Did you enjoy the Pokéathlon game?

[RTLfan]

I've heard some people call it the worst Pokemon side game.

 

[Leaf_Ranger]

I don't know simply because I never had the idea that it wasn't successful. I love it very much and it's one of the best side activities to this day: a bunch of mini-games in which the Pkmn give their best without fighting, the interaction needed by the player is fun and it isn't just ridiculous showing off with props. The rewards are also neat and I love to see the Pkmn's statues.

 

[Puddle]

I adore HeartGold and SoulSilver but I have to admit, I never really took to the Pokeathlon. I'm not really sure why; it could just be that I was enjoying the rest of the game so much that I didn't want to pause my adventure to play minigames. I also tend to prefer turn-based gameplay to reaction-based gameplay, which is why I prefer Contests. I did try the Pokeathalon a few times and found it quite fun, but it didn't hook me enough for me to want to spend time learning about a new set of mechanics and stats.

I don't think the Pokeathlon is anywhere near being the worst Pokemon minigame - my least favourite is Pokestar Studios.

 

[WyndonCalling]

I agree with Leaf Ranger - I'm not sure it was unsuccessful. I'm sure everyone rolled their eyes when they got snagged into the little detour to make sure you didn't miss it, but the games were great. They were simple, intuitive, required no real prep, used lots of overworld sprites and the three stats reflected the Pokemon designs very well - Machamp was strong, Rapidsah was fast, the starters were balanced etc.

RSE contests are a solid runner-up for side activity, but they were always a little bit arcane and required preparation that wasn't always intuitive. Pokeathlon was fun and dirt simple to get to grips with.

 

[Esserise]

This is the first I'm hearing the Pokéathlon being condemned as the worst, and the online fandom tends to love HGSS in general. I only ever hear people bagging on BW's Musicals.

But much like how Battle facilities have taken a cut because a lot of players never bothered to engage with them, I wonder what percentage of players really ever got into the non-battling side-activities. Personally, I never did much with them until Musicals, which I found appealing in their simplicity. I think that's what I'd always been wanting the Contests and Pokéathlon to be like - something easy and fun that I could do in between all the battling and story progression, without having to worry about optimizing stats or any of that (and as a kid, that stuff was way too abstract for me so I'd have had no hope of making it very far). I played Mantine Surf quite a lot in USUM because, same deal. It's solely about honing your timing and your technique, plus, the BP reward was worth it as something I could actually apply to the rest of the game via the Move Tutors.

(I suspect I'd have liked the Amie minigames, but y'know, for some reason I didn't even know they existed until years later, lol)

 

[Phosphene]

Why do you think the Pokeathlon game wasn't very succesful?

I've heard some people call it the worst Pokemon side game.

Faulty premise. A couple people disliking a feature ≠ it was unsuccessful. The Pokeathlon tends to be more praised than criticized from my own experience, and judging by how highly the fandom thinks of HGSS and following Pokémon I’m more inclined to think the people who dislike the feature are in the minority. So I wouldn’t exactly call it unsuccessful.

 

[Esserise]

Oh no! I forgot to do my patented Funfest Mission stanning!

They're absolutely wonderful! People should go back and try them out! I can't believe it's been 8 whole years and the Bulbapedia article for them is still so sparse! GF should revive them for the Wild Area because they would fit in perfectly!

See, the first few times I played B2W2, I just totally ignored them, but one year I said fuck it and decided to give them a go, and I'm really glad I did. But it's not surprising that they'd appeal to me, since once again, there are no statistics involved - just challenges. They absolutely met the remit of being a fun time-waster in between main sequence tasks or training, and like Mantine Surf, they could be a useful means of grinding practical resources like Shards and Pass Orbs.

Does the Dream World count as a side-activity? Because I played with that a lot, too, and I remember it being pretty fun, albeit overly complicated to actually set up.

 

[Sheep]

I've never heard of it being unsuccessful, if anything a lot of people I see praise the Pokéathlon! I loved it so much and it was part of why I adored HGSS as much as I did. was absolutely horrible at some of the games lol (looking at you, goal roll and to an extent ring drop) but it was so fun. I'd be so happy if we got minigames like these again in later games. ;_;/

 

[swiftgallade46]

Admittedly, I didn’t participate in Pokeathelon much simply because the rewards didn’t really appeal to me. But when I did try it out, I remember it being pretty fun, actually. The mini games were unique and interesting.

I do kind of wish it didn’t have its own stat system, though. That just seemed a little unnecessary.

 

[Lanstar]

I've heard people say B/W were the worst games evarrr. But that doesn't mean it's true.

Please: Before you make posts like this, actually talk to the fanbase at large. Maybe ask here, "What did you think of the Pokeathlon games?" to gauge people's opinions. Otherwise, this whole thread is just unnecessary clickbait.

 

[RTLfan]

Admittedly, I didn’t participate in Pokeathelon much simply because the rewards didn’t really appeal to me. But when I did try it out, I remember it being pretty fun, actually. The mini games were unique and interesting.

I do kind of wish it didn’t have its own stat system, though. That just seemed a little unnecessary.

How would their battle stats work with regards to the Pokeathlon then? Just based on their speed and defense? Their height and weight maybe?

 

[swiftgallade46]

How would their battle stats work with regards to the Pokeathlon then? Just based on their speed and defense? Their height and weight maybe?

No I meant that Pokeathlon would have been fine as just a mini game collection with no stats involved at all

 

[RTLfan]

No I meant that Pokeathlon would have been fine as just a mini game collection with no stats involved at all

Wouldn't it have been much too simple then? It's already a small game after all. Plus I find it very interesting to see what stat they chose to give to which Pokemon.

 

[swiftgallade46]

Wouldn't it have been much too simple then? It's already a small game after all. Plus I find it very interesting to see what stat they chose to give to which Pokemon.

Simplicity isn’t always a bad thing. Part of the reason I didn’t play it much is because it was just more complicated than it was worth to me.

 

[Nicolas721]

The Pokeathlon was a gift from the gods. I loved having lots of minigames where you could use your PC mons, framed in a competitive event that gives you a lot of adrenaline and effort to do better. The stats stuff is simple compared to the contests one (friendly reminder, natures were key as well a minigame you had to be the very best if you didn't want to rely on gifts) and I got very far without thinking too deeply about them. Again, choosing Pokemon directly from your PC means that you have access to many capable Pokemon, specially with the decent number of legendaries in the postgame (and Sunkern lol).

Its popularity was waned, and I think it has to do with it not being available in a "new generation" game, but it's still fondly remembered as of HGSS' key features.

 

[Matleo]

enjoy not avoided more.

-animation , if it would work and look like Pokken
- one on one for fairnes and many at once mode
- battling when racing option and racing without battling option
- lack of tournaments like in anime: flying race colleting bracelets
- lack of swimming race
-lack of fire fighting
-would make battling on a rolling on water woods on a river where you need to get on the other side as fast of posible or
a dual battle on such wood logs that can roll when you run on them right and cause oponent to fall into water and swim get hit by them...
-footbal or other ball game like in the anime we saw...

Would be cool to use your lets say Sword and Shield team in such a game... have a tournament where you can in each use diffrent pokemon...

generaly they when create such games make them to easy, cheap looking and forget about cool physics and real life mechanics...

also new creators of games that come in should watch the whole anime before start working there, the same with anime creators that should watch all previous works before creating new stuff into it...

 

[Esserise]

Shout out to the neat Pokéathlon origin story you can read about in the arena's basement

Pokéathlon Myth
When a disease took over the entire island, one human and three Pokémon overcame ten obstacles to spread the word about the cure.

The Beginning of Pokéathlon
To commemorate the friendship of the person and three Pokémon that conveyed the words of the cure, people started to tell of their achievement. The commemorating eventually took the form of ten games to compete in, just like the obstacles in the legend...

Plus there is an "old wall painting" that shows "One person and three Pokémon [...] learning something from looking up at the sky."

 

[Camille]

I liked this minigame quite a lot, it is up there with Pokestar Studios and Hoenn Contests as my favourite Pokemon side activity. I liked the fact every Pokemon was usable in it to some degree, although I was sort of puzzled by evolved Pokemon like Golduck having worse performance than unevolved ones. My favourite course was th Jump one, and I disliked the Skill one, as it was too challenging. I wish the items like evolutionary stones weren't so expensive, though.

 

[colours]

honestly, the pokeathlon minigames were the most fun i've had with a pokemon activity since gen 3 contests. heck, i'd go as far as to say that they remind me a lot of pokemon stadium's minigames. it's quite a shame that nothing like that has really made a return, to my knowledge.

 

[Ivan the Dragon]

I was very bad at the pokeathlon minigames I didn't play them much