New pokemon are different

[Sean Hollyman]

I'm more inclined to prefer the newer designs, I mean a lot of the old ones kind of suck.

A seal? Woah interesting.. a crab? Jeez, it blew me away.

I know it's not Gen V, but come on Gen III had an armored Tyrannousaurs.

 

[Nazulu]

They're effective, because they had to be to not be blobs, and they're iconic, because they came first.

That's a not good reason to say something is effective or iconic just so you know.

Believe what ever you want. Like I said, if you can't see it, then this is pointless.

Yes, you're obviously far too blinded by nostalgia for a proper argument.

And you're blinded because you have poor taste or just because you want to be right no matter what. Either way, you're a hypocrite if you think you made a better argument.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

No, sorry, that's wrong. It's not because they came first. Unfortunately, that's a coincidence a lot of famous artists make there most iconic stuff first, not always but a lot of the time.

No matter how you spin it, Pikachu will always be a design that stands out more than some dragon. Cute and really good aesthetics, amazing design, stands out even more than Charizard.

It would be nowhere near as iconic. Most of the other iconic first gen pokemon are just iconic for being the ones from our childhood. I doubt pikachu would have been famous if not for the anime. Hell, they changed the model for the american release of pikachu in blue and red to match the anime version. The very first ingame original pikachu looks pretty crap.

 

[Nazulu]

No, sorry, that's wrong. It's not because they came first. Unfortunately, that's a coincidence a lot of famous artists make there most iconic stuff first, not always but a lot of the time.

No matter how you spin it, Pikachu will always be a design that stands out more than some dragon. Cute and really good aesthetics, amazing design, stands out even more than Charizard.

It would be nowhere near as iconic. Most of the other iconic first gen pokemon are just iconic for being the ones from our childhood. I doubt pikachu would have been famous if not for the anime. Hell, they changed the model for the american release of pikachu in blue and red to match the anime version. The very first ingame original pikachu looks pretty crap.

It would be nowhere near as iconic?

No, they are very well designed and stick out and are why the show became popular in the first place. I couldn't give a damn what the original looked like, the new model is super effective (hahaha).

It's like music really. All the famous pop icons could of released those catchy songs much later and they still would of received a lot of attention.

 

[Dryk]

See, it's still the same guy doing the Pokemon Designs. It's not some new designer who's come in and messed up, it's the same designer, making designs that are more complicated and involved because now we have the graphics to handle them.

Just because they could make convoluted, chaotic messes doesn't necessarily mean they should. There are still heaps of simple and very effective Pokemon and they look great.

 

[Scrustle]

That gen 4 Charizard still looks way better than that gen 1 Garchomp to me. You have a point though. A lot of the new designs are far too fussy with lots of stupid useless bits and pieces hanging off them, but that's not what I think is the main reason for the decline in design quality. It's because they have drifted away from the original aesthetic. They're more or less had to since they've been creating more and more, but what it has done has made the new species look more and more generic. The new designs don't look like Pokemon, they just look like random monsters that anyone could have made up. There may have always been "stupid" designs in Pokemon, but at least you could tell a Voltorb and a Hitmonchan were actually Pokemon.

The new Pokemon look like monsters that anyone could have made up? As opposed to the old Pokemon who look... well, like monsters that anyone could have made up?

It's easy to tell the old Pokemon were Pokemon because you recognized them as Pokemon. Because you've known them as Pokemon for a lot longer. In other words, because of nostalgia.

Although I won't pretend I don't have more nostalgia towards older Pokemon it's obvious there was a tighter aesthetic with the designs in older games. Like if you take a look at the bird species through the series. The Pidgey family, the Spearow family, the Duduo family, the original legendary birds, Ho-oh, and even Farfetch'd all have similar design cues. Fast forward to the most recent incarnation of Pidgey, and we have Pidove. It just looks like a cartoon pigeon. It looks like it could come out of any cartoon. The previous bird Pokemon designs were recognisably consistent, but as time has gone on it's become less and less cohesive. There's a clear progression.

 

[Ranylyn]

Prime example: Rhyhorn

Rhyhorn (Gen 1) - Rhydon (Gen 1) - Rhyperior (Gen 4)

Rhyhorn and Rhydon are great. I actually like using them for their decent defenses and having a pretty damn high Attack stat among gen 1 Pokemon. They also don't look half bad.

Then Rhyperior. Stronger than Rhydon, sure. But appearance-wise? WHAT THE HELL!? First off, the color is way off which is very jarring (Imagine if Gardevoir or Gallade, two very popular pokemon, were suddenly VERY off shades of nasty puke instead of a similar green to their prevolutions.) And that really scrawny part of the arm, it'd snap if it so much as tried to MOVE it's arm! Like what the hell?


Gen 1: Every pokemon was functional in it's own way. Elegant in their simplicity (just look at that picture in the starting post for this thread and how Charizard would be ruined if it was designed in Gen 4.) And whatnot. And come on, who can honestly hate pokemon like Sandshrew, Arcanine, or Starmie?

Gen 2: They got a little more adventurous, here. Xatu? Smeargle? Some were great, others less so, but the point was, it was largely more of the same. Sure, Azumarill, as cute as it is, just lacks the sleek functionality of, say, Raichu, but what can you do?

Gen 3: OH GOD WHAT AM I LOOKING AT!? Medicham!? What is this and why is it's ability so broken!? I despise Gen 3 because all the "Oh god I hate this design" Pokemon are leagues stronger than they should be due to their abilities. The few pokemon whose appearance I DO like (Torchic, Swellow, Altaria, etc) are, well, generally not even really worth using. Oh, and Ludicolo. I'll say it right now. Ludicolo offends me. My best friend died when he was 13 (will be 8 years ago this October) - and he was from Mexico - and he didn't like Ludicolo because it was stereotypically offensive. And I carry on his stance. Point being, I walked away from Gen 3 with... Gardevoir. That's... really about it. Oh, and they also introduced a lot of no-sense type matches simply to add more STAB options. Fire/Fighting? Really? Those don't exactly go hand in hand. Not like Rock/Ground, or Grass/Poison, etc. Fire/Fighting is seriously just "Here, handle some of your weaknesses better!" Like seriously....

Gen 4: Okay. So while they made some things worse (Rhyperior is just one example) at least their new designs GENERALLY weren't as atrociously bad as a lot of Gen 3. Sure, Chimchar is a blatant insult to Charmander (don't give me that "Sun Wukong tribute" crap, it just looks like a cheap Charmander ripoff coupled with the aforementioned Mixed type BS - but at least they balanced mixed types across all the starters. Torterra gets Earth STAB against Infernape, who gets fighting STAB against Empoleon, who double weaknesses Torterra with ice.)

Gen 5: I really can't comment. No money to play it.

 

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

Pokemon Generations are always full of subpar designs. Muk (a pile of mud), Smogmog (just... no), Dugtrio (triple the first one... *golfclap*), Mr. Mime, Jynx, Exeggutor. All of them are as lazy, disguisting or offensive as the examples brought up in this thread.

In Exeggutor´s defense, he is possibly based on a japanese folk spirit known as the Jinmenju, a tree that supposedly had human heads in place of fruit. Heads that constantly smiled and giggled.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

I kinda knew what this thread would become about, but I'm glad to see it isn't too openly hostile yet, even if some comments are straying in that direction. (try and keep it civil guys)


I must admit some of the designs for new pokemon that were meant to be evolutions of older pokemon (such as the rydon evolution and the magneton evolution) aren't all that crash hot.

While others like the mismugnius i think it's called (evolution of the gen 2 ghost pokemon) I'm actually really liking.

I suppose it might come down to whether it feels they retained the same 'essence' to them despite the general shift in how they design pokemon now.

as for gen three, some designs were a little silly but on the whole i don't actually think they're to bad, even stuff i kinda mumbered(complained) about when i first saw it have kinda grown on me (like how aron's evolutions were just ryhorn/don with a steel coat of paint, yet now i think that's actually pretty cool). Guess they grew on me


(ps i like ludicolo, and must be kinda dumb as i never picked up on him being 'insulting' to mexicans... or even related to mexicans in any way XD)

 

[Lizardon]

That's also true, seems to be a few more inanimate-object pokemon.

Though i'd assume thats got to do with already having used so many real and mythological animals already, so they're trying to find other sources.


coincidently in the same place I saw the picture in the OP it also had this, which mentions pokemon by... 'source'? whatever you'd call it, by whether they're base don plants, animals, inanimate objects, etc.

IMAGE SNIP

(guize i bet you totally can't guess where i was wasting time on)

Damn, that's what I was going to post.

Anyway, this is how I feel about newer Pokemon.

I think I waste my time in the same place as you >_>

 

[Bato]

I actually pulled up a giant list of Pokemon months back and went through all of them to see how their design evolved over the years.
And I still believe the more natural design of Generation 1 is the best, even the Pokemon I didn't like that much had a visual styling that was perfect. But every subsequent generation after they just get worse. Their design becomes busy, unnatural, and like some guy on PCP took an animal, nailed some objects like jet turbines to it's head and painted it purple, red, and black.

I don't think it's Nostalgia speaking either because Gold and Silver were my Nostalgia nuggets, not Red and Blue. I know I played Gold three times as much at least.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, GenWunners gonna Wunn. Facts of life here people.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

I'm more inclined to prefer the newer designs, I mean a lot of the old ones kind of suck.

A seal? Woah interesting.. a crab? Jeez, it blew me away.

I know it's not Gen V, but come on Gen III had an armored Tyrannousaurs.

Aggron is a triceratops not a tyrannosaurus. Learn your dinosaurs.

Captcha = My Dear Watson.
Seems appropriate for now. Basically add this before the first word of my post.

It could be a mix.
I thought Triceratops's walked on all fours.

 

[loa]

Ultimate badass legendary gen1 -> current gen

->

Yeahh...
You can argue that there were complicated designs in earlier gens and you would be right but there clearly is a trend to be seen here.
Some shapes are interesting but there's so much of those that now we're closing in on FF belts-n-zippers territory.

I'm curious how they can top THAT in the next generation.

 

[FakDendor]

I actually jumped on the bandwagon at the tail end of Gen.2, and got gen.3 shortly thereafter. As such, I'd like to think that I can look at the issue without nostalgia (though that 'prolly isn't completely true).

I figure it this way. Sure, there were pokemon in the first generations we didn't like (those have already been mentioned in previous posts). But how often did you see one of those in battle and just sigh dejectedly?

I never particularly liked, say, Koffing. But when slogging through a big group of Team Rocket grunts, I never wanted to break my gameboy when they sent out the fifth koffing in a row.

Conversely, every time I see Chimchar, or the ice cream cone that shall not be mentioned on pain of disembowlment, I die inside.

I never favored the Chikorita family, but I never minded seeing them in the anime or games, and in fact choosing a starter in the first three games was a huge decision for me, because they were ALL awesome, and it would shape how my team would form.

Whereas, in generations four and five, I had made my choice as soon as I'd seen the images of the starters in pre-release info, because the other two choices were, quite frankly, rather dumb.

While you may not agree with my specific example above, I think that we can at least agree on my basic premise:

While there were disliked Pokemon in the earlier games, there seems to be a greater number of disliked pokemon in the later games, and a greater dislike of them.

 

[Emilyx382]

Prime example: Rhyhorn

Rhyhorn (Gen 1) - Rhydon (Gen 1) - Rhyperior (Gen 4)

Rhyhorn and Rhydon are great. I actually like using them for their decent defenses and having a pretty damn high Attack stat among gen 1 Pokemon. They also don't look half bad.

Then Rhyperior. Stronger than Rhydon, sure. But appearance-wise? WHAT THE HELL!? First off, the color is way off which is very jarring (Imagine if Gardevoir or Gallade, two very popular pokemon, were suddenly VERY off shades of nasty puke instead of a similar green to their prevolutions.) And that really scrawny part of the arm, it'd snap if it so much as tried to MOVE it's arm! Like what the hell?


Gen 1: Every pokemon was functional in it's own way. Elegant in their simplicity (just look at that picture in the starting post for this thread and how Charizard would be ruined if it was designed in Gen 4.) And whatnot. And come on, who can honestly hate pokemon like Sandshrew, Arcanine, or Starmie?

Gen 2: They got a little more adventurous, here. Xatu? Smeargle? Some were great, others less so, but the point was, it was largely more of the same. Sure, Azumarill, as cute as it is, just lacks the sleek functionality of, say, Raichu, but what can you do?

Gen 3: OH GOD WHAT AM I LOOKING AT!? Medicham!? What is this and why is it's ability so broken!? I despise Gen 3 because all the "Oh god I hate this design" Pokemon are leagues stronger than they should be due to their abilities. The few pokemon whose appearance I DO like (Torchic, Swellow, Altaria, etc) are, well, generally not even really worth using. Oh, and Ludicolo. I'll say it right now. Ludicolo offends me. My best friend died when he was 13 (will be 8 years ago this October) - and he was from Mexico - and he didn't like Ludicolo because it was stereotypically offensive. And I carry on his stance. Point being, I walked away from Gen 3 with... Gardevoir. That's... really about it. Oh, and they also introduced a lot of no-sense type matches simply to add more STAB options. Fire/Fighting? Really? Those don't exactly go hand in hand. Not like Rock/Ground, or Grass/Poison, etc. Fire/Fighting is seriously just "Here, handle some of your weaknesses better!" Like seriously....

Gen 4: Okay. So while they made some things worse (Rhyperior is just one example) at least their new designs GENERALLY weren't as atrociously bad as a lot of Gen 3. Sure, Chimchar is a blatant insult to Charmander (don't give me that "Sun Wukong tribute" crap, it just looks like a cheap Charmander ripoff coupled with the aforementioned Mixed type BS - but at least they balanced mixed types across all the starters. Torterra gets Earth STAB against Infernape, who gets fighting STAB against Empoleon, who double weaknesses Torterra with ice.)

Gen 5: I really can't comment. No money to play it.

You know, I actually agree with most of this... Gen 1, for the most part, I prefer because of it's simplicity....and Gen 2 is my favourite because they were a little more adventurous with their designs. There is however a point that they crossed in Gen 3 where some of the designs are just plain wrong. I very much agree with your comments on Ludicolo for example. I can get on board with nearly every Pokemon design in the first 2 generations....and then from Generation 3 onwards the amount of Pokemon I look at and go 'ergh' seems to increase. More so in Generation 5... Trubbish and his evolution are based on bursting rubbish bags! at least Grimer and Muk were a little better designed even if the were based on a similar thing. Though I am not saying that ALL the designs were graceful in Gen 1 or 2, nor that all of them are wrong in Gen 3.

I also feel that at some point the design team should stop trying to make new evolutions and devolutions for Pokemon from previous generations.... Lickilicky, Rhyperior and and Tangrowth weren't exactly exactly the best designs....

 

[snave]

Its all in the silhouettes.

Part of it is that Pokemon exhausted all available "cool" poses in the first generation or two. Pose is as much part of the silhouette as anything else. Heck, Nintendo themselves even knew this. Don't believe me? Recall the animated series and its guess the pokemon sections. Yeah. They knew.

So yeah, part of it is nostalgia: you associate that pose with the older generations. But to argue that means the newer ones are equally as innovative is like arguing the final Matrix film was as surprising or "fresh" as the first.

 

[Dryk]

I'm curious how they can top THAT in the next generation.

Give EVERY Pokemon a fur cock instead of just a few of them

 

[Joshimodo]

Ultimate badass legendary gen1 -> current gen

->

Yeahh...
You can argue that there were complicated designs in earlier gens and you would be right but there clearly is a trend to be seen here.
Some shapes are interesting but there's so much of those that now we're closing in on FF belts-n-zippers territory.

I'm curious how they can top THAT in the next generation.

This is the problem.


They've changed from being focussed on simple yet creative creatures into unimaginative creatures with WAY too much detail.

Take two very similar Pokémon - Muk and Garbodor. One is sludge, one is garbage.

Muk had an obvious silhouette, two-tone colour, and a face. Garbodor has an obvious silhouette, half a dozen colours, and lots of detail that reduces the impact of how it looks.

The Mewtwo/Kyurem comparison is apt. Another would be something like Mewtwo/Deoxys - Same sort of thing, but Deoxys has a lot of flailing bits and pieces, go-faster stripes, swirly bits, patterns and all sorts of messy shite.

 

[Cheesepower5]

The fewer doo-dads and colours on old 'Mons is for a pretty simple reason, the same reason every hero in Fire Emblem has blue hair to match their eyes: The Gameboy and Gameboy Color can do like, 2-8 different colours at a time. You just couldn't make a Pokemon look like they do now.

Overall I think Gen 5 has had the weakest designs (some were cool, like Golurk or Darmanitan), but I like 4's a lot. And to be frank, Gen 1/2 had plenty of problems. Why the fuck does Voltorb exist? Jynx, Mr. Mime, Dunsparce? I could think up more.