go back to do new things in the post-games.

If we look at how it has been for the past few years, I have gone back to many older games and generations. In 2020, I went back to Gen 5 to complete the Battle Subway once and for all, doing that took me around nine months. Last year, I played all games from Gen 4-5 as part of a project I was working on... and it isn't finished yet, but I have decided to put it on hold until I feel like going back to it. Towards the end of last year, I also started replaying the main game of Black (I also did all minor things in the post-game) and completed it earlier this year. But it was on emulator since theres no way I'm ever restarting my Black cart. I am planning to continue with Black 2 sometime soon, but I have had to postpone it for the moment since I have so much else to do that has been stealing my time. I have also started on a new project this year, it will involve many games from Gen 3-7 and it will likely take several months to complete.

In comparison, I haven't played Sword at all since October, and I haven't played it seriously since June. While I like the game, I just don't feel like doing anything more in it at the moment. However, I am planning to go back to it once more later this year. I have been playing Legends: Arceus recently as well, but I completed everything I wanted to do in it last week, so I have stopped playing it. I doubt I will go back to it unless there's more (free) DLC or other new additions that I just have to get. I don't own any other Pokémon games for the Switch apart from those two.

Looking back now, I think I have played the older Pokémon games more than the Pokémon games for the Switch during the past 2-3 years.
 

BIG ASHLEY

ashley
is a Community Contributor
the most recent games in the series i have played are usum, which really don't feel that old to me (FIVE YEARS?!? wtf)

if anyone wishes to buy me a switch i think swsh look fun
 

Mario60866iPod13

Banned deucer.
I played a nuzlocke of XD Gale of Darkness within the last six months. It was a pretty challenging one.
Oh geez! I did not know anyone would ever want to do a Nuzlocke of THAT one! I had a somewhat difficult time with it as-is!

Anyway I hope you had fun! I didn't like the story mode of XD but I do like the available Pokemon and the pvp features!
 
I occasionally go back to older games. Most recent older game runs were Diamond, HeartGold, White, and Y, and I plan to do White 2 in the near future. Outside of Y(which I used a hacked 2DS to back up my old save), all of them were games I obtained in used game stores to complete my English Pokemon DS game collection(I had Japanese versions of Heartgold, White, and White 2 before that, and no versions of Diamond whatsoever) The only older games I don't own physical versions of right now are Red and Gold, mostly because those were the versions my younger brother used when we were kids, while I used Yellow and Crystal(though I did also own Blue and Silver)
 
I am breeding an Adamant Solrock in Pokemon Emerald and transfer breedjects with items to Gen 4 with rare items like Rare Candies.
Ah, I really wish we could still transfer stuff to home with certain items. Would save quite a lot of BP and/or time sorting out stuff if I could transfer like 4 life orbs and focus sashes from older games.
 

Deleted User 400951

Banned deucer.
I have my original Platinum save that I started when I was young. It's over 10 years old and I still play it every now and then - whether it's for Battle Tower streaks (can't break 41 >_<), trying to finish the natdex (im actually only one mon off of having seen everything), or just battling for the sake of having fun and getting level 100s. I have over 850 hours logged iirc. It's kinda sad becuase the game cart is old and I'm at this point just praying it doesn't die out on me.

I also have a BW2 save that i started in 2020 seeing my old save got deleted by some jerk. I have around 300 hours on this and i just spend time in the PWT, the battle subway, or just training.

IDK, I just really like battling in game. I guess its the nostalgia? But its still fun. Especially the battle tower/subway and whatnot.

I don't really play any other Pokemon games at the moment.
 

Mario60866iPod13

Banned deucer.
I have my original Platinum save that I started when I was young. It's over 10 years old and I still play it every now and then - whether it's for Battle Tower streaks (can't break 41 >_<), trying to finish the natdex (im actually only one mon off of having seen everything), or just battling for the sake of having fun and getting level 100s. I have over 850 hours logged iirc. It's kinda sad becuase the game cart is old and I'm at this point just praying it doesn't die out on me.

I also have a BW2 save that i started in 2020 seeing my old save got deleted by some jerk. I have around 300 hours on this and i just spend time in the PWT, the battle subway, or just training.

IDK, I just really like battling in game. I guess its the nostalgia? But its still fun. Especially the battle tower/subway and whatnot.

I don't really play any other Pokemon games at the moment.
I played on my old Platinum file for ~830 hours (between August 10, 2014 and April 2016) before my save disaster happened and I lost my save file. I now play on a replica of this save file I created using PKHeX.
 
I don't even like Sword and Shield that much (I put like 300+ hours onto them before I stopped playing). I frencuently play older generations, specially Emerald, original G&S, HG/SS, Platinum and BW2.
 

Coronis

Impressively round
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
I go back and play Explorers of Sky and Ranger 1/mainly 2 fairly regularly. I like to occasionally go back and replay main series games with different teams, I have pretty much all of them except Alpha Sapphire, Sun/Ultra Sun, Shield and Shining Pearl. (lot less incentive to buy all of them with how prevalent online is plus having to pay for them myself nowadays!) Fortunately though this means I still have at least one original save in each set of games which is kinda nice.
 
Yeah cuz the old ones are better:totodiLUL:

I still think the older games, DS era in particular, were a lot more fully realized and content filled than alotta the 3d ones tbh. I haven't touched Sword since I played it cuz the game really gives me no reason to. No meaningful postgame content, a shallow main campaign, piss easy difficulty. I've heard good things about the dlc but frankly I'm not dropping 30 bucks on a game I don't like lol. And the same goes for XY too tbh, as well as both ORAS and BDSP which I do not enjoy for different reasons.

I've been replaying a lot of Pokemon games recently and I feel like you can tell a difference between something like BW or Platinum, with their fully realized campaigns and fun side content, versus SWSH which has like 2 undercooked dungeons and a borderline nonexistant story. Despite the advances in hardware it feels like the series has regressed in terms of content and polish tbh (This is excluding PLA, which is the best Pokemon game in a decade tbh).
 
I've been replaying a lot of Pokemon games recently and I feel like you can tell a difference between something like BW or Platinum, with their fully realized campaigns and fun side content, versus SWSH which has like 2 undercooked dungeons and a borderline nonexistant story. Despite the advances in hardware it feels like the series has regressed in terms of content and polish tbh (This is excluding PLA, which is the best Pokemon game in a decade tbh).
I think Sun and moon had more side varied gameplay and more interesting characters than X&Y at least. But yeah, there's been a big shift away from complexity in favour of reptitive, minimal thought required stuff like the Wild Area. There are barely any original caves with action puzzles.
Go showed Game Freak that complicated stuff like the Battle Frontier are not a necessary financial investment. That NPCs never need to be a real challenge.

I worry that dynamax candies could have very easily become linked to microtransactions. And that SwSh had basically nobody from another region show up.
On the plus side, actually building a competitive team seems to get easier and easier. With mints a cheaper bottle caps. Hopefully next gen's battle tower will give us more BP for a streak.
 
I started playing Crystal a few months ago on my 3DS. I got through a couple of gyms and then my 3DS stopped charging and that was the end of that :psysad::psysad::psysad::psysad:
 

The Mind Electric

Calming if you look at it right.
Other than BD/SP, I have played exclusively games older than Sw/Sh. This is both because I think the older games are generally better and because I have huge nostalgia for the DS. I wonder if those two things are connected. I'll probably play Legends eventually, but I haven't really been motivated to. I heard it was alright though.
 

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