Five improvements for the next generation of Pokemon games

Tomorrow, Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver will be released in the U.S., the last games of the current 4th generation. The next games to come out later this year will mark the beginning of Pokemon’s 5th generation, with new pokemon and new features. As I eagerly anticipate getting my copy of Soul Silver tomorrow, I’ve been thinking about some improvements I’d like to see in the upcoming 5th generation…

Over the years, Nintendo has done a good job improving the shortcomings of old Pokemon games in the new games. However, there are still a number of improvements and features we have yet to see. In addition to the usual – new pokemon, new attacks, new locations, etc., – below is a list of five improvements I’d like to see in the 5th generation games, or at least in some future generation.

5. Trade more than one pokemon at a time

In all Pokemon games that involve trading, players can only trade one pokemon at a time, one-for-one. Being able to trade more than one at a time, or at least not being limited to one-for-one and being able to make trades such as two common pokemon for one rarer pokemon, would be a nice improvement.

4. Return of the Item PC Box

Up until the 4th generation, there was an Item Box on the PC in addition to a Pokemon Box that players could use to put items in because the player’s Bag was limited. The 4th generation gave the player a limitless Bag, thus eliminating the need for the Item PC Box. While a limitless Bag is nice, over many hours of gameplay, it accumulates so many items that it’s time consuming to find certain ones. Even though items are divided by section (TMs, Key Items, Berries, etc), each section still accumulates a staggering amount. Whenever you pick up a new item, it could go to the bottom of the section, thus forcing you to scroll through 50+ items, many that you barely use but still need, in order to get to the new one. With so many new items introduced in the 4th generation, bringing back the Item PC Box would allow players to keep their Bags stocked with only daily items and keep lesser used items out of the way in the PC.

3. Trade items without pokemon

Items for pokemon to hold were introduced in the 2nd generation. Since then, the amount and complexity of items have increased, but still the only way to trade items from one game to another is to have a pokemon hold the item, then trade that pokemon. This makes trading a large number of items extra time consuming, what with having to trade only one at a time and having to find pokemon to trade them with. Being able to trade items (and like #5, being able to trade more than one at a time) amongst other games without having to trade pokemon too would be a great new addition.

2. Improved GTS

The GTS (Global Trade Station) is a revolutionary new feature introduced in the 4th generation that allows players to go online with their DS and trade pokemon with other players from all over the world. However, it was met with much criticism because so many players would offer unfair or impossible trades, such as wanting an extremely rare, high-level pokemon in exchange for their common, low-level pokemon. I have a simple solution to this problem which I think Nintendo should be able to implement – a system where pokemon can only be traded on the GTS for other pokemon of equal or lesser rarity. All pokemon on the GTS will be grouped by rarity (perhaps three groups: “Common,” “Uncommon,” and “Rare”). This way, if a player offers their uncommon pokemon up for trade for example, the only pokemon they can seek in exchange are other uncommon or common pokemon and not rare ones. Pokemon levels should also be restricted in the same way, prohibiting players from making offers such as their LV12 pokemon in exchange for a LV100 pokemon.

Another good GTS improvement would be the ability to not only put up your pokemon for trade, but to select certain pokemon characteristics (species, gender, etc) and see what others are offering for it. That way, players may be able to obtain pokemon they haven’t yet seen in their Poke-dex. For example, let’s say you have a Cradily that you’d like to trade. You look on the GTS to see what others are asking for a Cradily. One of the offers is for Kabutops, a pokemon you don’t yet have in your Poke-dex. You can choose which of the offers for Cradily you want even if you haven’t seen those pokemon yet.

These are the main GTS improvements I would like to see, but others could perhaps be the ability to seek pokemon not just by gender and level, but also by known attacks and nature. Being able to put more than one pokemon up for trade would be nice, too.

1. Give away pokemon/items without trading

The original concept of trading pokemon was so players could get together with their Game Boys and trade via link cable. But now that the games have become so expanded and technologically advanced, particularly with players wanting to trade large numbers of pokemon and items from one of their games to another, being able to simply give away pokemon (and why not items, too?) from one game card to another without having to trade pokemon one-for-one would be great. For example, let’ say I want to trade 30+ of my pokemon from Platinum into my new Soul Silver. To do that, I would have to catch 30+ “fodder” pokemon in Soul Silver just for the sake of trading them for the Platinum pokemon. Then I’d have to wait for each one-for-one trade to go through and come back and forth to the trading room five times because you can only have six pokemon at a time. But with this new method, I would simply select all the Pokemon I’d want to send from Platinum to Soul Silver and they’d be off without having to trade anything from Soul Silver.

A similar method for items would be good, too. And if Nintendo could figure out a way for a single player to trade between their own different game cards without needing two DS systems, that would be good as well.

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Those are basically the five best improvements I could think of for subsequent Pokemon games. Hopefully, Nintendo will figure out some way to implement them.

I intend to spend all day tomorrow playing Soul Silver. For some reason, the wait for this game as been one of the hardest since I first heard news about it over six months ago. As someone who’s been following Pokemon games since Red and Blue, I haven’t been this excited about one since the Japanese release of Diamond and Pearl in 2006.

Also, eight anime series I’m currently watching from the fall ’09 and winter ’10 seasons will be finishing soon…I’m hoping I’ll be able to tear myself away from Soul Silver long enough to write some reviews in the upcoming weeks =P