"Pokemon" Games: Generations I - III Quiz

Answer:

The "Pokemon" series started out as a brainchild of Japanese game developer Satoshi Tajiri. He was inspired by his childhood hobby of insect collecting, and thought to bring that to life in a video game, after observing the increasingly indoor play that urbanisation had led to amongst children of the time. Many of the staple mechanics of the games we know and love came from Tajiri's vision. These include the "catch 'em all" philosophy, the ability to give nicknames to Pokemon, the Poke ball, and Pokemon only fainting in battle rather than bleeding or dying.

But arguably, the crucial feature that led to the seemingly unstoppable rise of "Pokemon" was the trading system. The Nintendo Game Boy could be connected to other consoles with the Game Link Cable, allowing Pokemon and other data to be transmitted between games. This inspired the decision to split the release of the game into two parallel copies, with the same fundamental gameplay, but slight differences in the Pokemon roster available for capture. This motivated players to work together to complete their Pokedexes, and made it a real social event. This increased the virality of the Pokemon phenomenon on school playgrounds and in the neighbourhood.

Though wildly successful, the first generation of games was not without flaws. There were several glitches, programming, and type-balancing issues that affected gameplay in significant ways. The legendary "MissingNo." glitch could duplicate items, at the risk of permanently corrupting the save file.

Generation 2 built on the solid foundation provided by the earlier games, and addressed many of their issues. Aside from the new features we saw in the fill-in text, it added 100 new Pokemon, Pokemon breeding, the new Dark and Steel Pokemon types, legendary Pokemon that roam the overworld, and super-rare alternate coloured sprites of each Pokemon known as "shinies" with a 1 in 8,192 encounter rate. After completing the main quest of becoming the Johto League Champion, players can travel back to the Kanto region of the original games and explore the entire region, complete with all of its Gym Leaders and special areas.

Generation 3 saw a steady progression of new features, enhanced graphics, and of course, 135 new Pokemon in the roster. Aside from the mainline "Ruby" and "Sapphire", we saw remakes of the original Generation 1 Kanto games in "Pokemon Fire Red Version" and "Pokemon Leaf Green Version". The generation was rounded out by "Emerald", which is a polished and updated version of "Ruby" and "Sapphire" that combines the two storylines into one. Generation 3 is seen by many to be the peak of the Pokemon series, though Generations 4 and 5 also have their backers.