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Confirmed Pokemon Discussion Thread

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Uberiffic

Mence > Garchomp
Anyone ever watched the early seasons of Ben 10: Alien Force?

The rock looks like the offspring of Chromostone ._.

That's what I was thinking! Except, he looks like he ate a mini tank.
 

Smashchu

Beginning Trainer
No. It makes sense that those are the "best" to you. Because clearly you have preferences that haven't been updated in about a decade. And if that suits you, fine, but don't for a second think those preferences constitute an objective truth, because they most certainly do not.
Seeing as the best selling Pokemon game is Red and Blue and the most popular Pokemon come from there, I would say they are the best.

You know what these numbers mean? That Pokémon started as a white-hot fad putting up numbers that were utterly unsustainable. Popular culture in America and around the world is littered with products, series and franchises that have done the same. POGs, anyone? Tamagotchis? Don't be ashamed, I had boxes full of both.
Fads don't just end. Ever heard of Mario Madness? The box art for Super Mario Bros. 2 said "Mario Madness," on it. After Super Mario World, the fad died. Why? Because fads just die? No. That doesn't make sense. The property was popular once and is uncool later. A fad dying is not an act of God. It doesn't just happen. There must be a reason that consumers just said "I'm done with this."

How can I prove it you ask? Super Mario Bros 3 sold ~17 million units. Then, after 18 years, New Super Mario Bros. on the DS sold 22 million. It beat the old game. So, fads just don't die. The property leaves the consumer. The same is happening with Pokemon.
You know what Pokémon has done that none of those other things did, though? It has endured. As I just said, the numbers Pokémon put up at its international outset were utterly unsustainable. No one would have looked at those numbers and concluded "this franchise will continue to sell 30 million-plus per game." No one, not the wisest scholar or the greatest fool. But the fact that the franchise is still able to sell 17 million units over a decade later is not a detriment to the series, it is a testament. Do you know how many video game series would sacrifice countless virgins (hold your jokes, folks) to sell 17 million units every 4-5 years? A lot of them. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a defining work of its series, a seminal work of the medium and one of the finest video games ever. Do you know what its worldwide number was, not counting the various ports and re-releases?

7.6 million.

Even if you account for the fact that the sales numbers of Diamond and Pearl include the sales of two titles, the point is still quite clear. Companies laud their titles for selling in the single millions. Pokémon is able to routinely post sales exceeding 15 million, and that is for the pair of titles that sold the lowest. Pokémon has not declined - it has settled into a sustainable pattern and it has endured.
You may have a point that 30 million is unsustainable, but then, ask yourself, why did all those people stop playing Pokemon? It's not like they all lost their hands or they just disappeared. That was 30 million people who played Pokemon. So I would disagree. If it did it once, why is it not able to do it again, or even get close. Gold and Silver sold 23 million, which is very reachable now. Why can't they get close to that. The best they can do is 17 million?

Even if sales are still good, the fact remains they are declining. Diamond and Pearl could only muster an additional 2 million when the system it's on sold 50 million more than the Game Boy Advance. The DS helped to ease the decline. But it will get worse. You can not ignore nearly a 50% drop in sales.

Furthermore, the 3rd and 4th generations both introduced pair of remake titles to gamers. Funny how you neglected to include those numbers - that's an additional 10.49 million units worldwide for FireRed/LeafGreen and 7.94 million units for HeartGold and SoulSilver, a title that hasn't even been available in Japan for a full year - in your argument.
I don't include them because that's comparing two games to one. That is not a good comparison. Especially as the buyers of Diamond and Pearl could also pick up the remake of Gold and Silver. So no, you are not suppose to add in those sales. You are trying to compare the combined sales of two games to the sales of just one game. Of courser they are going to be high.

Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine together sold more than Super Mario Bros 3. Does that mean the 3D Marios are more popular than the 2D ones?

So the clientele at your one Wal-Mart is completely indicative of the sales of the games over an entire continent? Really? Particularly when the numbers say that the games are still selling at incredible rates?
The point was to show how it is no where near as popular as it once was.

You see the error in logic here, I really hope.
I dont have what I said, so I'll skip this for now.

And to put this as politely as possible, those people literally do not matter. Know why? I'd bet you few to none of them actually buy the games currently, and the beautiful irony to that is that if they are buying the games, clearly these horrible, ugly Pokémon that are contributing to the downfall of society aren't all that bad, hm?
What? Those people do very well matter. They are the old fans. They are the fans who are drifting away. Their ranks will keep growing. And ignoring them will hasten the demise of Pokemon.

People are very much leaving Pokemon. Not that many people are buying the game as they did in 1998.

Because of 493 Pokémon, what is a mere fraction of them have the qualifications necessary to appear as playable characters in a game like Super Smash Bros. A far better indicator of the point you're trying to make here would be the Pokéball Pokémon, a group in which all four generations are represented equally. Furthermore, did Brawl not include an entire stage based visibly and conceptually on a distinct location from the Sinnoh region, featuring three Legendary Pokémon from that region in the background on a regular random rotation?
You missed the point. The characters who appear in Smash tend to be the ones people like. Stages always come from new games (they used a Jungle Beat stage instead of one from Donkey Kong Country). The characters have a lot of bearing on people's attitudes towards them. There are only two Pokemon that are not from the first generation. There are 7 Pokemon from out of 151 verses 2 out of 342.

Yes, because Pikachu has been, is and always will be continually pushed as the franchise's mascot. He is the most popular because he was engineered and positioned to be the most popular.
He really wasn't. He was just the first electric Pokemon they designed. Chefairy was a Pokemon that was meant to be a forerunner, but Pikachu overtook her. But, why can no one come close to Pikachu. They defiantly try to get them to be as popular.

To base an entire argument solely on these subjective, frivolous and whimsical factors would be an error in thinking of gargantuan proportions. Your entire tirade here is built upon skewed data, subjectivities, perceptions and other facets of the truth you've either embellished or outright ignored in the name of trying to make your point.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Seeing as you had to combine the sales of two different games to say how the series is healthy, I would say your the one being subjective.

My argument is based on the fact that the main Pokemon games have been declining. These games are the forerunners of the series and should do the best. Of course, it's no surprise to me that most people will rationalize it away ("it was a fad." "It's still doing well"). You don't want to admit that the series you love is dying.

Pokemon does well today, but just because the sun shines today doesn't mean it will be that way tomorrow. You can not ignore the decline which will get worse and worse. You may say "Oh, that will never happen. Look how good it does." After about 14 years, the series has declined almost 50%. And you say it will never happen. An old friend says hello.
 

PKMN Trainer Manson

Well-Known Member
does anything else think that the thing with all the red peices in the middle of the 3 vs. 3 is some kind of probopass evo? mayby something where it swaps defense for offense.

Not one similarity besides being red and blue and rocky.

For christ's sake, not only does it not have a big nose, it doesn't appear to have a nose at all.
 
Not one similarity besides being red and blue and rocky.

For christ's sake, not only does it not have a big nose, it doesn't appear to have a nose at all.

Don't be hasty, look at the main body, see that Red Crystal jutting out from it? That could be the nose, even more so when you compare its body to that of Nosepass. Plus beneath the "Nose" there are two lines, Pencil Moustache perhaps?
 
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Biodragon

Well-Known Member
Sure seems to be a lot of unrelated stuff floating around here. Back on topic, does anyone else thing that headpiece on the giant mole looks like it could go down, as a sort of face guard when it tunnels? If that gets added to it's animation I'm going to be pleased :D
 
Sure seems to be a lot of unrelated stuff floating around here. Back on topic, does anyone else thing that headpiece on the giant mole looks like it could go down, as a sort of face guard when it tunnels? If that gets added to it's animation I'm going to be pleased :D

Slightly off topic of you post, but: Have you also noticed the left claw looks like Lairon's head?

And also I'm really liking that mole :)
 

sfxcactus

Licky Pirate
I really am not sure what to think of these pokemon. Since reshiram and zekrom, my interest in the new pokemon has been declining.

Its hard to judge though, the sprites can't really give us all the details of a pokemon. I do find interest in the sarcophagus pokemon and also the tarantula, but have yet to see the front side and so can't make a final statement.

I'm not too thrilled at all about the lolita pokemon, that green puff...thing, and the rock monster thingamajig. Again, its really too early to tell on this sort of thing, but this constant suspense is driving me nuts.

And who knows, they might grow on me, I disliked a lot of the fourth gen, and now many pokemon I hated from that gen are now my faves.

Many have already stated this, but the mole design that is presented here seems too similar to many other mole designs, personal opinion. For the others I eagerly await to see what happnes.
 

Vrdnt25

VerdanTree
The green plasma thing looks like normal/ghost(that would be really awesome. only x2 by dark, resistance to others)

the crystal thing looks like rock/psychic

black girl looks like dark or ghost

Desukan looks like an evo of Spiritomb

Denchura looks like an evo of Ariados

Doryuuzu is ground/steel fo sho, Moguryu is ground.

Ononokusu bug/steel or the bug/fire centipede that everyone has been hoping about

sorry if any of this was repeated
 

.euphoria.

Out of my vector.
Or it's just those people in particular. As there are plenty who are enjoying the new pokemon. I mean we have the Mudkip meme, Smugleaf is starting to catch on the interwebs, and DA is filled with fan-art from all the generations. You can make the case on design for either side and it'll be full of opinions due to the fact design is a lot like art: it appeals to different people differently. You may hate the design of Chiramii or the gothlolimon, but I like them. Opinions.

The internet is not an accurate judge of how people view the new Pokemon. The people who start memes and spend their time on Pokemon fansites talking about the new 'Mons in the first place are the fans. They're gonna buy the games anyways more likely than not. Of course it's gonna seem positive if you're only looking at the fanbase! Just judging by what the internet says, Pokemon is doing well because you will mostly find people praising it.

The people who aren't fans anymore because they started hating the new Pokemon at Gen 2/3/4 aren't talking about it on the internet. Why should they discuss a franchise they don't even like? Why should they make "fanart" AGAINST the new Pokemon or rant about them on sites like this? There are a few people who do that but they're not the majority of former Pokemon fans.

Point being, people who used to like Pokemon but hated the new ones and gave up on it are a lot more common than you'd think. They just aren't all running around on the internet talking about how awful all the new 'Mons are and how wonderful the old ones were. If they were, there'd be another big "Anti-Pokemon war" going on.
 

SergeiDragunov

Crits Everywhere
Sure seems to be a lot of unrelated stuff floating around here. Back on topic, does anyone else thing that headpiece on the giant mole looks like it could go down, as a sort of face guard when it tunnels? If that gets added to it's animation I'm going to be pleased :D

That sounds awesome. And it'll be even better if they release a new 3D console game. Hopefully it doesn't fail as hard as PBR though =/

Wow, a Gothic Lolita Pokemon? LOL. Looks like we have our new "Gardevoir". *cough*

God help us all o_O

Doryuuzu is ground/steel fo sho, Moguryu is ground.

I actually have this feeling that Moguryu and Doryuuzu are going to be the Bidoof line of this gen, being either Normal/Steel or Normal/Ground.
 

Josiah

is your favorite
Seeing as the best selling Pokemon game is Red and Blue and the most popular Pokemon come from there, I would say they are the best. You can't prove an opinion with sales figures.




Fads don't just end. Ever heard of Mario Madness? The box art for Super Mario Bros. 2 said "Mario Madness," on it. After Super Mario World, the fad died. Why? Because fads just die? No. That doesn't make sense. The property was popular once and is uncool later. A fad dying is not an act of God. It doesn't just happen. There must be a reason that consumers just said "I'm done with this." They grew up? Same reason people stopped watching Barney, Power Rangers, etc.


How can I prove it you ask? Super Mario Bros 3 sold ~17 million units. Then, after 18 years, New Super Mario Bros. on the DS sold 22 million. It beat the old game. So, fads just don't die. The property leaves the consumer. The same is happening with Pokemon. Pokemon hasn't left the consumer in any way. If they suddenly became a real time MMO then you'd have a point, but the games at their core are the same.


You may have a point that 30 million is unsustainable, but then, ask yourself, why did all those people stop playing Pokemon? It's not like they all lost their hands or they just disappeared. That was 30 million people who played Pokemon. So I would disagree. If it did it once, why is it not able to do it again, or even get close. Gold and Silver sold 23 million, which is very reachable now. Why can't they get close to that. The best they can do is 17 million? They've sold more this generation, you just refuse to accept it.



Even if sales are still good, the fact remains they are declining. Diamond and Pearl could only muster an additional 2 million when the system it's on sold 50 million more than the Game Boy Advance. The DS helped to ease the decline. But it will get worse. You can not ignore nearly a 50% drop in sales. You can't ignore that they are gradually catching up to Mario in total sales, a series that's at least a decade older. It's the second biggest franchise, period.




I don't include them because that's comparing two games to one. That is not a good comparison. Especially as the buyers of Diamond and Pearl could also pick up the remake of Gold and Silver. So no, you are not suppose to add in those sales. You are trying to compare the combined sales of two games to the sales of just one game. Of courser they are going to be high. And you refuse to look at them, why? It doesn't matter that they're different games. If the first games were so great, why did RSE outsell their remakes?


Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine together sold more than Super Mario Bros 3. Does that mean the 3D Marios are more popular than the 2D ones? They are from different 'generations'. The third and fourth generations had all their games on the same hardware and were compatible together. Can you honestly say that no one chose between getting RSE and FRLG instead of getting both?





The point was to show how it is no where near as popular as it once was. It was a fad. Now it isn't. That's the reason. Notice how the generational sales haven't declined at all since the second generation?






What? Those people do very well matter. They are the old fans. They are the fans who are drifting away. Their ranks will keep growing. And ignoring them will hasten the demise of Pokemon. So Pokemon should grow up to try to appease an unpleasable base that isn't even in their demographic?



People are very much leaving Pokemon. Not that many people are buying the game as they did in 1998. It isn't a fad anymore. You refuse to accept that.





You missed the point. The characters who appear in Smash tend to be the ones people like. Stages always come from new games (they used a Jungle Beat stage instead of one from Donkey Kong Country). The characters have a lot of bearing on people's attitudes towards them. There are only two Pokemon that are not from the first generation. There are 7 Pokemon from out of 151 verses 2 out of 342. The first characters are the most famous. Super Smash Bros. isn't meant to show a bunch of obscure characters. Do you expect them to include Paratroopa and Chain Chomp as playable Mario characters as well?





He really wasn't. He was just the first electric Pokemon they designed. Chefairy was a Pokemon that was meant to be a forerunner, but Pikachu overtook her. But, why can no one come close to Pikachu. They defiantly try to get them to be as popular. Because Pikachu has had the most exposure. They put it forward more. If they wanted another mascot they would just use another mascot. They don't want a new one.





Seeing as you had to combine the sales of two different games to say how the series is healthy, I would say your the one being subjective. It is healthy. It is gaining on the best selling series of all time.



My argument is based on the fact that the main Pokemon games have been declining. These games are the forerunners of the series and should do the best. Of course, it's no surprise to me that most people will rationalize it away ("it was a fad." "It's still doing well"). You don't want to admit that the series you love is dying. You haven't given any tangible reason to think they're doing bad. They have been selling more each generation after the second generation drop off.



Pokemon does well today, but just because the sun shines today doesn't mean it will be that way tomorrow. You can not ignore the decline which will get worse and worse. You may say "Oh, that will never happen. Look how good it does." After about 14 years, the series has declined almost 50%. And you say it will never happen. An old friend says hello.
Of course it will die eventually. Everything does. You're being a fortune teller right now, giving vague predictions that will inevitably become true at some point in the future.



For now though, Pokemon is the healthiest franchise around. Even its spinoffs sell in the millions.
 

Smashchu

Beginning Trainer
The flaw in your logic is just that if something did well in Japan, you think it automatically means it'll hit stateside. Not true, as there are just certain things that wouldn't translate here that do in Japan. A modest example would be SMT 1 and 2 or some of the later entries in the Secret of Mana series SNES run. A better example would be H-games, which are "wildly" popular in Japan, yet would hardly be sold here in the US.
That has nothing to do with what i said. I said that the stuff came with the game stateside because Pokemon, the game inself, was so popular. The anime and what not was an effect of Pokemon's popularity. Even so, these things, like the show, still run. If that's so, why are sales going down.

You can't attribute that as a complete case, but there are very few things you can say are absolute reasons in any kind of business. One could say the fad ended by the time 3rd gen came out, or people who bought the original Game Boy didn't want to upgrade to the GBA. I know I didn't until one day I was very bored and went to Wal Mart to pick up an SP and saw Sapphire there and picked that up as the game to play. Whole lot of reasons, but not all of them are the one true cause.
You didn't explain why the fad ended. One problem about talking about Pokemon is the flawed idea that fads just end for no reason. That is illogical. There is something that made the person buy the product which made it big enough to be called a fad. But then they stopped buying it. It is only logically to say there is a reason they stopped buying if we say there was a reason to buy.

Except that is what matters. At its heart, Gamefreak is a business, and the way you tell how successful something is how much money it makes. They don't care WHO buys it, just that it is bought. That is how the world works.
No, your wrong. I'm looking at customers.

A thief can make money. A crook can make money. Only a business can make a customer. That is the difference. I'm looking and wondering where did all the people go. Since the remakes could just as easily be bought by someone who bought the main game (which probably happens a lot), they are irrelevant to discussion.

If they are still making money like they are, with Pokemon stil making money, I mean HG and SS occupying spots 10 and 7 on CNBC's top 10 best selling games of 2010, you have sustained sales which is a wonderful thing. And it is June, and the games came out in March. And how long were DPPt at the tops of the charts when they were released? Pretty long if I remember correctly.
The point is that they are in decline. The problem was that Red and Blue did so well that a sharp decline it is having is still better than a lot of other games. However, it will keep declining.

This is also why the series will likely just die off. They wont see the sickness of Pokemon and eventually they'll hit a point of no return.

People loved the card game initially for the same reason people liked Pokemon at that time: it was popular.
Why was it popular though. it was is it not popular today?

But people do care about the metagame of competitive things when you are dealing with sustaining success. Look at card game "rival" at the time, Magic. It had just gone through the metagame breaking Urza Block, fillied with broken combos and engines, including a card that was banned before it hit print! And what happened? Sales dropped heading into Masques block, which was significantly tamer to deal with Urza Blocks difficulties and didn't really recover until the metagame stabilized a few years later when either Invasion block hit or Ravinca block hit.
Competitive play (high level play) does not help a game. Look at Street Fighter. Strong high level play. But the series doesn't do well. Compare it to Smash brothers where the developers don't care about the metagame and yet it's sales go up and up.

Gameplay mechanics, "cool looking" cover, which the box legends/fully evolved starters tended to do, and word of mouth. How many times did you go to see a movie because your friends thought it was cool? Same principle.
First, what drives word of mouth? It's a good game. If people like the game, they tel theuir friends.

Your problem here is you do not look at a customer's reaction, you look at "marketing." I'm a customer and I see Pokemon. What might interest me in Pokemon. Well, the Pokemon of course. It's the title of the game. It's the focus of the game as you catch, trade, and battle Pokemon. The title isn't "Awesome Metagame 4." It's Pokemon. So I play it. But I see all these Pokemon I don't like. Because I do not like the Pokemon, I do not play Pokemon.

Pokemon is the focus of the game. Not the gameplay. Not the Metagame. It's on the freaking box in big letters. The driving force is Pokemon.

Or it's just those people in particular. As there are plenty who are enjoying the new pokemon. I mean we have the Mudkip meme, Smugleaf is starting to catch on the interwebs, and DA is filled with fan-art from all the generations. You can make the case on design for either side and it'll be full of opinions due to the fact design is a lot like art: it appeals to different people differently. You may hate the design of Chiramii or the gothlolimon, but I like them. Opinions.

Nope, it's the people's preference like everything else in this world. Besides, the base means nothing, it's the quality of the show/franchise that matters.
Seeing as the sales have declined ~50%, I'd say a large majority of the opinions are that they suck. Their preferences do matter because it may very well be what is holding them back from buying the game.
 

BCVM22

Well-Known Member
Seeing as the best selling Pokemon game is Red and Blue and the most popular Pokemon come from there, I would say they are the best.

Sales-wise, that's undisputable. Content-wise, it's completely subjective. Are you going to try and tell me that 7-year-old Jimmy, who just bought a copy of Soul Silver from your Wal-Mart yesterday, is going to say "boy, this sucks, I'm going to go drop money on a game twice my age and the outdated hardware needed to play it"?

Fads don't just end.

I beg your pardon? They most certainly do. When was the last time you saw a POG at your corner store? That's the definition of a fad: "a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc., esp. one followed enthusiastically by a group."

How can I prove it you ask? Super Mario Bros 3 sold ~17 million units. Then, after 18 years, New Super Mario Bros. on the DS sold 22 million. It beat the old game.

So... do you suppose we could conclude that Mario is in that rare category of fictional characters - Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla, a handful of others - who manages to remain viable across decades and generations?

Gold and Silver sold 23 million, which is very reachable now. Why can't they get close to that. The best they can do is 17 million?

Gold and Silver, and to a lesser extent Crystal, were the only choices in the 2nd generation. The 3rd and 4th generations both gave gamers a choice of not only the first pair of games and their third counterpart, but a pair of remakes as well. There's no way you're going to tell me that there is no one, anywhere, who only bought one game this generation and therefore the numbers for HG/SS have to be taken into account as well.

Even if sales are still good, the fact remains they are declining.

Again, you're seeing the numbers settle to sustainable numbers and mistakenly calling it a decline. If the series is in decline, how did the numbers rebound by two million after Ruby and Sapphire?

The first two generations were the absolute height of the franchise's popularity. No one is saying we're still in that phase, but the franchise is not dying.

I don't include them because that's comparing two games to one. That is not a good comparison. Especially as the buyers of Diamond and Pearl could also pick up the remake of Gold and Silver. So no, you are not suppose to add in those sales. You are trying to compare the combined sales of two games to the sales of just one game. Of courser they are going to be high.

See above. It is a legitimate possibility that there are any number of gamers out there to only purchase one game from the 3rd generation and one from the 4th: one from the pool of Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red and Leaf Green, and one from the pool of Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heart Gold and Soul Silver. With that in mind, how can you claim the sales numbers for the remakes don't matter? Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl were not the only pairs of games in their respective generations. Gamers actually have a choice now if they only get one game per generation, and it's a significantly bigger choice than simply picking between Red/Blue and Yellow.

What? Those people do very well matter. They are the old fans. They are the fans who are drifting away. Their ranks will keep growing..

Yes, because PEOPLE GET OLDER. Your tastes change as you get older. You aren't the same person you were ten years ago. You aren't even the same person you were five years ago. These people are no longer playing because they grew out of the franchise. It really is that simple. They aged and grew and matured and one day picked up a Pokémon game and realized "hm, this no longer entertains me."

You know what the great part is, though? Kids are like potato chips - we always make more, unless we're in some sort of post-apocalyptic genetic crisis of which I'm unaware (always a possibility, I suppose). And for every one of these all-important older fans whose exodus you claim represents the end of everything, there are ten kids of today who are very much interested, willing and able to purchase Pokémon merchandise. The old fans can leave all they want. Good bye. Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Don't trip over the block-long line of eight-year-olds waiting to buy the next game.

You missed the point. The characters who appear in Smash tend to be the ones people like. Stages always come from new games (they used a Jungle Beat stage instead of one from Donkey Kong Country). The characters have a lot of bearing on people's attitudes towards them. There are only two Pokemon that are not from the first generation. There are 7 Pokemon from out of 151 verses 2 out of 342.

I didn't miss the point at all. There are distinct characteristics as to which Pokémon make for suitable playable characters in a game like Super Smash Bros., and the one critter from the 4th generation that fit those characteristics - Lucario - is right there waiting for you. If the 1st generation is so obviously the best, why did they remove Mewtwo, then?

The fans don't have nearly as much say in the Smash roster as they like to think. If that were the case, the roster would be littered with obscure, random characters from countless franchises, not just Pokémon. There are distinct characteristics that each of the playable characters in all three Smash titles share. The 3rd generation of Pokémon was lacking in Pokémon with such characteristics and so to represent that generation, they used the male trainer from Fire Red/Leaf Green, complete with his design from that game. It's similar to why Pichu was granted a playable spot in Melee: the 2nd generation lacked a Mewtwo-like persona, a super-powerful standalone Legendary Pokémon with no counterparts to balance. They instead elected to use Pichu, who, through the magic of marketing, had a suitable presence of its own and had no concerns about balancing a counterpart.

In response to your follow-up to this, that being "well, why didn't they use the Hoenn trainer and give him a team of Mudkip, Grovyle and Blaziken, then?", because I readily grant you that to the public at large, the millions of individuals who play Super Smash Bros. because they enjoy the wide range of characters and the nostalgia that the minutiae invokes, the Kanto starters are more recognizable than the Hoenn starters.

My argument is based on the fact that the main Pokemon games have been declining. These games are the forerunners of the series and should do the best. Of course, it's no surprise to me that most people will rationalize it away ("it was a fad." "It's still doing well"). You don't want to admit that the series you love is dying.

Your argument is based on bias and skewed facts. You're seeing a franchise settle-- no, not even settle, we're going to talk in the past tense here, given that the largest drop was between the 2nd and 3rd generations and yet here we are, watching the sun set on another tremendously successful generation with another one about to rise in the east. You're seeing a franchise that has settled into a sustainable pattern and for some reason, some part of your thought process sees that and says "obvious decline, it's going to continue falling until it reaches ZERO!"

Tell me, after the 4th generation, where the two pairs of titles have sold about 25 million combined worldwide, and again, that's with Heart Gold and Soul Silver only being a few months old outside of Japan, what happens when we're having this discussion in another five years and the inevitable two pairs of games in the 5th generation have sold just as well? What happens to this cataclysmic "decline" then?

You can not ignore the decline which will get worse and worse. You may say "Oh, that will never happen. Look how good it does."

Sure I can. Because "decline" is relative, particularly once that decline levels off, as Pokémon's sales have, and have just fine.
 
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pikachu500

Elite Champion
I cleaned up the Lolinx's face and she looks a lot like smoochum!
http://i47.*******.com/k39aoj.png
I think smoochum evoles into Lolinx, look at the face and top hair!
Also the lips.
 

Josiah

is your favorite
You didn't explain why the fad ended. One problem about talking about Pokemon is the flawed idea that fads just end for no reason. That is illogical. There is something that made the person buy the product which made it big enough to be called a fad. But then they stopped buying it. It is only logically to say there is a reason they stopped buying if we say there was a reason to buy.
Because it was the cool thing. Peer pressure and interest in a brand new thing causes all sorts of fads. Back then it didn't have the stigma of being a little kid's game, either.
No, your wrong. I'm looking at customers.

A thief can make money. A crook can make money. Only a business can make a customer. That is the difference. I'm looking and wondering where did all the people go. Since the remakes could just as easily be bought by someone who bought the main game (which probably happens a lot), they are irrelevant to discussion.
Then maybe we should only look at sales of one game each. Sales for Red, Silver, Ruby, FireRed, Diamond, and SoulSilver. People could have easily bought multiple versions in the same generation, after all.
The point is that they are in decline. The problem was that Red and Blue did so well that a sharp decline it is having is still better than a lot of other games. However, it will keep declining.

This is also why the series will likely just die off. They wont see the sickness of Pokemon and eventually they'll hit a point of no return.
You only see a decline because you refuse to include remakes. The only generation that's had a sales drop is the second.
First, what drives word of mouth? It's a good game. If people like the game, they tel theuir friends.

Your problem here is you do not look at a customer's reaction, you look at "marketing." I'm a customer and I see Pokemon. What might interest me in Pokemon. Well, the Pokemon of course. It's the title of the game. It's the focus of the game as you catch, trade, and battle Pokemon. The title isn't "Awesome Metagame 4." It's Pokemon. So I play it. But I see all these Pokemon I don't like. Because I do not like the Pokemon, I do not play Pokemon.

Pokemon is the focus of the game. Not the gameplay. Not the Metagame. It's on the freaking box in big letters. The driving force is Pokemon.
So objectively, Giratina is worse than Pikachu?
Seeing as the sales have declined ~50%, I'd say a large majority of the opinions are that they suck. Their preferences do matter because it may very well be what is holding them back from buying the game.
You are only coming to these conclusions because you refuse to include remakes. Again, why would all these fans not buy remakes with updated graphics and the same Pokemon that are in their beloved first generation? Are you telling me that people don't like the new Sugimori art of Charizard but they loved it the first time around?
 

Gus Portual

Slateport Ranger
Look Smaschu, what I did was combine the sales of DPPtHGSS with the respective generations, GSC and RSEFRLG separately. The sales were still bigger.

Sales drop. Sales go up. It's called the market. If you can figure out what makes a game sales go up or down, what are you doing working at a Wal Mart? Use your amazing marketing insight to make millions in a company like Nintendo. You obviously use just raw data and not just your opinion!

Just because you don't like the look of the new pokémon, it doesn't mean the franchise is going to die. Mario has had massive bombs and massive successes. Sonic has had TERRIBLE games, and others that maked a generation. They're both still going. Pokémon has NOT had a bomb yet. Every game has sold millions. Those facebook groups and "raw data" that you're showing are only a minority of the market, and the only reason you don't see this is because you don't want to.

Let me try this again: Nintendo is pushing the release date of Black and White because they want to up their sales by bringing out a new edition of their most popular and profitable franchise.

By the way, a sale is a costumer?? Man! You really need to go back to business school!! A sale is a sale. One costumer wants to buy 6 copies of each game? Nice! Lets figure out a way so that all costumers want to buy 6 copies of a game and we'll multiply our numbers by 6! Who cares who buys them as long as they're sold? Apparently you're the only one. Thank God you don't work for Nintendo!

People do not buy Metagames? So what's Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon Battle Revolution?



Look, it all comes down to the fact that all you've used to contradict my points is just your opinion. "What I've seen is people not warming up to them". Where, in your Wal Mart? On a facebook group? There's a facebook group called "Ladies who like to talk on their phones in the elevator" that has 12k members. Is that an indication to something? In my experience, the people I know who stopped playing Pokémon with Gold and Silver are coming back with Black and White. As you can see, I'm not using that as raw data. I am, however, telling you that the lines for the Pokemon VGC were 700 in Newark and someone said 2000 in Dallas. And you know that when Black and White come out, the lines to get the game are going to be insane. What game still manages to get people to line up to buy it? And how's this for ignoring remakes?: When DP came out, the lines weren't horrible. When Platinum and HGSS came out, I had to stand in line at the Nintendo store in NYC for an hour and a half.

The raw data is, the Nintendo DS games have sold 30 million copies. And that's a fact, sir. Next time you want to contradict someone, please prepare yourself a little better.
 
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