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obscure little spinoffs :)

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so like i saw this pokemon game tier list maker the other day. and it got me thinking... there are a LOT of pokemon spinoffs nobody talks about. we all know pmd, occasionally you'll see colosseum/XD or ranger discussed, but there's like. SO MANY OTHERS. i remember i found out there was a pokemon trozei game on the ds and the absolute intrigue i felt when i saw there was a pokemon game that looks like THIS...
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pokemon rumble blast is also a big fave of mine because like. you would not expect this game to have a plot but it sure does!! i gotta draw some art of cobalion sometime tbh. and pokepark don't even get me STARTED on pokepark... so yeah, i wanna hear about your thoughts on all the odd little spinoffs out there!
 
There's Pokémon Conquest which is one of the most interesting ones to me as it's one of the only few times (if you put Smash Bros aside) where we've seen the franchise actually collaborate with another: in Conquest's case it's Nobunaga's Ambition, one of Koei-Tecmo's own franchises which is a tactical strategy game.

I've never played it but I've always wanted to since it sounds like such a cool idea and it kinda makes me wanna see more crossovers with other game series.
 
Never played Trozei, but something about the art style really appeals to me. Sort of like an early 2000s cartoon.

Pokémon Channel was a pretty important spinoff for me. I asked my mom for a Pokémon GameCube game, and that was the cheapest one. It's just... watching Pokémon-themed TV shows. Good stuff.
 
Pokémon Channel was a pretty important spinoff for me. I asked my mom for a Pokémon GameCube game, and that was the cheapest one. It's just... watching Pokémon-themed TV shows. Good stuff.
Ah, yes….the experimental days. Something like Channel would probably not get made today, but I hope they don’t play it completely safe now. When thinking outside of the box did work we got classics like Snap.

A lot of the more obscure games I saw in the store but never picked up. They were PC-exclusive and we were a Mac family. The only one that I’d still like to check out today would be Pokémon Project Studio, but there were also the PokéRoms and Team Turbo.
 
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trozei was really fun for me as a kid
i think i still have my copy with me
i heard it got a sequel that played like puzzles & dragons
 
I actually bought Trozei from a used game store awhile back but haven't played it too much. I also still play Pokemon Puzzle Challenge, bothPokemon Pinballs, and Pokemon Rumble Blast when I don't know what else to do and remember I own them - I remember as a kid I discovered an easy to do glitch in Rumble Blast where if you used Waterfall on the lifts your character would float. I also really enjoyed the original TCG games on the GB.

If you want to get really obscure I'd also really love to play some of the Pokemon Minis but they're very hard to find now and I don't think there's any which have been dumped. If you want to stretch the definition of game the Pocket Pikachu and Eevee Tamogachi are high on my wishlist. PokeMate is also very fascinating to me - it's mostly completely lost but I'd be interested to see a recreation of it or something inspired by it.
 
When I went on Serebii and saw Conquest being announced under it's Japanese title I assumed I was misreading the title "Pokémon X Nobunaga's Ambition". I've played several NA games (and it's sister series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and was unsure how they'd mesh it together with Pokémon--from what I've read about Conquest it's gameplay has little to do with Nobunaga's Ambition other than sharing characters and both being strategy games, though.

Also there was that racing game, Dash. I never read much about it though.

If you want to stretch the definition of game the Pocket Pikachu and Eevee Tamogachi are high on my wishlist.
I actually had a pocket Pikachu when I was a kid. Not sure what happened to it though.
 
Both Poképark games were great! Admittedly I last played them a long time ago, but I enjoyed them a lot when I was younger, so I want to revisit them on my Wii sometime to see if they hold up. In particular I remember really liking the world they were set in; the talking-Pokémon aspect was kind of reminiscent of Mystery Dungeon, just in an adventure game setting rather than a roguelike RPG.

Personally my favorites out of the more obscure ones are Pokémon Puzzle League on the N64, and its handheld cousin Puzzle Challenge. The former is based on the Indigo League/Orange Islands era of the anime, while the latter is based on the Gen II games and is set in Johto.
Puzzle Challenge in particular has some terrific sprite art for the GBC, it's really quite impressive and is just plain nice to look at. And Puzzle League, fun fact, is actually where the modern English title for the franchise comes from — Planet Puzzle League and Animal Crossing: Puzzle League are the most recent examples you might have heard of. I just think that's kinda funny because the initial title definitely meant "league" in the context of a Pokémon League... and that meaning is all but lost now.
(also, Pokémon Puzzle League's "plot" is just kind of ridiculous in every way, and I love it so much for that.)

If you want to get really obscure I'd also really love to play some of the Pokemon Minis but they're very hard to find now and I don't think there's any which have been dumped.
You can actually play some of the Pokémon Mini games in Pokémon Channel! IIRC, you can buy a Mini as an item for your house, and collect 6 of its cartridges that you can play emulated ingame. They're obviously a little iffy trying to play them with a GameCube controller, but the option is nice at least lol.

The Mini definitely doesn't get enough credit though — my favorite is Zany Cards, that one is a lot of fun.
 
has anyone played the pokepark games? are they any good? whenever i think of obscure spinoff games, those come to mind.
omg You do not know how many hours I logged into Pokepark LOL. I don’t know why I enjoyed it so much but I sure did. I never tried Trozei and I genuinely forgot the art style is so cute! A shame I didn’t, but I think it came out before I had an interest in those kinds of games…

I never got to try Pokemon Dash(?) either, but I remember seeing it in stores. Did anyone manage to touch that? I saw Daren mention it above that they saw it also.

Rolling in with an extremely unpopular opinion though, but I LOVED Battle Revolution. It might be my bias to the XD Gale of Darkness/Colosseum lines, but that game was gorgeous for its time and extremely immersive. It’s also the reason I got more into the competitive scene, but I don’t think any game replicated the dopamine battles in that one got me.
 
Rolling in with an extremely unpopular opinion though, but I LOVED Battle Revolution. It might be my bias to the XD Gale of Darkness/Colosseum lines, but that game was gorgeous for its time and extremely immersive. It’s also the reason I got more into the competitive scene, but I don’t think any game replicated the dopamine battles in that one got me.
AAAA i also loved pbr!!! i loved battles on it even more than i did colosseum/XD ❤ really miss those times for sure ;_;



even the music slaps!!!
 
Honestly I never got around to playing Pokkén, if only because I’ve never been super big on fighting games. Graphically it looked gorgeous though. I think I was immediately scared off from it because I know how sweaty the competitive scene for fighting games can be, though I do lack to hear of it even from my friends over in those…
 
I never actually played Trozei but I remember the commercial for the game lol. I didn't have a DS at the time so I couldn't have played it anyways, but what really made me dislike it was the character designs and the fact that the game itself looked basic af.
 
The talk of Colo/XD and PBR's amazing soundtracks reminded me...

There was a Gen V spinoff game for the DS called Learn With Pokémon: Typing Adventure. It came with the Nintendo Wireless Keyboard, which was a small keyboard accessory that connected to your game cartridge via Bluetooth — and you improve your typing skills by typing various Pokémon's names as they come up onscreen.

Anyway... the developer of Typing Adventure was Genius Sonority, the same studio that gave us Colosseum, XD, and Battle Revolution. Therefore... it has some extremely banger tracks for a little educational typing game:



(it does make me a little sad that Genius Sonority seem to be relegated to making the mobile puzzle games like Shuffle and Café ReMix these days... they clearly have a lot of talent over there! They were also the ones who made Trozei!)
 
There was a Gen V spinoff game for the DS called Learn With Pokémon: Typing Adventure. It came with the Nintendo Wireless Keyboard, which was a small keyboard accessory that connected to your game cartridge via Bluetooth — and you improve your typing skills by typing various Pokémon's names as they come up onscreen.
omg I remember hearing about how this game had a banger soundtrack!! I didn't know it was by good old Genius Sonority! I never played Trozei but I appreciated how different the art style was, it was refreshing. I was thinking about the Pokemon Ranger series the other day too, I actually genuinely enjoyed Pokemon Ranger, and it's a shame to think we won't get any more of it. (That was the hardest I ever worked for a Manaphy Egg...) I feel Pokemon spinoffs really do add some life into the series we otherwise would've missed out on.
 
i've thought about trying pokken but like... i'm not sure if it's my thing? when it originally came out for the wii u i was kinda like "meh", because it had such a limited roster of pokemon and none of them really appealed to me save a few, and the switch version didn't really do a whole lot to change my mind. but i've been stuck on this "eh" mood for so long about it that i eventually just gave up on getting it
 
has anyone played the pokepark games? are they any good? whenever i think of obscure spinoff games, those come to mind.
YES omg so as a kid PokéPark 2 was my first Pokémon game. I've played it a lil now and it's not exactly the bestest compared to games nowadays ofc, but I had SO much fun with it as a kid. 100% would recommend to a smaller child for them to play~
i've thought about trying pokken but like... i'm not sure if it's my thing? when it originally came out for the wii u i was kinda like "meh", because it had such a limited roster of pokemon and none of them really appealed to me save a few, and the switch version didn't really do a whole lot to change my mind. but i've been stuck on this "eh" mood for so long about it that i eventually just gave up on getting it
Pokken is neat! I'm not good at any fighting game though...but it's sad that the competitive scene died (I think?) because honestly the game itself has so much potentiallllll
 
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