WyndonCalling

Documenting every facet of this gargantuan IP is a task perhaps only the most dedicated and/or foolhardy would embark on, yet that's exactly what our Bulbapedia team and thousands of selfless contributors have done over eighteen long years! With Pokémon now encompassing nine generations of main series games along with dozens of spin-offs, mobile games, movies, anime and manga series, merchandise and much more, the wiki itself has grown in tandem - we recently hit a whopping 50,000 articles! To celebrate, we've compiled a list from across the Bulbagarden team of our favourite wiki articles. Read on for an eclectic collection of articles detailing some of the most obscure corners of the Pokémon franchise!

There's only seven days remaining for 3DS owners to purchase games from the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops before both services shut down on the 27th of March, 2023. Though purchased games can still be downloaded after this point, this means that Pokémon fans will have to move swiftly to get their hands on a wide range of games that are only widely available via Nintendo eShop. Notably, this list also includes Pokémon Bank; though Bank (and its associated DLC, the Poké Transporter) cannot be downloaded after this date, the Pokémon Bank service will become free of charge for users who have already downloaded it by this date. Players are encouraged to visit the eShop while they still can, so that they are not limited to expensive second-hand physical copies when wanting to delve into Pokémon video game history.

Bulbapedia may seem monolithic at times, but the wiki's success rests upon the efforts of everyday contributors and especially the team of Researchers, Poké Maniacs and Super Nerds that run the site and manage those contributions. In this article we'll be speaking with some of those (very human) Admins and figuring out what makes both them and Bulbapedia tick, covering their day-to-day priorities as well as their future plans. Whether you're a seasoned wiki editor or have never so much as thought about getting involved, we hope you'll find it enlightening!

Much rests upon the shoulders of Legends: Arceus. Though the series has continued to enjoy commercial success on the incredibly popular Nintendo Switch, critical reception in the past three years has, anecdotally, not quite kept pace. Sword and Shield gained some notoriety for cuts to the Pokédex and a Wild Area that was disappointing to some, and reactions to Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, which quickly gained a reputation for being at least a little buggy, were similarly mixed. These titles weren’t loathed - far from it - but they fed into a personally-felt unease that the franchise’s halcyon days might have been on the Nintendo DS, with titles such as the original Diamond and Pearl, Heartgold and Soulsilver, and Black and White, two console eras ago. That’s why it comes as a significant personal relief that Legends: Arceus is good. Really good.

Sinnoh confirmed! BDSP were unique from the onset; these are the first main series Pokémon titles to be developed by a studio other than Game Freak, namely ILCA, a distinction that sent fan speculation off the charts regarding not only these games, but the future of the franchise. It’s hard to discuss BDSP without reference to other remake titles in the series, and the shrinking visual and gameplay differences between said remakes and the original games. With BDSP the difference is the smallest it's ever been.

Day One Despite the novel challenges of amalgamating ghostly and corporeal forms, the ectoplasmic surgical equipment I recently acquired from Silph Co. made the process a cinch. Such exciting opportunities lie ahead with other specimens!

Day One The amalgamation process has not gone quite as I had hoped...

Day One Amalgamating two mammalian forms, even ones of such dramatically different sizes, is easy by now...

Day One The composition is a success...

If you haven’t been following much (or really, any) Pokémon news of late, Pokémon UNITE is a new Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game brought to us by Tencent, currently available on Switch and, come September, iOS and Android devices - crucially, it’s also free to download and play. The nature of a Free to Play (FtP) game, with constantly evolving features and varying levels of content depending on what you’re prepared to pay, makes it difficult to provide a conventional, comprehensive review of Pokémon UNITE, so instead we’re going to share our first impressions on the title. Later down the line we’ll be checking in to see how the health of the game is holding up, how well new content has been received and whether or not the balance between free and paid content feels egregious - many FtP games have boasted a strong start, only to be later hobbled by irritating economies.

The recent announcement of the release date for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and the upcoming Nintendo Direct has sharpened minds as to the content of these already-familiar games, but any established Pokémon fan will be able to tell you that it's far from an exact science to predict the changes, additions and subtractions of a remake relative to the original titles. Nevertheless, we've taken a stab at predicting a handful of features we'd love to see in the return to Sinnoh.

Pokémon fans love seeing Pokémon. What’s more, seeing Pokémon go about their own business in their natural ecosystem is a special kind of pleasure. One of the franchise’s under-appreciated strengths is world-building; that is, the sense that the places and characters of the games don’t just disappear the moment we close our eyes, and have lives outside of the player’s interactions with them. Few things enhance the sense that this is a world with a life of its own than seeing the inhabitants walk, stomp, crawl, fly and swim through the environment without heed for the protagonist. It’s why the Wild Area was so central to the premise of Sword and Shield and the Expansion Pass content; it’s why the original Pokémon Snap is so beloved despite merely being an on-rails photograph-’em-up; and it’s why New Pokemon Snap is such a great non-core Pokémon title.