Pokemon X and Y launched on the 12th of October, and after a few weeks of waiting, I finally have my hands on my own copy. I've played Pokemon games for over half of my life, and one of my favorite things about a new game is seeing the change in graphics and style.
The new game is made for the 3DS, which means there's an even bigger jump in style this time. In this post, I'm going to explore the change from 1995, the first games, to 2013, with the newest ones.
Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow were the first games in the franchise, for the Gameboy Colour. The colours in the actual game were limited (ironically), showing more colour in Pokemon battles than in the actual world where your character walked around. Everything was extremely square, with a low resolution screen and limited space. Backgrounds weren't even apart of Pokemon battles, instead keeping them simple to concentrate on the gameplay rather than the visuals.
Pokemon Gold, Silver and Crystal in 1999 didn't have a huge change in graphics compared to the newer ones, but both Pokemon and the main world had a lot more color. It was a lot more interesting visually, and environment designs looked a lot more interesting, even if they were still stuck with too many square shapes.
Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald (2004) had a huge jump in graphics. It was the first Pokemon game for the new Gameboy Advanced - and the GBA SP which featured a backlight, something that was much needed for the older games. Everything has bright color that fits nicely with the environment, and even the battles have patterns and colors for their background, depending on what location you are in. Though still very square and blocky for the most part, there are a lot more interesting shapes that make certain parts of the environment (i.e trees) seem a lot less stuck together.
The next games out were Pearl, Diamond and Platinum (2009), and Soul Silver and Heart Gold, in 210, both of which had very similar designs. Above is Heart Gold/Soul Silver gameplay, picked just from personal preference. Environments have again improved, a lot more realistic and shaped than before. There's a wider range of colors, and shading isn't as plain now - the game uses a pseudo-3D style of rendering to make things like the trees much more realistic.The next couple of games, Pokemon Black and White used largely the same style.
Pokemon X and Y are the newest games of the series, released in 2013 for the 3DS, which changed the graphics drastically. Rather than the typical frame-by-frame animation of the earlier 2D games, small 3D models are used instead of sprites, including those of Pokemon in the actual battles - with the 3D switch on, you can watch the battle in 3D without any glasses if you can manage to hold the console extremely still, and not get a headache or any queasiness from it. Though I don't particularly like the actual 3D mode you can put it on, the 3D animation inside the actual game looks good. It's so far from Pokemon Yellow that it barely feels like the same franchise, but the games style every new generation has led into this style smoothly enough, and I think it is a good change, especially with a wider target audience - there's no worry of keeping the game in the Pokemon 'style' anymore - the older games are already considered as retro, and this new style is accepted a lot more among newer viewers.
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