The Recap of Pokemon Games (Up to Gen 8)

Pokemon is a fantastic series of games, we all love them, and the history of the game, anime and manga has been ongoing for more than 22 years. In total there has been eight generation of Pokemon along with the latest release of sword and shield.

However, you may be wondering what each generation brought to the world and how they were different from the previous ones. Which is the exact reason we’re looking at them right now, but we’re not looking at them in chronological order. Instead, we’re going to looking from most interesting or maybe just our favourites first.

The latest generation, the sword and shield generation, has stirred the world of Pokemon up the most. There are very many reasons for this, and they can all be condensed into two very distinct things. The removal of a lot of things and the addition of one very random looking thing.

Taking a look at the great Dexit we can see where the anger started, because it is more than a removal of some of the loved Pokemon from generations past. It is the removal of two powerups that a lot of people have come to love, namely Z-moves and mega evolutions. You read that right, Pokemon Sword and Shield does not have mega evolution or Z-moves.

Luckily, it does have something else, Gigantamax and Dynamax. Which from just appearance makes a normal Pokemon really, really big. It does boost stats and moves which means it does provide an advantage for a few moves. Unfortunately, there has been a rather vocal crowd in the West against these moves from Pokemon publisher Game Freak.

With these moves the game has changed drastically as several play styles and game strategies must be abandoned. Something that will either help Pokemon grow even more prolific or not, only time will tell.

This is where a lot of remakes of older generation also took place and we got one of the more lighthearted games of the Pokemon series. It started with Sun and Moon in 2012, then it grew to Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby and ending with Ultra Sun and Moon.

We had a load of new Pokemon, Alolan forms of certain Pokemon. New Mega Evolutions and the lovely and awkward Z-Moves. Yes, you know those ones, the move where your trainer does this very dorky looking dance and the Pokemon does an insane attack. This was the generation that also saw the release of Pokemon Let’s go Eevee and Pikachu.

This was a very busy and chaotic generation that left most of us excited for what lies in the future. We had a lot of variety and new events that kept us busy and looking for new ways to fight and build our teams. It’s also the period in which our saviour was captured on Twitch, Ash won the Pokemon League and some of the best merch got invented.

The Seventh generation was a good time to be a Pokemon fan and with the end of the teen years of the 21st century around the corner it has left quite a legacy behind for future games and (perhaps) TV shows to fill.

We were all young once, some of us were so young when Pokemon started that we could barely lift a Gameboy. The first generation of Pokemon started with Blue and Red, with no more than 151 Pokemon in the game. A limitation that was created by the cartridge size of the time, which did not stop it from becoming a sensation across the world.

The first games of Pokemon was a great time, a time where the internet couldn’t quall any rumours and no small amount of frustration was created by that bloody truck refusing to move. However, it made the groundwork for all future generations of games and anime. If you are a fan of Pokemon then you have certainly at least tried to play one of them, which you definitely should.

The only noteworthy thing about the OGg Pokemon games was the inclusion of their legendries and the exclusion of Mew. Which is very much not the same as todays games, which all feature grand stories, proper rivals and even legendries that affect the gameplay all on their own.

Every great franchise has a period where its kind of slows down, where fans are still plentiful but the games themselves barely make a splash in the wider world. For me this was the Fifth and Sixth generation of Pokemon, I heard about them, I even played them but my heart was never in them and I never conquered the Elite Four in any of them.

The world almost agrees with this sentiment, because apart from the introduction of Mega Evolutions they floated around noiselessly among fights between consoles, the rise and fall of the Wii and Wii U and even the take back of 3D screens.

These generations started with the Nintendo DS and left many people wanting for a lot more. The handheld console market was flooded thanks to Sony and its PSP and Nintendo was facing a very tough time financially thanks to the slump in console sales overall. I also consider this generation to have both the coolest looking Legendary and the lamest group of legendries, looking at you Cobalion.

Before these generations Pokemon was a rather odd game to play, mostly coloured in one shade and left with strange colour pallets across the board. Pokemon Yellow was literally a Yellow game, which meant for the first time you could enjoy the games without guessing what your Pokemon looks like.

These generations brought in all new Hidden Moves and left us with several hundred Pokemon to catch. If you knew how you could even transfer your old teams from previous games over. Meaning you could build ever stronger teams and enjoy the mystery of whatever the hell was happening in the Unown caves.

These were the last few games enjoyed on the original handheld consoles, the GameBoy’s. They were great in certain ways and quite entertaining to figure out, since I had no friends that played and no internet, I was left to figure it all out on my own, which left me missing all legendries and eventually hacking it with a emulator.

This is where my love for Pokemon was cemented, which is why I left it for last since I cannot be unbiased about this. I got Pokemon Sapphire on the same day I received my Game Boy Advance SP (Limited Tribal Edition).

This generation had the first space Pokemon, two legendary Pokemon that were properly legendary and an overarching story that was more than just a weird guy following you around. To top it all off Game Freak also released the remakes, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen. Two games that are still being enjoyed today on game boys across the world.

Or so I would hope. But we’ve come to the end of this quick and lose recap of Pokemon and what each generation has brought to the table. I know I skipped Ultra Beasts, and the immortal man, they’re all stories on their own and need to be told properly.