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Do you think that there is too much Kanto nostalgia lately?

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RileyXY1

RileyXY1

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Well, I think that now, the newest games in the series are plagued with gigantic references to Kanto. For the record, here's all the Kanto references I found in XY and SM.

XY
Santalune Forest is essentially a copy of Viridian Forest.
You get the Kanto starters with Mega Evolution.
There is a Snorlax blocking your path and you need a PokeFlute to wake it up.
Lapras is given to you as a gift.
Mewtwo is available in a postgame exclusive area.
Kanto fanboy favorites Charizard and Mewtwo are the only Pokemon with two Megas.
The legendary birds make yet another appearance.
The game is scripted so that Pidgey is always your first wild encounter.

SM
The player character is from Kanto.
The Alola Forms are Gen I exclusive. The guy who studies them just so happens to be Professor Oak's cousin.
There's more Kanto mons in the Alola Pokedex than new Pokemon. And Alola Forms count.
The Nugget Bridge was copied over word for word.
The Fly Pokeride Pokemon is Charizard.
Alola has its own Digglet's Cave.
The Kanto starters are the only Pokemon not in the Alola Pokedex to have Mega Stones available.
The Kanto Pokemon (and other old Pokemon, but there aren't many) are more common than the new Pokemon.
Lille leaves for Kanto to go see Bill.

I play new generations for new Pokemon, not to have old Pokemon shoved in my face every 15 seconds. This is really starting to sour my opinion on Gen I and the original 151.
 
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Yeah, I do think it's a bit much.

I can't say I was ever a huge fan of Kanto in general (the one thing I do really like about the place is a Special exclusive character, that being Yellow), and it honestly just gets tiring to see it everywhere.

Some of the pandering is worse than other inclusions, though. Alolan forms are probably the worst of it, it denies over 500 Pokémon a shot at having something new just because they happened to be introduced later. The Kanto starter mega stones is another, since it's basically denying the player use of legal Pokémon in the Battle Tree once Bank opens because they aren't one of these specific Pokémon. There's also no particular reason for the Fly Pokémon to be one not Alola Native beyond obvious pandering.

On the other hand, stuff like
Lillie going to Kanto to see Bill
isn't quite as... overboard. It's a cute call back, it makes sense, it's not done at the expense of something else. I like that.
 
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While I definitely agree that the game shoved older pokemon in your face too much in the wild and kinda hid the new Mon I think saying SM pandered to Kanto is a bit much.

I'm a fan that played every new series game when they came out except for sinnoh and bw2, and playing thru SM I loved the mentions to ALL the past regions thru the game.

Such as the food at the restaurant in the pokecenters,the Johto area garden,the fossils from I believe sinnoh and unova.

It felt like a true celebration of all 20 years with Kanto in the forefront but Kanto did start it all.

I remember being a small kid and playing Pokemon blue on an original Gameboy it was a gaming experience like none before and it's why I'm still here.

But pandering to Kanto? Only if that's what your looking for

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk
 
Eh, I don't think so. It's the 20th anniversary. There are going to be Kanto callbacks. In fact there's hardly a more appropriate time for them.

And with XY, we must remember that those games came right after BW/B2W2, which really went off and did their own thing, and made it a point to break away from the older regions and traditions. Which was nice, but the approach was so stark, that a sort of returning-to-roots in the following installment was in my opinion, reasonable enough. Afterward, ORAS were pretty much Kanto-free in terms of major influences, and overall, I don't even think the Kanto references in XY or SM got that much in the way of those games being their own.
 
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Kanto (and, to a lesser degree, Johto) is the lynchpin of the popularity of the whole franchise. It's the part of Pokémon that's a touchstone of popular culture. It's what brings back old fans, and what allow new parents (the people who actually buy games for kids) to relate the new games to the games they played as kids. In short, Kanto sells. The others...don't.

Kanto is here to stay, and the sooner the Pokémon fandom accept that fact (And forget they ever heard that moronic "genwunner" term), the better for everyone.
 
Really, I don't mind. Not in the slightest.
But then 'Gen I nostalgia' isn't really a 'thing' for me personally, considering that my first games were from Gen 4. So I'll never get a feeling of nostalgia from Kanto Pokemon, or anything from the region in general.
It kind of makes sense that there would be a lot of Kanto call backs in the most recent gens, since FireRed and LeafGreen will probably never be remade (even though, simply by time, they are due a remake) there needs to be something to bring back the nostalgia and feelings of Kanto for the audience that grew up both with Red and Blue and with FireRed and LeafGreen.
 
There is nothing wrong with call backs to previous generations. Simpley out it is not pandering at all. It is just going g to what attracts the bigger market. A Mudbray, Chimchar or a Gardevoir isn't going for resonate with people compared to Kidding, Tentacool, Zubat, Bulbasaur or a Mewtwo.

Pokemon was really big in the late 90s. Really, really, really big. It was part of pop culture all around the world. A lot of these people stopped playing the games but still remember these guys. Then came Pokemon Go which had Gen I Pokemon and a lot of people were so in.

These people are likely to buy games if they are familiar with the Pokemon or strokes a nostalgic cord with them.

The fact of the matter is that even a remake of Pokemon Stadium with heavy marketing of Pikachu, Venusaur, Charizard and Golbat among others than a remake of D/P. That might be a hyperbole but why alienated a bigger potential market for a smaller market that will buy the games regardless.

For me personally seeing those Alolan versions of the original 151 was a lot cooler than seeing the new Pokemon. I'm familiar with them, I grew up with them and they resonate better with me.
 
Ghostsoul said:
But then 'Gen I nostalgia' isn't really a 'thing' for me personally, considering that my first games were from Gen 4. So I'll never get a feeling of nostalgia from Kanto Pokemon, or anything from the region in general.
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Hell, I did start with Gen I, and I don't have a lot of Kanto nostalgia. Always been more of a Gen II person, myself. That or Gen V, since that's what I re-entered to the franchise with. But I don't have much of an issue with the Gen I-focused marketing. I get it. It makes sense. The old Pokémon are the icons. Stuff like Pikachu and Bulbasaur and Mewtwo are globally recognized. And it's not like they don't reference the other generations - they just don't do so as visibly.
 
Sadly, yes, and I've had enough of it. We've had 6 games prior to SM that were heavily influenced by Kanto or had more than necessary Kanto-related Pokemon (XY, GO, and Virtual Console RBY), which is far too many on its own. I don't care if it's the 20th anniversary or that Kanto started it all, I want to put that region and its inhabitants behind me. New games and new gens are supposed to focus on the new Pokemon, new characters and new regions, but for the past few years we've been unable to break away from Kanto, which I'm quite sick of. Out of all the games in the past few years, only ORAS has not had any sort of Kanto reference or influence, which I'm grateful for. I want to see everything about Kanto put to bed and stop having it shoved in our faces all the time. While SM wasn't as big of an offender as the aforementioned games, it still shoves Kanto and its Pokemon in our faces while hiding Alola's potential and its Pokemon in its shadow. Enough is enough. I'm quite sick of it all. For years we can't seem to get rid of anything involving Kanto, and it's become outright infuriating to me. If Gen VIII pulls the same stunt, I may rethink my position as a Pokemon fan. But yes, I do feel that the Kanto "nostalgia", as one could call it, has been very heavy lately, and it's causing a lot of potentially high-rate games to lose value. Honestly, BW did it right, so why can't GF learn from BW's awesomeness and put the focus on the new Pokemon/characters/regions instead of shoving not-so-golden-oldies in our face 24/7.
 
That's a shame, because it's a wish you're never getting.

Kanto is the core of the series, and one of its best (and easiest) selling argument for average consumers. It,s not going to go away to appease the handful of hardcore fans who obsess over new stuff. Especially not after Go and VII went out and shattered records each on their side.
 
It's easy to hate on Kanto but Mon for Mon it's the best and most recognizable group of Pokemon.
Outside of it you get alot of questionable pokemon that most people dislike and I rarely see anyone put together a team of non legendaries without one Kanto pokemon.

I mean seriously name one region with a more solid line up of Pokemon or a region that out sold Kanto, pandering to Kanto is pandering to the majority of gamefreaks customer's

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk
 
As others had mentioned, there are a difference between simple references and pandering. But SuMo and XY went beyond the simple Zubat and Magikarp's omnipresence. Some I don't mind (Santalune Forest being borderline a Veridian carbon copy for example. Another example being a certain spoiler and mostly due to context) but in general its a little tedious, because combined with this 4-game-a generation streak it screams two things:
  1. that Gamefreak seems content to let older games die and be forgotten after being remade once 2-5 generations later.
  2. that Kanto will be an exception and put on an eternal pedestal because of people that think that pokemon based on inanimate objects are the devil and that the 90s were the only period in history that made earth a utopia >.>
 
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Morningstar said:
Bad wording (and hyperbole) on my part. I meant to say that they aren't considering remaking the games more than once.
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I don't think we've yet gotten to a point where that would be viable, let alone necessary.
 
Glaceon Mage said:
Alolan forms are probably the worst of it, it denies over 500 Pokémon a shot at having something new just because they happened to be introduced later.
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I'd say that the problem is more with the relatively low number of Alolan forms (compared to Mega Evolutions) than all of them being from Generation I. Some of the forms are on the questionable side, but 12-14 Kanto representatives wouldn't have been excessive at all for the 20th anniversary. There should have been around 30 overall, but it's silly to blame Kanto for the lower number.

But it isn't too late to add more regional variants.

The Kanto starter mega stones is another, since it's basically denying the player use of legal Pokémon in the Battle Tree once Bank opens because they aren't one of these specific Pokémon.
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No. It allows the player to use the Mega Evolutions of the starters as a reward for defeating Red, which seems fair to me.

The exclusion of the other Mega Evolutions not native to Alola is an issue that Game Freak deliberately chose to impose for reasons that have nothing to do with Kanto.
 
I dont mind references to Kanto to a certain extent, but if it comes to be only Kanto Pokemon getting new stuff that shouldnt be happening, other gens and pokemon need representation too and not be completely shoved aside as if they dont even exist. Other gens are still important.
 
Morningstar said:
Bad wording (and hyperbole) on my part. I meant to say that they aren't considering remaking the games more than once.
Click to expand...

Which post-Kanto game should they be re-remaking exactly? HGSS was just one console ago (and is still playable on the 2/3DS), ORAS is a mere two years old. There's no sane reason whatsoever to re-remake either of them.
 
My thought about all the Kanto in Sun & moon is so they don't have to re-remake FRLG, since it would be next in order in the remake line. I did think it was a bit weird that it got a ton of references in both XY and SM, but I don't really mind it. I certainly was hoping for Alola forms from other gens though and I think more references to other gens would be nice (but they do still exist, just less frequent and obvious). Obviously Kanto is special to a lot of people because it is what started everything and even for those who made the games I would imagine it is very special because it led to so much success. Because of that it will always get a little more than the other gens.
 
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