Why do people buy Pokemon games?

[Onyx Oblivion]

Why not, people buy call of duty games, and different year sport games as well and they are all the same too.

Yeah but the sports games actually change from year to year. Look at the improvement from NBA 2k10 to NBA 2k11. 2k Sports fixed almost all problems with their previous game, added more game modes, updated roster (as usual), and a revamped online competitive mode.

What does each version of Pokemon add? Like 5 more pokemon?

To use your words against you:

added more games modes

Battle Tower, Frontier, 2v2 battles, etc.

updated roster

Generally 100+ new pokemon each generation. Also, new moves and sprites to old pokemon. New TMs and HMs.

revamped online competetive mode

Pokemon is actually one of the most hardcore online games on the market. with tier lists, banned movesets, and everything.

 

[Dexiro]

I've played Sapphire and Fire Red and seen footage of the rest. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME DAMN THING!

Of course you think they're the same if you only played 2 consecutive games, one of which was a reboot.

If you play a wider range, like say compare the original Red to Platinum you'll see a ton of changes. And recently they've started upping the changes a hell of a lot.
Platinum, Heart Gold/Soul Silver and Black/White have all made significant changes on each other, Black and White being the most drastic changes so far.

So yeah I agree that a lot of the earlier games pretty much are the same, but they're making the effort now people are getting bored of the original formula.

 

[MetaKnight19]

Because they still fucking rock, and have some of the best competitive play and endgame content in the business on top of that.

People who think it all went downhill after R/B/Y or G/S/C are just fooling themselves.

The improvements made with each game in the series are mostly seen in the battle system and endgame content.

The Battle Tower was the best thing to happen to the series, imo. And not the shitty Crystal version one.

The Physical/Special split between individual attacks, rather than just types, introduced in Gen 4 was brilliant, too. It made elemental punch Alakazam less utterly broken, and made Hitmonchan...Well, he still sucks, actually. Just much less. He's now viable, at least.

Don't get me started on the epicness of the Battle Frontier...

I think this about summed up my feelings about the games perfectly. My favourite out of all of the games for me is Emerald, mostly due to the debut of the Battle Frontier. I've played the main quest and most of the endgame stuff through at least 6 times now, and still never get tired of it.

 

[theheroofaction]

The same reason people bought madden 2011 or ncaa 11 or any modern sports game for that matter, the new roster and the slight game engine changes

with 5 games they have over 650 monsters ( I don't know the exact number) three battle types two (edit:3) reboots of the stats system, more attacks and an increasingly large competitive scene
Edith yeah =, and a new continent

and that's just from the original series

people don't buy it for the plot, they buy it forthe things on this list

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

You can say the same thing about Mario, all you do is save the damn princess, but it's still fun. With the newer pokemon games they had side quests, not very many and if you could really call them that, and the pokemon had different moves in each game. For me, it's all about making a good team with the new pokemon that are there, and using the Battle Tower and Battle Frontier, as infuriating as they can be.

 

[crudus]

Because they still fucking rock, and have some of the best competitive play and endgame content in the business on top of that.

People who think it all went downhill after R/B/Y or G/S/C are just fooling themselves.

The improvements made with each game in the series are mostly seen in the battle system and endgame content.

The Battle Tower was the best thing to happen to the series, imo. And not the shitty Crystal version one.

The Physical/Special split between individual attacks, rather than just types, introduced in Gen 4 was brilliant, too. It made elemental punch Alakazam less utterly broken, and made Hitmonchan...Well, he still sucks, actually. Just much less. He's now viable, at least.

Don't get me started on the epicness of the Battle Frontier...

Despite the improvements I still say it went downhill after G/S. It wasn't the games themselves, but the pokemon. They started to look weird and unreal. In B/R and G/S they looked like actual animals. After that they looked completely stupid. I can get behind the game mechanics they have changed which is why I play FR/LG. Although I can't play HG/SS because the graphics hit the uncanny valley for me (the graphics didn't make it feel like a pokemon game).

 

[TerranReaper]

Oh no, a game follows a formula, alert the press!

Let's not play Zelda anymore, you are always some low class blond kid destined for greatness who meets the princess, solves puzzles and defeats Ganondorf!

Also I find this complaint about the formula completely moot. Wanna try something else? Play the billion spin-offs. They include being a ranger, being a Pokemon yourself, etc etc.

The fact is that the games are superb. They're fun, they're very different from each other in aspects that you're probably too dense to get, and well, they're FUN bro.

For that matter, IGN recently published a very interesting piece regarding this topic, read it and maybe you'll be able to form a better argument. Not gonna waste my time finding it for you though.

Each Zelda game is different. Same story but lets not try to compare the change from Zelda to Zelda to the changes from Pokemon games to Pokemon games. Zelda games ultimately have the same story but are very different from each other. Can you say that the DS Zelda games are the same as the gameboy ones? Or the Wii ones?

If we go by your logic on how Pokemon games haven't changed, Zelda games haven't changed that much since the N64, of course, that isn't the case, there are small refinements and additions for each game that is released. Same goes for the Pokemon games.

However, the changes in Pokemon are a lot more subtle, Generation 2 (G/S/C) split the Special Stat in Special Defense and Attack, introduced items which effected how battles worked out, changed the status afflictions slightly, introduced more moves, introduced weather conditions, introduced the happiness factor, and that's just the battling mechanics.

Generation 3 (R/S/E/FR/LG) revamped the EV (Effort Value) system, introduced the Nature system, introduced Special abilities, refined the movesets, introduced more Pokemon and more moves, improved on the weather system, introduced double battles, brought in more held items, and basically paved the way for competitive battling.

Generation 4 (D/P/Plat/HG/SS) revamped the moves, separating them into either the "physical" category or "special" category, changed the stats to fit with this change, allowed people to transfer their Gen 3 teams to their Gen 4 games, brought a lot more moves which expanded competitive battling, introduced more pokemon and bringing more evolutions to make the previous ones more viable (Magmortar, Togekiss for example).

There are much more, but all of my points are JUST looking at the battling aspect of it, which makes a big chunk of the game, but not all of it.

 

[SovietSecrets]

I haven't played one since Ruby/Sapphire since they mostly started coming out on the DS after that and I didn't want the remakes of Red/Blue. I bought all the ones up to Ruby though and they were just amazingly fun. Its a good core formula that works and is easy to improve on with teach game and thats what they have done.

 

[BlueAnubis]

Because we are Obsessive Compuslive and MUST Catch 'em All! I've even got one game pretty much set on breeding Eevee so I can get shiny ones.

On that note, anyone need an Eevee or 12?

 

[Thrillho]

Well, yes. If you don't play every version, you won't see as much of a difference. For example, I don't like First-Person Shooters. Because of this, Doom looks like Halo looks like Goldeneye to me, just with different colour guns and levels. Same with strategy games. Sim City looks like Black & White looks like Civ 5.

I'm not saying any of these games are the same, or even similar. It's just that I have no interest in them, so I don't look closer at them.

 

[Wintermoot]

because they have a awesome singleplayer AND THEY CHANGE MORE THEN THE STORY look each of the games adds a small gimmick like dubble battles a new inventory and a completly new world

 

[WrongSprite]

Because I enjoy it, why the fuck else would I buy them?!

Shit, people can be dumb these days.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Because they still fucking rock, and have some of the best competitive play and endgame content in the business on top of that.

People who think it all went downhill after R/B/Y or G/S/C are just fooling themselves.

The improvements made with each game in the series are mostly seen in the battle system and endgame content.

The Battle Tower was the best thing to happen to the series, imo. And not the shitty Crystal version one.

The Physical/Special split between individual attacks, rather than just types, introduced in Gen 4 was brilliant, too. It made elemental punch Alakazam less utterly broken, and made Hitmonchan...Well, he still sucks, actually. Just much less. He's now viable, at least.

Don't get me started on the epicness of the Battle Frontier...

Despite the improvements I still say it went downhill after G/S. It wasn't the games themselves, but the pokemon. They started to look weird and unreal. In B/R and G/S they looked like actual animals. After that they looked completely stupid. I can get behind the game mechanics they have changed which is why I play FR/LG. Although I can't play HG/SS because the graphics hit the uncanny valley for me (the graphics didn't make it feel like a pokemon game).

At this point, I stopped caring how they look. But gen 5 has a few animal-likes again.

Sandile is a croc.

Pig, Otter, and no clue for the grass type.

When I see a pokemon sprite...All I see are it's moves, types, general stats, and HP.

 

[PureChaos]

that's partly why i played Blue and never moved on. Blue FTW

 

[theheroofaction]

@onyx oblivion: the grass one is a lizard.

 

[Istanbul]

Well, let's review.

Why did I buy Yellow, some ten years ago? Curiousity. Everyone seemed to like Pokemon, so I decided to try it. Turns out that if you can get past all the merchandising and the hideous anime, there's a decent little game in there.

Why did I buy Diamond, about two years ago? Social pressure. I joined a pokemon-themed MU* on a whim, and then found myself wondering what everyone was going on about with all this new stuff.

Why did I buy Soul Silver, last year? Several reasons. Diamond was pretty good, but it had some irritating issues that got fixed in the new version. What's more, there was still an entire region I had yet to explore (having bypassed the entire Gold/Silver/Crystal, FireRed/LeafGreen, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald era).

Why did I buy Sapphire, later last year? Completion. Not only was there still another region I hadn't explored, with an entire generation of Pokemon with which I was unfamiliar, but there were Pokemon I wanted to add to my collection that none of my current games could get.

Why did I buy LeafGreen in October? Nostalgia. Yellow was long-gone to me, but I was very interested in returning to Kanto and basking in my memories of the original 151, especially since Soul Silver had given me a taste of Kanto in the second half of the game.

Why will I be buying White? Innovation. Not only do I want to have some fun with the new Pokemon, but I'm curious about the new gameplay mechanics, I want to try out the new attacks, I want to explore the new area, and I want to see what they're doing with the series to take it forward.

So if you want a single, unifying reason why I keep buying Pokemon games...sorry, I'm going to have to disappoint you. But if you want a single, unifying reason why I buy Pokemon games in the first place?

They're fun.

 

[Enigmers]

I like catching and using new pokémon (or, at least, ones I haven't used before). The games all follow the same formula, but are just barely new enough to feel fun and fresh to a degree, so I keep playing them.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Because they still fucking rock, and have some of the best competitive play and endgame content in the business on top of that.

People who think it all went downhill after R/B/Y or G/S/C are just fooling themselves.

I will agree that the battle mechanics have vastly improved, but dude, they need to get better character designs. Have you seen some of the new ones? One of them is a fucking ice cream cone. I WISH I WAS FUCKING KIDDING!!!

You have to admit, R/B/Y & G/S/C were stronger in the character design aspect.

 

[nuba km]

I've played Sapphire and Fire Red and seen footage of the rest. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME DAMN THING! Start in a small town, mom tells you to see professor, someone tells you professor is on trouble, ave professor ten you get your pokemon. After that their nephew/niece becomes your rival. Get all badges rinse and repeat. To add to the milking why do they release tow versions of the game on the same platform with the only difference being ONE damn pokemon?

People talk about COD, Halo etc. but THIS is the most milked franchise EVER

Oh all bioware games are the same make a character form a team save the world the only difference is setting (sarcasm). Pokemon is constantly adding depth and balance to the game every generation (the remakes just balance things a bit) also each generation has cool pokemon that are fun to train also the way the game is made it will be very hard for two of the same pokemon will be the same when you train them. also with over 600 pokemons to train no team will be the same as yours. The gameplay is different form a lot of turn based rpg's with more tactic then most turn based rpg's. I will admid that the two version thing is stupid (their are normally about 10 pokemon exclusive in each game but in the fifth generations their will actually be two areas one for each game (black has black city and whit has white forest). to be honest this view looks like an outsider looking in and when it comes to most video games always results in a big what?