Attempting to follow up the success of the original generation of Pokémon was going to be difficult at the best of times, let alone with the restrictions of the decade-old Game Boy still being present (Only Crystal was a Game Boy Color exclusive). It got to the point that when it came time to move the games to the GBA, the entire game structure had to be overhauled and we got the original “Dexit.” But given those limitations, Gold / Silver / Crystal still came out as games that I was willing to write more about than should be considered sane.

A lot of my appreciation for the generation came from the design of the Johto region. Even if the broad strokes are similar to its neighbour to the east (Kanto) there’s a lot more room for exploration with the cities a bit more spread out, and the cities themselves have more places for exploration with locations like the towers of Ecruteak City, the Olivine City Lighthouse, and the large underground sections of Goldenrod City. Even something as minor as the Lake of Rage was fun to explore. Sure, you can dive straight for the red Gyarados, but exploring around reveals some pretty big rewards (which were expanded in the DS remakes).

There wasn’t a lot of room under the hood to make the wholesale overhaul that they might have had in mind, but there’s a lot of things that were added in the generation that are still seeing benefits today. The split of “Special” into disparate Attack and Defense stats meant a lot of the existing Pokémon could have more defined roles, and the ability for Pokémon to hold items in battle added a lot of strategy and timing. The day-night cycle, though irritating for Pokédex completionists, did make meaningful changes to exploration. The third version (Crystal) was even farther ahead of its time with a female player character option, move tutors, postgame battle facilities, and even internet connectivity in a fashion being added (even if it took the rest of the world until 2018 to see the fruits of that last one).

There was only space in the game to add about 100 Pokémon, and a few of those slots were questionable. I’m still not sure why they felt they needed to give mascot Pokémon something weaker. But the new evolutions did give a much-needed boost in usability to forgotten or just unoptimized lines like Crobat for the Zubat family, Kingdra for the Horsea line, and giving Onix a usable attack stat via Steelix. Even the completely new lines have some of my favorites, like Ampharos, Lanturn, Houndoom, and Tyranitar - a rare member of Pokémon’s “600 Club”* that isn’t a Dragon type. That’s actually kind of refreshing nowadays.

I’d still make several changes to the games if I could. Almost every gym leader team could use an overhaul to actually have new Pokémon (there are literally FOUR new Pokémon across eight Johto gym leaders), the encounter tables could use an overhaul so that the native Pokémon are all available before postgame, and either the levels in Mt Silver are adjusted or we don’t put 23 levels between Blue and Red’s highest leveled Pokémon. But the second generation is what laid the foundation for things that have become standard in the series, for both casual players AND sweats simultaneously.

* AKA “psuedo-legendary” Pokémon, a three stage line where the final stage has a “base” stat total = 600