Cactus, With Occasional Music

Game Freak, the minds behind the ever-popular Pokemon franchise, recently announced that a new Pokemon series for the DS was forthcoming. Since Game Freak doesn’t handle any of the many spinoff titles, and it has been almost exactly four years since the release of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, a lot of gamers have taken it to mean that Game Freak is starting up the series’ 5th generation. This is pretty much pure speculation at the moment, but like pretty much every Pokemon fan on the planet, I’ve got suggestions as to how the series could be improved.

First and foremost, expanded and streamlined online play. The only thing Pokemon Battle Revolution had over the handheld titles, besides shiny graphics, was online battling against randomly-selected opponents. Why not cut out the middle man and add that feature to the handheld titles? Another welcome feature would be more control over the rules of online battles. Allow players to set Item Clause, Species Clause, number of Pokemon used, and so on. A return of the Battle Recorder would be nice, too; it was a great feature for sharing battles with friends.

Secondly, more complex sprite animation. The 4th generation saw a fairly significant uptick in the overall visual quality of the series, which is nice, but the Pokemon sprites themselves still have very limited animation. Surely there’s something better than the two or three jerky frames of animation available here. Some fans have been calling for a full 3D entry in the handheld arena, but I’m not entirely sure the DS is ready for that just yet.

Thirdly, and this may be wandering into Captain Obvious territory, more Pokemon. Kind of a given, but some people seem to think Pokemon designs have been getting worse over the years, and that therefore no new ‘mons should be made. Now, I could throw up pictures of the original 151 Pokemon sprites and point out that some of them are amongst the most hideously twisted creatures ever to grace the planet, but that would be counterproductive. Really, whether or not Pokemon design has improved over the years is secondary to the fact that more Pokemon means more options, which means a bigger playing field and a more interesting game. There are so many type combinations and combat roles that still have yet to be utilized.

Next, a rather specific request; A storage utility that allows players to store and move Pokemon between games. Nintendo has released two different storage programs over the course of the series — Pokemon Box, for the Gamecube, and My Pokemon Ranch for the Wii — neither of which allowed players to share Pokemon between carts. Given that the only way of transferring Pokemon from one game to another en masse is trading them one by one, moving to a new game is far more tedious and difficult than it really needs to be.

Also, a wider variety of Legendary Pokemon would be nice. Over the course of the last two generations, Psychic and Dragon have gotten the lion’s share of Legendaries, to the point where we have some serious overlap. Heck, in D/P alone, there are four Legendary Psychic-types with Levitate, most of whom share similar combat roles. There are so many types that haven’t seen a Legendary yet that this overlap seems a little silly. How about a Fighting-type Legendary? Or a Poison-type? I’d commit any three acts of mayhem you’d care to name for a Bug-type Legendary.

And finally, give Farfetch’d an evolution. Seriously, it’s getting ridiculous. Bird Samurai? Flying/Fighting type? It’s staring you right in the face, folks.