Demos for Pokemon Games

[techitisJ]

I was looking through the games I had in my Nintendo Switch E-Shop library, and I happened upon the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX Demo. Seeing this demo again got me thinking, hat are some of the Pokemon games that have had playable demos? And would the franchise benefit from having more? Looking through the bulbapedia page on it, I realized that not many Pokemon games have had any sort of demo, main series, or otherwise. In terms of spin-off demos, there was the aforementioned Mystery Dungeon DX demo, and a demo exclusive to Korea for Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team. For main series games, Gold and Silver had the famous Spaceworld demo which had the old Gen 2 sprites, and downloadable demos via the 3DS E-Shop for ORAS and SM. The page also lists some more demos tied to events, and I am sure there have been more than that also tied to events (like Sword and Shield's gym demo), but besides that, there really hasn't been much.

I feel like Pokemon games should get more downloadable demos. It has always bothered me that so many games have demos that are exclusive to events. I get that especially if they have to do extra developing for the demo, it makes sense that they would keep them exclusive to events (well, if you have to pay to get into the event), but if there isn't much, it would be nice to have a downloadable demo for everyone (especially with the state the world is in rn). I don't think the main series games really need them (except if you're new to Pokemon in general, then it might be a nice way of deciding if you wanna buy a monster-catching game), but I think some of the spin-offs could really use them. There are many people who love the main series Pokemon games, but some of the spin-offs don't suit their tastes in games, and especially these days when big franchise games cost $60, it would be nice to have a free demo to try it out first. I was actually thinking that it would have been nice to see one for New Pokemon Snap, with basically just access to the first area, and the use of all the (known) items you get). New Pokemon Snap has an interesting and fun concept to it, but in the end, it is simply taking pictures of Pokemon. How do you know if you are going to enjoy that kind of gameplay and be willing to spend $60 on it?

So what do you think? Do you think pokemon games should have more available demos? Would the availability of a demo help make it easier to decide whether or not you want to purchase a Pokemon game?

 

[Welkamo]

I got Omega Ruby around 2016/2017, but in 2020, I saw the demo in the eShop, I thought "hey, I wanna play through this to see how it compares to the final game!" and got it. I really loved some of the dialogue in it. It was definitely fun even if I had already played the final game. I've gotten other demos, but they've also (mostly) been of games I had already played before.
I agree that demos would be helpful for spinoff games. Since they're so different from main series games, it would help fans get a feel for the mechanics and decide if it was the right game for them.

 

[Okido]

Agreed, demos for spinoffs would be a good idea to do more frequently. For games with somewhat unique or hard to understand aspects to them, free downloadable demos are a life saver to see whether you'll like them or not beforehand (the Tomodachi Life and Miitopia demos come to mind as an example). If you haven't played the original Pokemon Snap, I can only imagine how weird the premise of "photography-based gameplay" would sound, so it's kind of an odd decision they decided to forgo one entirely this time.

Even then, demos are also just fun to play if you're already excited about an upcoming title and want a preview of what you're gonna be getting into. I never got to play the OR/AS one in its time due to needing a serial code for it back in the day, but the Pokemon Sun & Moon Special Demo Version was great fun when I was really looking forward to playing Sun the month after.

I think they're a good idea in general. I feel like if the option to just try a Pokemon game out for a bit without fully committing to it was made more widely available, it would open up the franchise to a lot of people who currently might be a bit intimidated by it.