LogFAQs > #951278715

10. Pokmon Gold/Silver/Crystal (GBC, 2000)
Strong Pokmon. Weak Pokmon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites.

I don't know if there's any game with a weight of expectations upon it greater than that on the first Pokmon sequels. Gold and Silver had the burden of carrying the franchise forward, of proving that it was more than a passing fad, and of establishing Pokmon as a gargantuan franchise for Nintendo, along with Mario and Zelda, for the rest of time. And holy heck, did they deliver. I'm not sure if there's any game in the series that has fully realized its potential as much as Gold and Silver, which was one of the few games to really tackle just about any little thing that the fans were clamoring for and go for it completely.
Gold and Silver bumps up the number of monsters, adds new moves and types, and gives players a whole new region to explore and discover. But it also builds upon a ton of the concepts set out from the first game: the game is canonically a sequel to the events and characters from Red and Blue, so you have things such as recurring Gym Leaders and Elite Four members, characters like Bill and Professor Oak who play a role in the story, and of course Kanto itself is accessible after reaching the Hall of Fame for the first time. But I also love the way that the new Pokmon are handled - some of the earliest monsters like Hoothoots and Sentrets are pretty common, but a ton of the new monsters are hidden in odd locations, or via new mechanics like Headbutting trees or smashing rocks. This gives the Johto dex a feeling of an evolving understanding of the Pokmon universe, one that runs parallel to the way the storyline is presented in-game. Even now-common creatures like Marill and Snubbull were confined to extremely rare encounters in Gold and Silver.
And there's just a ton of extra added stuff to the mix. There's an in-game cell phone (PokGear) that you can use to dial up trainers for rematches and for hints to rare monsters. It's the first game in the series with a built-in internal clock, which allows for Pokmon spawns, evolutions, and events to vary by time of day or day of the week (and drained the heck out of the internal save battery, which is why it's basically impossible to find a working Gold/Silver cart now). There's a ton of optional side-dungeons, with varying challenges and rewards, and two big ol' hideouts for the game's main legendaries (both of which can be caught in either of the two games, as well). The amount of stuff packed into the cartridge is famously known for Satoru Iwata doing some mad genius programming to find a way to squeeze Kanto into the game. (And seems sadly impossible now, given the relative dearth of content in modern Pokmon games.) Crystal version also adds the first version of the Battle Tower, to add a little extra content to the single-player experience. I'm including Crystal here because it's my favorite version of the three, though its differences from Gold/Silver are far too sparse to demand a separate entry.
And then there's just the personal stuff. Johto is one of my favorite game regions: I still find it impressive the way they sold the area's traditional Japanese architecture through basic 8-bit graphics, but it works. Gold/Silver has many of my favorite monster designs, of course including my perpetual namesake, and a lot of really neat evolutions and ideas that expanded upon the potential of the original games. And it's the first Pokmon game I got the chance to get super hyped up over; while I had known some about what Red and Blue were before I played them, Gold/Silver were games I agonized over for as long as some bare-bones screenshots and monster reveals were out there. (Remember Pikablu?) I played a ROM of the Japanese release all the way to the Elite Four, where I accidentally talked to the Abra guy who teleports you back to the first town for some reason (which is absolutely hilarious in retrospect). I pored over every detail of the new creatures, the new areas, and the new Pokmon card sets, before the US release finally happened and I played it every day for months. When Pokmon Crystal dropped on 3DS Virtual Console a few years back, I played that for the first time - and actually went through with completing the game's in-game Pokdex (via trades with the Red/Blue VC releases, using some wild glitches to get a 'legal' Mew and completing everything else legit).


And as much as I'll defend what Sword/Shield did right, as much as I still do love the Pokmon series despite its problems, that was my favorite experience with the franchise in the past decade.
For me, Gold and Silver are the games that not only define my formative experience with Pokmon and video games, but still stand out on their own as just awesome and thoroughly replayable adventures. I'll point to the prior writeup of Red/Blue for all the ways I think the games are still eminently playable in 2021, with the added caveat that Gold/Silver fixed a lot of the terrible issues with balance and broken/useless moves and mechanics. I also think that HeartGold and SoulSilver are the best remakes they've ever put out, too, owing to the high quality of the source material but also the amount of effort they put into lovingly recreating the Johto region and all the crazy stuff they added there as well. (Battle Frontier! Pokathlon! Follower Pokmon! Safari Zone! A fully-fledged Kanto! The Pokwalker!) If you don't count it as cheating, you can sort of lump those in there with this entry, since a lot of the same great stuff about original G/S/C, plus more, goes with that.
That being said, this is a top-ten game regardless and felt like the perfect way to kick off this section of the list. I think this whole project is about a combination of games we adore but also an encapsulation of our personal experiences through games, and Gold/Silver seems essential for me in capturing a certain part of my life that will always stick with me.
Top 5 Favorite Johto Pokmon: Slugma - Lanturn - Lugia - Wooper - Murkrow

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