>tfw starting with Gen 3 the games slowly started to sell less and less and it wasn't until Pokémon Go that it became cool to like Pokémon again
So what the heck happen to Pokémon during the post Mania, pre Go era? Did people just stop playing the games?
We just grew out of it. Pokémon was seen as a game for babies in a time where games where becoming dark and edgy.
It's just the DS games. Gen 3 was still the most popular games on the GBA, as were Gen 6 on the 3DS.
>Gen 3 was still the most popular games on the GBA
>The least notable Mario Kart
That's less of a testament to Gen 3's quality and much more attributed to how unappealing the GBA's library was.
>Numerous Mario ports/remakes
>Even more SNES ports/remakes
>A bunch of RPGs most people aren't going to care about
>"Stale" 2D platformers that most people were overlooking
>A bunch of generally obscure shit
GBA wasn't a long lasting handheld and was replaced really quick with the DS. While the games weren't failures it wasn't as profitable as Gen 1 and 2. Pokémon starting with Gen 3 was more in maintenance mode in terms of profitability. It was still making money but it wasn't as big as it was in the previous generations.
Most of the audience for red/blue were 7 - 12 when those games came out, by the time gen 3 came out those kids were in high school / headed into college and the series had done nothing to evolve and give itself more mature appeal, so it got mostly dropped until Pokemon Go made it a cool retro millenial adult thing.
People assumed Gen 3 would follow the lead of Gen 2 and be another direct sequel, and we're disappointed when not only were a lot of old Pokemon missing until FRLG, they couldn't even connect to older games
You be bullied at school around Gen 3 if you admited you still liked Pokémon. People had fully moved on into Yu-Gi-Oh! and DBZ by then because unlike Pokémon it was cool and edgy.
This. I was in middle school when Red/Blue came out and it was unlike anything I've seen before or since, every single boy my age played it, it was crazy. Even by the time Gold/Silver came out, just 3 years late apparently, it was completely uncool and I didn't know a single person who played it.
so what you're saying is gen ii really did kill pokemania
I think it says more about people's/kid's attention span than it does about the quality of the games when so many dropped it not because of anything specific to do with the new game but more because they all of a sudden decided they didn't like the concept at all in the span of a few short years.
Adults gave it up because it was going to remain a kiddyshit toy advert (funnily enough, the most prophetic opinion of the last 30 years). I personally gave it up as I wasn't shelling out £190 for a GBA JUST to play pokémon on a shrunken SNES when I'd gotten a playstation 2 the year previously.
Which left the kids still young enough to be monetised and the fresh set of 7 year olds growing into the brand - hence the reboot in the anime, the reboot in the regions (including a remake of an older one) and the reboot in the rest of the franchise as they moved away from "keeping up with the fad demand" to "developing and curating the brand to persist"£.
it was still popular but not the spectacle they make it today. reveals for every little thing didn't come in the form of worldwide youtube vids, but scans from japanese magazines. we got our games like half a year at least before japan, and all the little details like designs and stats were discussed on forums until we got the game. there was no twitter or official social media accounts for pokemon
Compared to the Pokemania time Pokémon wasn't popular at all with the audience that played Gen 1 and 2. It survived thanks to Japan being less into edgy shit and a few Younger Kids whos parent wouldn't let them play edgy games.
*half a year after japan
pretty much, pokemon went from being the thing that literally everyone at school talked about to being something that brought on social stigma for even mentioning it in public at the tail end of gen 2. Gold/silver was still very popular for its novelty when it came out, but basically nobody I knew was still playing when crystal released
>the start of the Cool and Edgy trend in gaming where even a Sonic game had to be edgy
>why was Pokémon not as popular
The fact that it was able to even sell at all says a lot of the strength of the formula as a whole. I imagine that a big chunk of the sales in Gen 3 came from Japan when compared to previous generations. Pokémon in said era did not fit the era of games coming out. Same thing happened with Nintendo with the GameCube bombing and even the new Mario game was trashed for being kiddy.
I hated fucking gen 3 when came out because like 75% of the pokemon looked like shit
To this day is still despise hoenn
you and plenty other johtoddlers
enjoy your permanent hate boner over one of the best gens because you couldn't import your piloswine and walk around with it at night
There were a few here and there, but like many people, we just pick the consoles.
>But DS and DSi are consoles!
Handheld. Completely different. Handheld games are good consoles, but most of the time they were just "lesser console versionof X generation".
When Pokemon GO happened, the game became normie. Normies prefer using their phones rather than PCs, so what happened was more of a fan crossing event, not a pokemania 2.0.
SWSH already passed GS in sales and SV is gonna do so too any moment now(in fact, there is a chance it might have already)
This isn't a statement about the quality of the games, as the switch era has disappointed me, but the figures are objective facts.
Go and the Switch's wild success resuscitated the franchise
I was thinking about this earlier today. I think at least part of the reason is that there were so many spin-offs in that time, mostly of mediocre quality at best, that distracted from the main series just enough. But most weren't popular enough on their own to really stick around. They were mostly done by Gen 5 but the main series hadn't recovered yet. But Gen 6 got marketed a lot especially in the West and laid the foundation for Go to then pump it up further. So they flipped the script, spin-offs and other media were cannibalizing the main series before, probably aided by the really long time between Emerald and DP but then they flipped the script and now spin-offs are off to the side but actually bringing in people who eventually do buy the main series games.
>starting with Gen 3 (16.22m) the games slowly started to sell less and less
>Gen 4 outsold Gen 3 - 17.67m
>Gen 5 sold less - 15.64m
>Gen 6 outsold Gen 3 - 16.68m
>Gen 7 outsold Gen 3 - 16.30m
>Gen 8 outsold Gen 3 - 25.92m
>Gen 9 outsold Gen 3 - 22.66m
Seems starting with Gen 3, burger maths education utterly collapsed.
based gen3 holding down the fort and giving gen4 a good boost which the later gens failed to take advantage of
What's it with Pokemon fans and gaslighting each other?
I relly hope they push the memes and Iono and Miriam end being sisters