The Nintendo DS: Part Five

The 3DS has been out for 3/4 of a year, but that doesn't mean I can't stop eulogizing the original DS! Oddly enough, there have been a great game or two released for the system since I wrote the last post in this series, even. But anyway! Back to the saga of the DS!

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

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Since its debut in the fall of 1996, the Pokemon series has always been a juggernaut for Nintendo. Each version in each "generation" of core Pokemon games sell well into the millions. The GBA versions of Pokemon were good, but that generation was the first in which Nintendo was criticized for "going through the motions" with the series. Cries of "the Pokemon designs are too similar to the old ones!" or "the designs are stupid" spread like wildfire on message boards across the internet. It probably didn't help that Nintendo released the first of the Pokemon remakes, FireRed and LeafGreen, which were upgraded versions of the 1996 Game Boy games. "Obviously, Nintendo is out of ideas when it comes to this series," many said. "What could they possibly do different in the future?"

Astute observers, though, would have noticed where Nintendo was likely going to go if they paid attention to how they released the aforementioned remakes. FireRed and LeafGreen both came with wireless adapters, so players could trade Pokemon wirelessly with each other, eliminating the need for each player to have their own cords and all that. If you owned FireRed or LeafGreen, you had a wireless adapter and were thus ready to go. No extra cost, no extra trip to the store for mom and dad, you can just trade with your friends right now. The only thing the adapter didn't let you do was go online to trade your Pokemon.

Nintendo's next generation handheld fixed that. Sporting wireless connectivity right out of the box, the time was right for Nintendo to implement some new functionality to the series before it became stagnant. It was time to allow players to trade their Pokemon with anyone in the world.

And that is exactly what they did. There were now almost no barriers to entry to playing and fully enjoying Pokemon like there was in the past - so long as you had the system and the game, you were on a pretty even field with everyone else. You would not have to buy two versions of the same game to be able to get all the Pokemon - you could simply trade with someone on the internet to get the ones you were missing. You didn't have to buy a separate cord to be able to hook up with a friend. And, despite the collective internet losing its collective mind about the implementation of Friend Codes, the DS Pokemon games only made you enter them to trade with individual friends. You could trade to people on the internet without having to waste your time typing in a long code each and every time you made a trade.

The level designs in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were a huge step up from the GBA games as well. Gone are the underwater sections from that game, which were ugly mazes that you could only get to by using a HM move (a move taught to your Pokemon that was usually useless in battle, but took up one of your precious four move slots so you could get around the world map). Some areas of the world had dynamic weather, which would change the way the player can move about - and also changes which Pokemon might appear. You could also bring your Pokemon from the previous generation up to the new one by utilizing the GBA slot on the DS.

Also, with just a few exceptions (the obligatory new version of Pidgey - the Starly evolution line, among a few others), the new Pokemon designs were interesting again. Battles were a bit easier to get through as well, because the player could use the touch screen to issue commands to his Pokemon in addition to being able to use the buttons as before.

Nintendo eventually released Pokemon Black and White, also for the DS, this year. They fixed some of the complaints people had about Diamond and Pearl, most notably how slow the battles moved even with animation turned off. Black and White added even more weather effects, and the world was navigated with a bit more visual flair as well. The story had a bit of a darker tone to begin with and was thus a bit more interesting than usual, despite veering into familiar territory near the end.

But the Pokemon series could not exist as it does today without the DS hardware. There will not be a mainline Pokemon game released at any point in the future without the ability to trade over the internet. But not every game would need such features. Some games were meant to be deliberate throwbacks to simpler times. Nintendo had been hinting at looking back at some of their older titles already on the GBA with the E-Reader versions of classic NES games, along with the Classic NES Series. But it had been a long while since their most important franchise returned to the realm of 2D...