Pokémon official vs fangames in a nutshell
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so one story is there is this robot from a niche Nintendo game who sees birdo in the women’s restroom, and the robot gets mad and says “that’s illegal because birds isn’t a women they are a man who thinks they are a women” so then birdo goes to jail, then you play as captain rainbow, and try to prove birdo is a women and not “a man who thinks they are” so you break into birdos house steal something that vibrates and shows it to the robot and birdo gets freed, this is not fully correct but it’s what I could find for the first story
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how can a fan game be 10 minutes?
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Accurate
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An obvious advantage of fan games is that they are free, primarily because the threat of Nintendo C&D letters and lawsuits hangs over the head of even non-profit fan projects that vaguely invoke Nintendo properties like the Sword of Damocles. If one were to charge money for their fan game, I imagine Nintendo would strive to outright ruin you. The recent refusal of many of their retroactive patents in the face of Palworld can only have heightened their vigilance.
The reason that the Switch FRLG port caused so much controversy was that it was a straight port of a twenty year old game. If they had charged $5 for it, I think most people, even the ones who complained about it, would be willing to pick it up at that price. $5 for FRLG on your Switch with slightly more convenient Home transfers. Not too unreasonable.
Conversely, if the had added tons of new features and content, I think most people would have been happy to buy the game at the higher price just to see the extra content. And it is clear to see where their money was going and that effort had been put into the product.
As it stood, it was an unambitious, virtually unmodified port of a game everyone has readily had access to for the past two decades, with a relatively high price tag slapped on it for no other reason than they thought they could. And they were right.
High price tag, low ambition.
Pokémon fan games often explore more ambitious or interesting design space Gamefreak themselves refuse to explore. I do not think they truly understand what parts of the formula made their game the worldwide phenomenon it has become, so they will only bolt gimmicks onto the core formula or add functions to skip what they think are the boring parts, rather than refining or redesigning the core game loop.
Fan games have no such concerns and are free to radically change the formula and explore new ideas. A bad fan game isn't going to tank the Pokémon franchise.
(Mind you, bad official games don't seem to either, so why not go crazy, Gamefreak?)
Fan games can also get away with content and story concepts that a family friendly corporate product can only vaguely hint at. Fan games are untethered from corporate concerns about brand image or identity. They can have fun with their own twist on the Pokémon formula, and the players in turn can enjoy something that greatly deviates from the standard Pokémon fare.
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All your points are really valid. The lack of restrictions in the story and free price tag make them the better 2d experience for older players in my opinion. It’s nice to have a game that doesn’t cost £80 and isn’t just ‘the protagonist beats up a generic evil team, the end’. I will say modern Pokemon games have improved on the story element, but they are essentially different games, 2d and 3d Pokemon have become vastly different things. Both each have their strengths and weaknesses, and I’m okay with that, I enjoy both.
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