2D Pokemon Games Had The Most Three Dimensional Towns
The worst thing about Pokemon moving from 2D to 3D was the sprites. While it has eventually evolved to the point where boss Pokemon are kaiju and you can run around the battlefield to get the best vantage point, it’s taken a long time to get here and in the meantime I’ve missed the skillful art of creating an exciting 2D battle sprite.
Okay, I admit some of the Gen 1 sprites were a little scuffed. Golbat is so horrendous it has become a cult favourite, and Mew looks like a biblically accurate angel or something. But there’s a nostalgia attached to the old 2D games, and the technical limitations of the original Game Boy led to some incredibly creative designs. This wasn’t limited to Pokemon sprites, however, it was extended to the towns too.
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Editor-in-chief Stacey Henley is embarking on her own Pokemon quest to be the best like no one ever was - sorry, I mean, revisit all the towns and cities of Kanto, and that reminded me of something I love about the 2D Pokemon games: the exploration.
We can freely roam through open-world Pokemon games now, but somehow the cities feel more one-dimensional than ever. Take Sword & Shield for example, the most recent traditional-style main series Pokemon game. Some of the towns are brilliant ideas: I love the medieval keep of Hammerlocke City, and the fairy forest village of Ballonlea is beautiful and eerie in equal measure. But for all the creativity channeled into the themes and visual designs of these towns, it’s all a facade.
Try to explore any of these cities and, well, you can’t. Hammerlocke is separated into two separate levels, which is cool. But on each level, there’s just one straight row
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