The lost art of 2D Pokemon sprites and more traditional midi style music
Prior to the 3DS era with the DS, GBA, and GB/GBC era there was a certain art with the spritework that isn't seen today with modern Pokemon 3D models. With the music as well despite the lack of more modern orchestral sounds the older music had its charms and sounded quite epic despite the older hardware and music techniques. This is a place to discuss this.
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This mostly came to me while listening to the soundtrack of Pokemon GSC vs HgSs and thinking that HgSs lost a lot of the musical themes and general sound of the original and thinking that DPPt did a better job with the music themes and sounds for that generation and then thinking of the remake and how it does sound more crisp but lacks the feeling of the original. Then I thought of the spritework in BW and B2W2 and how the series has improved over the generations and then thinking of how in XY and beyond the 3D models for Pokemon on the 3DS have remained somwhat stagnant for the entire time Pokemon has been on the 3DS.
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I love electric guitar, so I perfer modern music.
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For a long time they took away Typhlosion's neck flames in its idle stance, I don't wanna hear it
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it’s like 2d and 3d animation
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My best Pokémon hot take is that Pokémon should have remained a 2D series, or at least kept around a 2D spin-off series.
Before gen 6, Pokémon had been refining its sprite art, progressively becoming more detailed, more colourful and more animated. It reached its peak during gen 5. They clearly had a lot of talented sprite artists working on the series.
But then Nintendo needed system sellers to prop up its flagging "glassesless 3D" gimmick handheld. There was no way the next Pokémon game would be allowed to remain 2D.
To be 100% fair, while the character and Pokémon sprites were still 2D, the DS Pokémon games had started using 3D models for their overworlds, but it was still in keeping both in terms of aesthetic and game design with the 2D sprite work.
The 3DS games were sort of the worst of both worlds. The characterful 2D Pokémon sprites were replaced with ironically flat and static 3D models, while the world did very little to utilise the 3D spaces beyond visual gimmicks, and largely mirrored the earlier games' 2D world designs. Battle was the only place that utilised the 3D effect, and it would cause an already stuttering engine to chug. Goodness help you if there were more than 2 Pokémon on the screen.
This is not to say that a 3D Pokémon game couldn't be done well. It's just that Gamefreak have been agonisingly slow to adapt their Pokémon games to the conventions and innovations of 3D game worlds. We only got a free camera in Scarlet and Violet. Other games had that in the 90s.
The music on the other hand, is something I feel has remained consistently high quality throughout. Styles and instrument choices have changed with technology and trends, but I would be hard pressed to pick a Pokémon soundtrack I didn't largely enjoy.
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