Every Pokémon Handheld Game You Haven't Played Since You Were A Kid

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The Pokémon franchise has released so many games across almost thirty years that there will almost certainly be installments that its oldest fans aren't likely to have touched since they were children. There are plenty of reasons this might happen — a player might simply bond more to a particular generation than another, impacting which games they revisit until previously overlooked gens see remakes later in their lives. But they might not have seen other installments in a while because they were brief experiments that Pokémon hasn't quite repeated or niche titles that they might not have taken the time to know next to the series' popular mainline RPGs.

The Nintendo Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, and DS saw a number of titles that wouldn't be unfair to place in the latter category in particular. All three handhelds saw efforts to bring the Pokémon collectable trading card game to a console format. Pokémon Pinball and its Ruby and Sapphire sequel were pinball games where players filled their Pokédexes by triggering catching minigames. The fan-favorite Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Pokémon Ranger series were more conventional adventures, but ones that respectively cast players as a monster and a member of the titular trainer class, not a trainer. Then again, the original Mystery Dungeon received a remake as recently as 2020, so none of the series seem off the table for a return.

Related: Other Pokémon Spin-Offs That Need Revivals Like Pokémon Snap

But it might be a surprise to some that Nintendo released handheld Pokémon titles that weren't major console or handheld releases, and that those are the ones that fans are least likely to have touched since their childhoods. Alongside trading cards, arcade games, and what modern gamers