With the excellent Pokemon Legends Arceus marking what looks to be the start of a whole new era for the franchise, this felt like as great a time as any to stop and take stock of the state of the franchise as it stands at the present moment in time. And so, we decided to go ahead and rank the Pokemon games. To be clear, we didn’t rank all of them – that would be insane, and also redundant, since so many games in the series are just slight variations of each other. 

Instead, what we did was take the best representative for each campaign and used it as a stand in for all other games that are also based on the same campaign. Put simply, this list doesn’t rank Pokemon Red/Blue, Yellow, FireRed/LeafGreen, and Let’s Go separately – it just takes what we think is the best one out of those, and ranks that one. (As for which one the best one is, you’re going to have to find that out for yourself now, won’t you?).

Is that clear? Great. Then let’s get started.

10. POKEMON X/Y

Pokemon X/Y was probably the first game in the series that caused wide scale disappointment among the fans – everyone had some complaint or the other with it. It makes sense – the game, which marked the series’ long awaited jump to 3D, was definitely a letdown on many fronts. The story was baffling and banal (even by Pokemon standards), the difficulty level was ramped down to such absurd levels that you could very literally finish the game without even paying attention to what was happening on screen, the region was extremely linear (and lacking in dungeons to a severe degree), there was nothing in the way of a post game, it pandered far too much to the first generation of Pokemon games, and it introduced the smallest roster of new Pokemon to date.

But there was also a lot to like about it – the Player Search System it introduced remains the single best online suite in any Pokemon game to date, and really, one the best multiplayer suites out there, player character customization was a hugely beloved feature that went on to become a series mainstay, it took the first steps towards making Pokemon training and team composition easier and more transparent by giving players direct control over the growth of their Pokemon, it added a brand new type that upended the meta game almost entirely, the Mega Evolutions battle gimmick was really fun, the design of the new Pokemon was uniformly excellent, and it looked charming as all heck with its chibi style 3D graphics. In hindsight, X/Y have become the most inessential Pokemon entries, because almost everything they did well went on to be appropriated by future games in the series, who would do it much better – and its shortcomings never got the chance to be fixed by an expansion or re-release, as would happen for so many other games in the series. But in spite of that, they’re very fun games, and probably exemplify the sentiment that even a “bad” Pokemon game remains an extremely well made, charming, and satisfying game to play through.

9. POKEMON BLACK 2/WHITE 2

The fifth generation of Pokemon was a wild time for the franchise, rife with experimentation and all sorts of new things the series had never dared attempt until then. One of those was a direct sequel – the first and only direct sequel to a game taking place in the same region the series has seen to date.

It made sense, though – the excellent Pokémon Black/White (which we’ll get to later on in the list) left a lot of sequel hooks in their story, and Unova was an amazing setting that clearly had more to offer. Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 deliver on that, but the adventure we get is decidedly inferior to the original games. While these are still excellent games, and essential for anyone who enjoyed the original Black/White, the campaign eschews a lot of the boldness and novelty that made the original games stand out so much, squandering the narrative opportunities hinted at by the originals (and in some cases it outright undermines them), and mechanically don’t really expand on the original games enough to really stand out on their own. They do offer a meaty, hefty post-game, and a frankly absurd amount of content – and all of it is absolutely great. But when you play through all Pokemon games, these ones tend to stand out less than the others – because very honestly, most of what they do was already done better by the original Black/White just one year prior, and they don’t really bring enough unique stuff of their own to the table to make up for that.

8. POKEMON ULTRA SUN/ULTRA MOON

Pokemon Sun/Moon were extremely interesting games – bold and ambitious, willing to experiment with the structure of the franchise, doubling down on a pointed narrative and storytelling focus, and giving us the most fleshed out and believable look at the world of Pokemon to date. They offered a lot of excellent stuff – Alola is a great region with a lot of personality and a distinct aesthetic, the new Pokemon designs are amazing and contextualized in extremely believable ways as part of a larger ecology and even the story and characters were interesting. But Sun/Moon were extremely flawed games, with their story falling apart towards the final act, extreme linearity and railroading making for the least player driven Pokemon game to date, an overabundance of cutscenes with trite and repetitive dialog that you could not ever skip, an online suite that was a shocking regression on the excellent X/Y, and, yet again, an acute lack of post-game content.

Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon… well, they don’t really fix Sun/Moon, but they patch them up to a level that they are no longer the worst games in the series (if Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon didn’t exist, yes, I would have absolutely placed the original Sun/Moon at the bottom of this list). They tweak the story and characters to be less bizarre towards the end, the cutscenes spacing and story pacing is improved, areas get bigger, allowing for more exploration (though overall progression remains extremely rigidly linear), the post game gets a hefty chunk of new content to sink teeth into, and they add an absurd amount of content to the original game as well. They are also among the most difficult games in the series, with a certain specific fight near the end being legendary for how brutal it is.

Sun/Moon, much like most other games in the series in the 3DS era, are flawed and a tale of missed opportunity – but Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon existing at least makes that missed potential slightly easier to swallow, if only because it hints at what might have been had developers Game Freak taken the time to properly flesh things out with their games.

7. POKEMON SWORD/SHIELD

The single most controversial entry in the franchise, Pokemon Sword/Shield became flashpoints for controversy. There were loads of reasons for this – a decade of resentment building over repeated disappointing entries, poor communication by the developers and publishers for taking away a lot of content that players expect from these games, and extremely poor graphical quality, even considering Pokemon has never been a technical showpiece, all became easy latching on points for the backlash these games generated.

I would argue that to a very large degree, the backlash was not undeserved. Pokemon Sword and Shield are not bad games at all, but they are very clearly products of a rushed and troubled development cycle. The new region they introduced was visually distinct and hints at lush beauty and interesting lore, but the games never get around to it. There was, at launch, a total paucity of post game content again. The games forced further mechanics that trivialized the difficulty even further, making for the easiest games in the series at the time of release. The Wild Area concept, a mini open world region for players to explore and catch Pokemon in, was conceptually sound, but fumbled in execution. The online functionality was a baffling step back from the 3DS era. They cut down almost half of the roster of Pokemon.

But in spite of that laundry list of complaints, the core campaign was extremely compelling and fun, and knew to get out of the players’ way to let them enjoy the adventure at their own pace (something the Alola games had categorically failed at); new mechanics such as Max Raids were excellent, and giving players full control over how their Pokemon grow was game changing. The characters are excellent. And while the Wild Area was underdeveloped, and the story never fleshed out, both managed to stumble upon some rather unforgettable moments nevertheless, with a certain late game story development still ranking as one of my favorite story moments in the series. And all of this is before we consider the excellent expansions, which actually addressed a lot of the complaints players had with the base games – they added in another couple hundred of the missing Pokemon back in, they delivered fully fleshed out open world areas that properly leveraged 3D space and delivered a believable patchwork of biomes and ecosystems that rewarded player exploration, and they offered some actual meaningfully difficult battles as well; plus, given that they are meant to be post-game content, they naturally address the absence of post-game in the base titles too.

Even with the expansions, Sword and Shield are an unfortunate tale of missed potential (I’m sure you’re picking up on this being a running theme) – but in spite of what their troubled reputation might suggest, they are very good games, and absolutely worth playing regardless of their many stumbles. What they do well, they do really well, and ultimately, their take on the core Pokemon formula, while finally beginning to strain at the seams by this point, still delivered a compelling, engaging, and fun adventure.

6. POKEMON EMERALD

This is likely to be the most controversial entry on this list, because Pokemon Emerald is beloved by a army of Pokemon fans. You can see why – Emerald, building upon the good but flawed Ruby/Sapphire, is arguably the apex of Pokemon games in almost every regard. The campaign was long and challenging; there was a ridiculous amount of side and optional content; the Hoenn region in Emerald is extremely memorable, with some standout locations, excellent dungeons, and fantastic level design; the story and characters were the best the series had seen at the time Emerald came out; the post-game was meaty and over-delivered, marking the debut of the fan favorite Battle Frontier (the absence of which in every new game in the series is lamented to this day).

Pokemon Emerald was absolutely amazing, and honestly I have nothing bad to say about it. Why, then, is it ranked so relatively low on the list? The answer is simple, we have now gotten to the part of the list where every single game is an amazing, excellent title and could justify placement at the top, depending on how you choose to classify and rank things. Basically, we’re now looking at six, amazing, excellent games, and trying to rank them is a bit like splitting hairs – no matter what you do, you’re still left with six amazing games. Emerald ranks lower than the others in this bunch because I feel the ones higher on this list than it did everything better for my liking. But that doesn’t take away from how incredible Pokemon Emerald is. It’s an amazing game, and legitimately one of the best RPGs of all time – everyone owes it to themselves to check it out.

5. POKEMON BLACK/WHITE

Pokémon Black/White marked the fourth new Pokemon entry on the DS, an at the time unprecedented volume of mainline games on a single system. Game Freak knew that to make these games stand out, they would have to work hard to give them their own identity. And they decided to do just that, in the process delivering among the best, and probably still among the most ambitious, games in the series to date.

Everything about Pokémon Black/White was so incredible – Unova as a region, basing itself on the urban aesthetic of continental United States, was a breath of fresh air after four regions based on Japan; a massive roster of new Pokemon (the single largest new batch to date, in fact) headlined these games, with Pokémon Black/White making the bold decision to only have new Pokemon in the game for the duration of the campaign – you’d be able to bring in your older pals, but they’d be limited to post-game content, meaning every new encounter was fresh and exciting in a way it hadn’t been for over a decade by the time Black/White came out.

And speaking of post-game, the post-game was fleshed out and meaty (the last time a new generation would deliver on this front). As good as that post-game was, it paled next to the campaign, a blisteringly fast story driven adventure (yes) that actually raised troubling ethical questions about the concept of catching and battling Pokemon (yes), with some legitimately well written characters and antagonists (yes), pulling in and recontextualizing the regular “win badges and beat The Pokemon League” conceit into the framework of a broader story (yes), delivering some legitimately surprising story developments and twists (yes), and culminating in an incredibly epic final act and a hell of a conclusion (yes).

All this, and I still haven’t talked about how this game marked the first time the series did away with the annoying HMs as a progression mechanic, the new experience curve mechanics that worked so much better for game balance than the EXP All that the games would force on the players in future entries, how much optional content there was, how excellent the region and dungeon design was, the new battle styles the games introduced (Rotation and Triple battles, I miss you…), how it simultaneously managed to represent the series’ first forays into 3D spaces, while delivering eye catching and attractive sprite art that remains arguably the best aesthetic the series has had to date… honestly, I can gush about these games forever, they were utterly excellent, thoroughly compelling, and so perfect, so great, so ambitious, that at the time they painted a bright picture for the future of the franchise.

The decade that would follow would not deliver on their promise – in part because Black/White remain the lowest selling mainline entries in the series to date, I assume. And that really sucks, because until very recently, Pokémon Black/White was the last time the series managed to deliver a truly great game. If you can, I urge you to track these down and play them – they are amazing, not just at being Pokemon games, just at delivering incredible RPGs.

4. POKEMON FIRERED/LEAFGREEN

Pokemon Red/Blue were borderline perfect – which is a terrible burden for games launching a series developed by a small, boutique development house that clearly was unprepared for how big their passion project would become. But let’s put aside that broader context for a second and just talk about Pokemon Red/Blue as games assessed on their own merits. To this day, those titles hold up. Oh sure, their primitive and rudimentary graphics are a bit of an adjustment, and they are so buggy that they would make a Bethesda game blush. But holy crap, did they nail the game design side of things perfectly. They took players on an amazing adventure, simultaneously breezy and challenging in just the right amounts, with a great campaign, amazing and memorable creature designs, wonderful lock and key progression, and a lot of optional content for players who went off the beaten path.

Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, which remade Red/Blue, are all of that but better. Modernizing the original games to bring them to the standard of the then-current third generation of Pokemon, they polish away the bugs, modernize the graphics, add even more optional content, introduce a lot of QoL and UX functionality the original titles were missing, add a ridiculously hefty chunk of post-game content (the one area the originals were, understandably, lacking in), flesh out their world and region even more, and do so all while remaining incredibly faithful to games that were played and beloved by 40 million players worldwide. They also started off the series’ now longstanding tradition of revisiting older titles via enhanced remakes, and they set the bar incredibly high, delivering the definitive take on the Kanto saga, a take so definitive that even the more modern Pokemon Let’s Go games, which are also remakes of the original generation, did not supplant them.

FireRed/LeafGreen are perfect. As I mentioned earlier, we’re splitting hairs at this point.

3. POKEMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS

Ten years of constant disappointment and unfulfilled promises, mismanagement and rushed development cycles, ten years of consistently managing to lower the bar, and still not meeting it. There’s no wonder that people had no confidence coming into Pokemon Legends: Arceus, because the last decade has been a difficult one for Pokemon fans.

But Game Freak finally threw off the shackles of 25 years of tradition and reinvented Pokemon in a bold new format – and managed to nail it, hitting the ball out of the park on their very first go. A lot like the original Pokemon Red/Blue, amusingly enough. 

Pokemon Legends is such an incredible game. The open world design lends itself beautifully well to the Pokemon franchise, The Pokemon themselves are recontextualized as dangerous, lethal wildlife, the world is harsh and unforgiving and requires the player’s wit and ingenuity to traverse, the maps beckon and invite player exploration and discovery, the Pokemon are delightfully well realized as living and breathing flesh and blood members of a larger ecosystem, the changes to the battle mechanics work well for the game, the new additions such as crafting and Pokedex research all contribute to a self perpetuating, ridiculously addictive gameplay loop, the story is surprisingly fun with some great characters, the action RPG segments actually work surprisingly well, there are several dramatic leaps forward in so many areas (from QoL to mechanics to structure) and there is a ridiculous amount of content thrown in, with, yes, a very hefty post game. It is a shockingly accomplished take on an entirely new formula, and like with Pokemon Red/Blue, Game Freak comes dangerously close to getting it perfect on their first go.

Yes, it has flaws – most notably, it is a bad looking game, with the technical aspects and art style never coming together (somehow, it is still a better performing game than something like Sword/Shield, however), and there are a fair few bugs and glitches here. But ultimately, Legends is a bold new step for the series, and one that it manages to take with a surprising amount of confidence and and dexterity, delivering one of the best games on the Switch, and one of the best games in the series in the process.

2. POKEMON PLATINUM

Sinnoh is very legitimately one of the greatest game maps of all time. It’s a masterpiece of design, with ridiculous amounts of visual and location variety (swamps, mountains, snow, beach and coastal areas, forests, small pastoral villages, big urban cities), and an incredible lock and key design that, while overly reliant on an annoying HM mechanic, leads to the best sense of adventure and discovery the player ever gets in the Pokemon franchise. It’s also backed with some amazing lore and backstory, and massive areas that beg to be explored, tucked away with dozens upon dozens of hidden dungeons and optional quests that you could miss for years without even knowing they exist.

Sinnoh, being the region that Pokemon Platinum is set in, is a huge part of why this game is so great. When you have a map this well designed, and progression through it this well designed, you end up with an unforgettable game. But even beyond that, Platinum was just mind blowingly incredible – it has an excellent campaign, a shocking amount of multiplayer modes, great post game (the Battle Frontier returned!), just the right amount of challenge (people tell horror stories about Cynthia to this day), some great and iconic player designs, major strides forward for the series (including the Physical/Special attack split, as well as the introduction of online play), as well as polishing up the considerable rough edges Diamond/Pearl had – those games suffered majorly from the transition from GBA to DS, and are borderline impossible to go back to because of their bevy of technical issues (including a frame rate so low it’s like walking through treacle). 

Platinum remains the definitive take on Sinnoh to this day (even the recent remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl do not supplant it), and is honestly peak Pokemon. Or at least, it would be, were it not for…

1. POKEMON HEARTGOLD/SOULSILVER

You knew this was coming. There is one thing constant in Pokemon lists and fans – HeartGold/SoulSilver are always at the top. And with good reason – these games are literally, legitimately, perfect, absolutely flawless at every single thing they do, while managing to deliver the biggest and best Pokemon games ever. The original Gold/Silver games were already extremely notable for their massive campaign (set across two regions, 16 gym badges, and two separate Pokemon League challenges) and the introduction of several major and mind blowing mechanics for the franchise, including real time time of day and week impacting in-game events, berry farming, Pokeball crafting, shiny Pokemon, trainer rematches, roaming Legendary Pokemon, held items for Pokemon, weather effects in battles and arenas, and the introduction of Dark and Steel Type Pokemon.

HeartGold/SoulSilver have all of that, plus an additional ridiculous amount of content (mainline, post-game, and optional), gorgeous pixel art graphics that keep these games looking the best ones in the series to this day, almost a decade and a half after their original launch, the availability of every single Pokemon at the time all in one game, plus the inclusion of Platinum‘s Battle Frontier, a brand new Safari Zone, brand new mini games, major QoL and UI enhancements (these games are the only ones that can be played almost entirely via touch screen!), full featured (for the time) local and online multiplayer, and the definitive take on one of the most epic final battles in any game ever. Excellent world and dungeon design, some actual challenging battles, an emphasis on player driven exploration and discovery, a non linear campaign that allows players to break sequence multiple times, and snappy and sharp writing. These games are perfect. There is no flaw to them. They represent among the best games ever made, not just for Pokemon, but in general. 

If you are going to play one Pokemon game, make it this one. 13 years after their initial release, and they still have not been topped. They probably never will be.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It’s in the tradition of pretty much all Nintendo portable systems in the past – the Gameboy got Gameboy Color, the DS got DSi, and the 3DS got the New Nintendo 3DS (that was its real name). And while it’s a concept that PlayStation and Xbox both embraced with the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X, it seems like the Switch Pro (we’re sticking with that one till the official name inevitably requires us to call it something else, and presumably something much stupider) will be more along the lines of the old Nintendo handheld upgrades than the console ones.

We can say this because of what the reports that have leaked this system’s existence have told us – these reports have told us of a fairly massive upgrade over the existing Switch system, with a fairly thorough modernization of its capabilities and specs, compared to the more conservative PS4 Pro, for example. These rumours also claim that, unlike the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, which were not permitted to ever have any exclusives – meaning that while games could look and run better on them, they would have to run on base consoles all the same – the Switch Pro will in fact be allowed to have those. In fact, it also sounds like at least a few ones from third parties may even be in the works, games that otherwise wouldn’t work on the Switch.

This all seems to be in line with the kind of upgrades we have been told the Switch Pro will have, which allegedly include major bumps to the SoC’s CPU cores and GPU capabilities, as well as memory bandwidth, thanks to a new chip that is rumoured to be based on the newer, cutting edge Ampere or Turing architectures. More importantly, the Switch Pro is also rumoured to include Nvidia’s vaunted DLSS 2.0 technology, which allows for image upscaling and reconstruction using machine learning, and very often delivering better than native rendered images for very little in the way of performance costs, thanks to specialized hardware. All of this stuff is supposed to make the Switch Pro a hefty update – for example, we know it will support 4K resolutions, though it appears more via DLSS than natively, to be fair. And none of this accounts for other exciting components of the systems that have also been leaked, including a larger OLED screen (versus the current 6.2 inch LCD one), as well as presumably better battery life thanks to a more efficient node for the SoC.

Hefty hardware upgrades, superior construction, and at least some exclusive software make the Switch Pro more than just a simple PS4 Pro style upgrade – while it’s not a full fledged next generation successor, these would bring the Switch Pro closer to that than a PS4 Pro style incremental step up would have been. There’s a reason I specifically invoked the Nintendo handheld upgrades, because, as mentioned, the Switch Pro seems to be following in their footsteps more than in PlayStation or Xbox’s.

The difference is that having substantial upgrades for cheaper handhelds that had been made with fairly obsolete tech to begin with is a fundamentally different proposition than what we are looking at with the Switch. It was easy for Nintendo to have a Gameboy Color that was a major upgrade over the Gameboy, while still being extremely cheap. It was very easy to have a DSi or a New 3DS that provided a substantial improvement over the base systems, while still being priced very similarly. But the Nintendo Switch was not made using cheap or outdated technology. While more console-minded players may often like to sneer at its relatively more limited capabilities, the Switch was using some of the most modern SoC tech available in 2016-17 at mass market prices. Many will probably point to their $1,200 iPhone or Galaxy S and say how it outperforms the $300 Switch – which it should! But that comparison is as facile as is comparing a $2,500 PC to a $500 PS5, and then laughing at the PS5 for being weak in comparison. At those prices, you’re getting some of the best tech there is.

With the Switch already being such modern tech, then, profit margins on it were slimmer. In and of itself, this isn’t really an issue – there was definitely high markup on accessories such as the Joycon controllers (which keep drifting, so you’re probably buying a fair few of them), and Nintendo game prices, as well as increasing digital revenues, have all helped make Nintendo have the single most profitable period any console manufacturer has ever had with the Switch. But the hardware itself, that’s probably harder to iterate on while maintaining profit margins, and keeping it in the same price range as the current Switch, which is generally how their previous portable upgrades have gone. So how do we reconcile that with the seemingly fairly ambitious sounding upgrade the Switch Pro is rumoured to be?

The simple answer here is that the Switch Pro will probably be expensive. By a fair bit over the current model, actually. While putting it in a whole different tier of pricing will be counter to how Nintendo has done things in the past, the Switch is not marketed or positioned as a portable, it’s positioned as a console. And the entire concept of more expensive upgrades is far more commonplace now than it was back in the time of the Nintendo DSi, thanks to annual smartphone and tablet upgrades, or even the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. By allowing themselves to hit a higher price, Nintendo presumably leaves itself more room to make the Switch Pro more capable than they would have been able to make under their older paradigm as well.

How expensive? That’s the (blank hundred dollar) question. There are several routes the company can take here. The first one is to have the Switch Pro take the current Switch’s $299 slot, while pushing the current model down to $249 (or discontinuing it); this, however, feels unlikely. As specified, the Switch Pro seems to be far too ambitious an upgrade to be able to hit a $299 price point while maintaining the kinds of profit margins on hardware Nintendo likes maintaining. Moreover, the same reports that have leaked the system’s existence have mentioned repeatedly that Nintendo is looking at pricing it in a higher tier than the current model.

So let’s go with that option for a second – it’ll be priced higher. Here, too, we have two possibilities. The first is that the Switch Pro takes a $399 price, while the current Switch retains its $299 price, and the Switch Lite keeps its $199 price. $399, however, would make the Switch Pro the most expensive hardware Nintendo has ever put out. It’s actually eye waveringly expensive, and puts it on par with the PS5 Digital Edition, and more expensive than the Xbox Series S. Then again, similar comparisons with the then-current PS4 and Xbox One never held back the original Switch, which was priced equal to the PS4 and Xbox One as well. There’s a possibility Nintendo may feel comfortable with this pricing model for a variety of reasons:

• It keeps things simple, clearly delineating and communicating an entry-, standard-, and premium-level tier to customers;
• $399 gives them higher profit margins than trying to keep the price similar to the current model would net them;
• Switch pricing relative to other consoles has not been an impediment to its success, as mentioned already;
• They probably feel comfortable with a higher price because of their understanding that the Switch Pro is aimed at a smaller niche, and their mass market movers will still be the standard and Lite models;
• It allows them to maintain the $299 and $199 pricing for the Switch and Lite respectively, which Nintendo really seems to be a fan of doing (because believe it or not, over four years in, the Switch has not received a single price-cut, the longest a system has ever gone in history without one).

This confluence of reasons makes this pricing model seem the likeliest. However, there is a chance that Nintendo chooses to keep that model, but with lower price points, in order to maintain some of their traditional price appeal with family friendly segments even with the more expensive Pro. In which case, I can see a Switch Pro coming in at $349, the standard Switch being dropped to $249, and the Switch Lite being dropped to $149. This model is essentially the same as the previous one, just with lower prices. It ends up retaining the elegant separation of tiers that that model has, although it does end up cutting into their profit margins across the board. Simultaneously, however, $349 is a more marketable price than $399 is – core, enthusiast players are likelier to buy a Switch Pro at a price where its cheaper than the PS5, even if it’s not by much, while that same price is also likelier to catch a lot of family purchases that may otherwise have not even considered the Pro and may have stuck with the standard model.

Simultaneously, dropping the prices of the standard and Lite models ends up opening those to a whole new demographic as well. The Switch Lite is actually extremely cheap at $199, but it’s still really expensive for a portable system, and $199 portable systems have traditionally been under performers compared to their cheaper counterparts. You have to assume that at $149, the Switch Lite can tap into a far bigger audience, particularly one that just wants to play, say, Pokemon or Animal Crossing, thus leading to substantially higher sales and revenue for Nintendo as well. Of course, $249 for the standard Switch helps it too – it’s a much more appealing price than the system’s current one, and again, more are likely to pick it up at that point than right now (not that the Switch has struggled to sell at its current asking price either, of course).

Here’s the thing, it’s hard to know what Nintendo will do. Not only are they a notoriously unpredictable company, but we’re in uncharted territory as far as the Switch Pro, and even the Switch itself, go. There are also a lot of variables at play, which make trying to divine any answer with any degree of certainty an exercise in futility. I don’t feel comfortable to committing to any specific prediction, other than saying that I feel like the Switch Pro will be priced much higher than the standard model – by how much, it remains to be seen. I’m personally a fan of the three tier pricing model for the Lite, standard, and Pro, separated by $100 each, but even that allows for a lot of variation (will the Pro be $399? $349?), and, again, is more down to my aesthetic preference for its symmetry more than anything else. 

It’s impossible to know what Nintendo is planning – assuming the Switch Pro is real to begin with (which, remember, officially it’s never been confirmed). Whatever they end up doing, presumably ends up going down well – with the Switch, Nintendo has exhibited uncanny business acumen, and the console is currently on a trajectory to end up as one of the highest selling systems of all time, and well above the PS4 or Wii ever managed. We’ll know soon enough, presumably by August or September at the latest, what, if anything, Nintendo has planned.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Pokemon is currently the world’s biggest media franchise. I want you to take a moment to understand that— it’s not just the biggest video game franchise in the world (cumulatively, that would actually be Mario, albeit Mario has a roughly fifteen year headstart), but the biggest media franchise in the world, period. That means it’s bigger than Star Wars, Harry Potter, and even the MCU.

And it almost didn’t happen, all because of one computer crash. Speaking to Polygon, reminiscing about the early development of Pokemon, Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda recalled how an early computer crash, that they had no idea how to recover from, and no backups for, caused them to possibly lose all the data for the game.

“Somewhere midway through the development, maybe in the fourth year or so, we had a really bad crash that we couldn’t, we didn’t know how to recover the computer from,” he said. “That had all of the data for the game, all of the Pokémon, the main character and everything. It really felt like, “Oh my God, if we can’t recover this data, we’re finished here.” I just remember doing a lot of different research. I called the company that I used to work for, seeing if they had any advice to recover the data.

“I would go on this internet service provider back then called Nifty Serve. It’s like a Japanese version of CompuServe. I’d go on and ask people that I never talked to for advice on how to recover the data. I would look at these English books about the machine itself, because there wasn’t a lot of information in Japanese, just to figure it out. We eventually figured out how to recover it, but that was like the most nerve-racking moment, I think, in development.”

At least I can hope that Game Freak learned to keep backups better after this incident. Of course, they eventually managed to recover their data, and the game came out, was a huge hit, and spawned, as noted, one of the biggest game franchises of all time. But can you imagine if all of that had never happened? Because of a misplaced computer crash, and no data backups?

Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, re-imaginings of those first games, are due out on November 16 for Nintendo Switch.

Much like Sony, who recently intimated that they have crossed 500 million units of hardware sold, it seems like Nintendo have hit their own milestone quietly. Gamnesia is reporting that as per Nintendo’s last financial report, the company hit 727.67 million units of hardware sold, ever- of which 300.11 million were home consoles (this milestone being the one Nintendo had hit as of June 30, 2018).

It’s a tremendous feat- no other company in the history of the industry has done this. Nintendo’s numerical breakdowns reveal some interesting statistics, collated on ResetEra– for instance, two thirds of their hardware sales come from handhelds (one third of that third is the Nintendo DS!). No wonder Nintendo went in the direction they did with the Switch. Meanwhile, the dismally selling Wii U is indeed the lowest selling bit of hardware Nintendo has produced.

These numbers don’t account for Virtual Boy, NES Classic, SNES Classic, Game and Watch, and Color-TV Game- so the final tally is even higher (Game and Watch alone sold about 40 million). Still, it’s an impressive feat by Nintendo- hopefully the Switch elevates them to even newer heights.

The Nintendo DS is the second highest selling system of all time, with 154 million units sold worldwide, and over a billion units of software moved. It represents Nintendo’s greatest success story, with a massive library supported by every major third party, and the bulk of Nintendo’s first party, and with Nintendo successfully fighting off the PSP threat in the handheld market, reducing Sony to a distant also ran contender in this arena.

But given how successful the DS, and its successor 3DS, ultimately turned out to be, I think it’s easy to forget just what an odd concept the entire system really was at the time. Today, the clamshell two screen design, with one of the screens being a touch screen, is taken for granted- but back when the DS was first announced, everyone thought that Nintendo had lost their minds, and that the DS would be decimated by the PSP.

Everyone also apparently included everyone within Nintendo- Satoru Okada, who was General Manager of Nintendo Research & Engineering, recently revealed in an interview with Retro Gamer Magazine (via Kotaku) that no in within Nintendo was on board with the DS at all. Ultimately, it was the diktat of Nintendo’s legendary Hiroshi Yamauchi, who apparently was convinced that the design would go on to be a success, that caused the DS project to proceed. Until then, Nintendo had been busy working on a traditional successor to the Gameboy Advance.

“Actually, after the SP, we were working on the newest model in this range. The code name for this new Game Boy was IRIS, like the flower,” Okada said. “The explanation for this name is simple: since it was for us the fifth generation of Game Boy, we chose the symbol of May (the fifth month of the year). In the Hanafuda playing cards, the month of May is symbolized by the iris. The project was moving forward at a good pace but during the development, something at unexpected happened.

“President Iwata then came to see me. He was obviously bothered and he said: ‘l talked to Yamauchi-san over the phone and he thinks your console should have two screens… A bit like the multi-screen Game & Watch, you see?’ Everybody is aware of this, but what people do not know is that at the time, everybody hated this idea, even Iwata himself. We thought it did not make any sense.”

Nintendo had once made a dual screened handheld before, with many handhelds in the Game and Watch line (Nintendo’s original line of portable games) sporting two screens. However, that had been because the technology of the time had necessitated two screens for dynamic gameplay- something unnecessary given modern screens.

“Back in the Game & Watch days, it was different because a second screen allowed us to double the playing area and the number of graphic elements on display. But with the modern screens, there was no point. We were free to choose the size of our screen, so why bother splitting it into two? Especially considering that it was impossible to look at both screens at the same time. This is why we did not understand his idea.”

Okada apparently wanted to talk to Yamauchi, and talk some sense into him, but Satoru Iwata, despite not being convinced of the viability of the DS, was reluctant to allow that to happen, and asked Okada to proceed with the DS concept anyway.

“Unlike many people in the company, I was not afraid of Yamauchi-san. I had already fought with him over different issues and I also sometimes publicly opposed his ideas. But Iwata turned me down and said ‘No, we will still give it a try. See what you can do with [it].’ We were both bothered by this, especially since it meant that we had to start all over with our project! So I tried to put my team at ease and I told them ‘I have some experience working with double screens, we will give it our best shot and we’ll see, don’t worry.’ It became project Nitro, released in 2004 under the name Nintendo DS…”

The rest is history- the Nintendo DS was a raging success, and touch screens and two screen interactions would both go on to become the norm in consumer electronics as a whole in the coming years. Nintendo themselves doubled down on double screen gaming with the 3DS, to continued success, and Wii U, to dismal failure. However, their next system, the upcoming Switch, is apparently going to be a return to single screen glory days. Hopefully, the Switch can revitalize Nintendo like the DS once did.

Nintendo have their work cut out for them with the upcoming NX- we’ve all known that for a while, and we don’t necessarily need someone to tell it to us. But you don’t understand the extent of Nintendo’s current plight until you see their hardware sales numbers in America laid bare in their glory. Video game analyst at Niko Partners Daniel Ahmad has done just that, and the takeaway is stark. It is then that you realize- Nintendo have been bleeding hardware sales and market share for a very long time now.

In fact, barring the aberration that were the DS and Wii, their handhelds and home consoles have both been in a state of steady decline, with each new generation selling less than the previous one. Even this generation, the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo’s bright spot, and the highest selling system of the cycle (higher selling than even the PS4, with 60 million units sold worldwide), has sold less than half of the DS, and well below previous Nintendo handhelds.

These numbers make you realize- Nintendo need to stem the bleeding, and fast. The NX is supposed to be their comeback after the Wii U, and there is a general hope that the machine, which acts as a successor to Wii U and 3DS both, will end up selling well. And that will involve it reversing a steady trend of progressively lower sales.

Happily for Nintendo, they may be able to do that- even with the 3DS, though the handheld has not managed to recreate the glory days of Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, or Nintendo DS, Nintendo managed to generate some demand for the system when Pokemon GO launched for smartphones in July, when it ended up as the highest selling system in America according to NPD. This shows us that there is a demand for Nintendo hardware on the market, and that people will buy it- Nintendo just has to make it an appealing prospect.

You can check out their handheld and home console sales for yourself below:

CONSOLES

• 34.00m – NES
• 23.35m – SNES
• 20.63m – N64
• 12.93m – GCN
• 48.64m – Wii
• 6.29m – Wii U

HANDHELDS

• 44.06m -GB/C
• 41.64m -GBA/SP
• 59.93m -NDS Family
• 20.11m -3DS Family

Pokemon is a legendary franchise. A pair of unassuming games that was released for the Gameboy at the tail end of the decade old handheld’s lifespan that just took off and happened to capture the imagination of millions of kids worldwide, a pair of games that would go on to become one of the most influential and highest selling franchises of all time. Pokemon is, to this day, an event. And this year, it is 20 years old.

20 years is a long time for any franchise to survive- it is even harder for a franchise to stay relevant, and thrive over those 20 years like Pokemon has. What must Game Freak, the developers of the games, who probably never expected the games to take off like they did, think about its success?

In two new videos that were just released, featuring interviews with Junichi Masuda (Director at GAME FREAK Inc.) and Tsunekazu Ishihara (President/CEO of The Pokemon Company), the creators reflect on the last 20 years of the franchise, from the original games’ troubled development, to everything that has followed since. It is, in the best way possible, nostalgic and heartwarming. Give them a look below.

Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow will all launch on the Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual Console later this month.

Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, the classic Gameboy RPGs that started the world phenomenon all those years ago, will be 20 years old, come this February. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of what is now their biggest franchise, Nintendo will be re-releasing Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console.

The games will be re-released as is (which means, hopefully, that MissingNo. will make it in), except for one all important change- the games will allow for local trading wirelessly using the 3DS’s LWAN, instead of the old link cables (which wouldn’t work with the 3DS anyway).

We don’t have pricing details yet, but it’s not unreasonable to suppose that Nintendo may charge a premium for these games- Pokemon sells a lot, and remains one of Nintendo’s most valuable franchises. No doubt these will be priced higher in relation to other Gameboy Virtual Console games.

But yeah, it’s time to catch them all again.

Last week, Nintendo announced their next dedicated games platform- it’s called the NX, and that is literally all we know about it. We don’t know whether it is a handheld, or a console, or whether it is even hardware (it might just be Nintendo transitioning to services), and for everyone who is always looking forward to the next big thing in the industry, speculation is running rampant.

Speaking to Japanese news outlet Nikkei, Iwata chose to clarify more on the enigmatic system, which, he confirmed, is not a continuation of either the Nintendo 3DS or the Wii U.

“If you only expand upon existing hardware, it’s dull,” Iwata said (translated by Kotaku). “In some shape or form, we’re always thinking about how we want to surprise players as well as our desire to change each person’s video gaming life.”

Of course, just because it is not a continuation of the DS or Wii lines does not mean that it is neither a handheld nor a console- remember, the DS and Wii themselves were a clean break from over 20 years of the Gameboy and Nintendo handheld and console lines respectively when they first launched. NX could be something like that too.

As to exactly what that something is- we will have to wait till next year, because that is when Nintendo will finally make an announcement about it.

Earlier this year, the internet created history as more than a 100,000 people came together to collectively play the classic Nintendo game for the Gameboy, Pokemon Red, and then, against all odds, finish it. It was a hilarious revival of an old classic with an intriguing new mechanic, and though Twitch Plays Pokemon has continued ever since, its popularity dipped.

That doesn’t mean there can’t be others to take its place.

A new channel on Twitch has cropped up. It is called Fish Plays Pokemon, and, I shit you not, it involves a fish playing Pokemon. How? Well, it doesn’t know it’s playing the game, obviously. It’s just doing its thing in its fishbowl, which has been outfitted with a motion tracker camera, and then separated into nine different sectors, each corresponding to a button press in game. So far, after more than 150 hours of play, the fish has chosen a starter Pokemon (Charmander), beaten Gary’s Squirtle with it, and is now stuck in Pallet. It’s frighteningly boring and mesmerizing all at once. It is also extremely popular- at the time of this writing, it had 20,000 viewers, and caused Pokemon Red and Blue to shoot up to being among the most viewed games on Twitch again.

Yeah.

I mean, I don’t know what to say about this anymore. Just think, though, the almighty Mewtwo is subject to the whims of a fish.