This year marks 25 years that Pokemon has been around since its debut in 1996 – and
if you've been around the franchise since the beginning like I have, you probably have felt
really old just now after hearing me say that - YEESH. To see how how far the franchise has come
from the days of the Game Boy to the Nintendo Switch is an amazing feat to say the least.
While the topic of which generation is the best is often debated in the fandom,
there is one in particular that should not ever be overlooked, and how so many features that
were introduced during this time are mainstays of the franchise to this day. This is my opinion on
why Generation II of Pokemon was so innovative and why it's still important to this very day.
Pokemon Gold and Silver were released in Japan on November 21, 1999 while the US release came nearly
a year later on October 15th, 2000. An updated version of these two games, Pokemon Crystal
(which I would like to call the Generation II equivalent of Pokemon Yellow), was released in
Japan on December 14th, 2000 and in the US on July 29th, 2001. You begin your journey in New
Bark Town as you run an errand for Professor Elm who supplies you with a starter Pokemon,
as you make your way to visit Mr. Pokemon's house to retrieve an Egg for Professor Elm to study.
When you reach your destination, you also meet Professor Oak, who entrusts you with a Pokedex and
suggests you should capture many different kinds of Pokemon, also noting your relationship with
your starter Pokemon. After running into a boy who stole one of the other starter Pokemon from
Professor Elm, you complete your task and give the egg to Professor Elm to study. The professor
encourages you to keep your Pokemon and to travel the entire region of Johto to defeat the gym
leaders and to eventually challenge the Elite Four to become the Pokemon Champion. Along the way,
you encounter Team Rocket who has now reformed after the prior events of Generation I, which
took place 3 years ago. Team Rocket's first plot is to capture Slowpoke and chop off their tails
and sell them on the black market. Their next plot is seen at the Lake of Rage and Mahogany Town,
as they are using a machine to brainwash Pokemon and force the Magikarp to evolve in the lake.
This plot is foiled with the help of a trainer named Lance, and after beating the Gym Leader of
Mahogany Town, Team Rocket takes over the Radio Tower in Goldenrod City in order to connect with
the organization's previous leader Giovanni, who disappeared after his defeat 3 years ago.
After stopping them in Goldenrod City, outside of one lone member who you encounter later on,
they disband and are not heard from again. After making your way to the Pokemon League and battling
through the Elite Four, you once again run into Lance, who reveals himself as the Pokemon
Champion. After defeating him and becoming the new Champion, when loading your save file, Professor
Elm gives you a new task – explore the region of Kanto, the same region from Generation I.
There are some changes that have occurred in many towns from the past 3 years, such as the closure
of the Safari Zone in Fuchsia City, the eruption of the volcano on Cinnabar Island that leaves only
a Pokemon Center, and most of Viridian Forest gone, with a much smaller maze in its place.
After defeating this region's 8 Gym Leaders, Professor Oak allows you to visit Mt. Silver,
where you find Red, the previous Champion and protagonist of Generation I,
awaiting your challenge. After defeating Red, the credits roll once more and from here,
you can either continue to complete your Pokedex, or explore the game and do as you please.
What made Generation II so innovative? For one, this was the generation to introduce new Pokemon
which brought the total of 151 from Generation I to now a total of 251, thanks to 100 new Pokemon.
Among these new Pokemon were pre-evolved Pokemon, also known as baby Pokemon of pre-existing
Pokemon, such as Pichu, Igglybuff, Tyrogue, and more. There were also new evolved forms,
such as Crobat, Bellossom, Politoed, and Slowking. A total of 86 new moves were added, bringing the
total number of moves to 251, the same number as the amount of Pokemon in Generation II.
My personal favorite is the ability to explore two different regions, the first being Johto,
the region that you start out in and the ability to visit the previous region Kanto, that was
featured in Generation I's Red, Yellow, and Blue. Generation II also introduced the concept
of Pokemon genders, which applied to any Pokemon that was not a legendary, and also allowed you to
breed Pokemon (which is what I did to get a lot of the pre-evolved forms with the help of a Ditto).
The Pokemon Storage System was not only given two more boxes, which brought the total storage across
14 boxes to 280, but the ability to move Pokemon directly between boxes. New types of Pokeballs
were added, for example, the Fast Ball was 4 times as effective compared to a Pokeball if it was
thrown at a Pokemon with a base speed of at least 100, the Friend Ball set your caught Pokemon's
friendship stat to 200 (more on that stat later), and the Lure Ball was 5 times as effective
compared to a normal Pokeball if you used it on a Pokemon you encountered while fishing.
Gold, Silver, and Crystal introduced the internal clock feature which allowed not only for in-game
events depending on the real world day, but also for different Pokemon to be caught during
day and night. This is the generation that introduced Shiny Pokemon, most notably the Red
Gyarados encountered during the Lake of Rage. The previous concept of the friendship stat introduced
in Pokemon Yellow with the player's Pikachu, now applies to all Pokemon. This stat can be increased
during methods such as grooming, using vitamins, and battling against a notable trainer such as
a Gym Leader or an Elite Four Member. Pokemon are now able to hold items that may give them
advantage in battle, such as the Amulet Coin which increases the amount of money earned from Trainer
Battles, or the Quick Claw which increases the chance of your move going into effect first.
The Pokerus is introduced, which doubles the Effort Values or EVs from battling.
The stat system has now also changed, with the Special Stat being split into Special Attack
and Special Defense. The Item Bag is also greatly improved as well, which was really annoying in
Red, Blue and Yellow as you could only hold up to 20 items, and if you ran out of items in the bag,
you'd have to resort to using the PC for extra storage. In Gold, Silver, and Crystal, the bag
has now four different sections, and allows you to hold up to 20 different items in each pocket,
and you are also able to hold all 50 TMs and 7 HMs, and 99 of each separate item. For example,
if you had 20 different potions in one section, you could hold 99 of each type of potion,
increasing your storage of 20 potions to 1,980 potions. You could also now use HMs when you
interact with the world; you no longer had to go to the Pokemon menu every time you wanted to use
an HM such as Strength or Surf. If you wanted to ride your bike with the press of a button,
you could use the Select button to register it or any other key item that you wanted. The PokeGear,
while exclusive to the Johto region in both the original and remake of the games,
functioned as a map which eliminated the need to carry a map as a separate item, a radio (which
later on would eliminate the need to carry the Pokeflute and also serve for other purposes),
and as a phone, as you could use the phone with a variety of different people, some trainers may
want rematches, some may let you know about a bargain sale, and some may also call you about
swarms of Pokemon to catch. Thanks to the updated hardware of the Game Boy Color, the game handled
the color and palettes of sprites a lot better, not to mention the overall addition of colors in
general that made the game very detailed, and of course better sound, that led the way for improved
music quality and tracks. With the addition of the Kanto region, you now had 16 Gym Leaders total
that you could fight, 8 from each region. This generation also marked the addition of two new
types of Pokemon: Dark Type and Steel Type. Gold, Silver, and Crystal were responsible for starting
the trend of featuring Legendary Pokemon on the box art of the core series in the games,
as seen in later generations. If you owned Pokemon Stadium 2 at the time, with the help of a Transfer
Pak, you could use your Pokemon to participate in battles, and even play your game on the big
screen. When Pokemon Crystal launched, even more innovations came along, such as the ability to
play as a girl (cue Professor Oak meme here). Animations for Pokemon were added when they were
encountered or sent from their Pokeballs. Crystal also introduced the Move Tutor – something you
only saw US wise in the English release of Pokemon Stadium. The Battle Tower was also introduced
for the first time, and even allowed for online battles and trading through the Mobile System GB,
a paid online service in the Japanese version of Crystal, which was used by connecting a
compatible Japanese mobile phone via the Mobile Game Boy Adapter. You could now also catch Event
Pokemon instead of obtaining them solely by trade. Legendary Pokemon had a unique theme for the first
time, and Crystal also incorporated legendary Pokemon in the plot, such as Suicune. Interesting
enough, this was the only generation that allowed you to trade with a previous generation,
as long as that Pokemon existed in Generation I thanks to Bill's invention of the Time Capsule,
and also the only generation that starter Pokemon when you received them held items. There were some
things that Generation II did lack, such as no new fossil Pokemon, meaning if you wanted Pokemon such
as Kabuto, Omanyte, and Aerodactyl, you had to make a trade with someone who had them via
Generation I. There was also no Safari Zone, as the Warden is on vacation story-line wise
and there was no way to move Pokemon forward from this generation to Generation III.
Here are some of my favorite things about this generation – the first being the music.
There were so many notable tunes, whether it was New Bark Town, the Champion & Red Battle Theme,
Dark Cave, or if it was the awesome remixes of the Kanto Region, such as Lavender Town now having a
calm theme, and the nice remix of Route 2 that pays tribute to Viridian Forest. The expansion
of the character of Lance in this generation was also a nice touch, as I recognized him as
a previous Elite Four Member. I was lucky enough to own Gold and Yellow around the same time when
these games were brand new, and it was an awesome moment of being able to battle alongside him, and
then running him into later at the Pokemon League. When Shiny Pokemon were introduced, I always made
it an effort to catch the Red Gyarados in the Lake of Rage and also use it in my party, every single
save file I ever made. While I was not a huge fan of the anime, as I was more interested in living
the adventure than watching it, I did recognize Togepi and it was awesome being able to use it
in my own party, and evolving it into a Togetic through the friendship stat. The fact that you
could also visit Kanto was an amazing addition and pretty innovative for the time, giving the
limitation of the Game Boy Color compared to consoles now. There's also nothing that
compares to finding Red at the top of Mt. Silver and hearing that music kick in for the every
single time, and seeing how high his Pokemon are as far as their levels, you know it's going to
be an epic battle with a legendary trainer. Last but not least, Totodile is my favorite starter of
all time, so every time I would start a new save file, I would always pick it and name it Krocky.
I touched upon it before, but I definitely have to talk about the remake, HeartGold and SoulSilver
which came out in 2010. This remake was everything I hoped for and much more, it did SO much justice
to the original game. For one, you could now have any Pokemon that you wanted to follow you in the
overworld (outside of certain situations), bringing back a sorely missed feature from
Pokemon Yellow. You can also interact with Pokemon and they may sometimes give you an item or tell
you how they feel. You are also able to capture other generation legendaries, such as Kyogre,
Groudon, Rayquaza, Latios/Latias, Zapdos, Articuno, and Moltres, and Mewtwo! The last
four that I just mentioned you were only able to attain if you traded them from Generation I
to Generation II. If you bought an original copy of HeartGold/SoulSilver at the time,
you got a Pokewalker – a pedometer that allowed you to link the two games and also the ability
to hold a Pokemon. If you stored a Pokemon in the Pokewalker, the more you walked, the higher the
experience it would gain and the friendship increased as you walked. You can also catch
Pokemon in areas only available to the Pokewalker and transfer them to the main game. Professor
Oak and Steven Stone will both give you a starter from their respective regions, if you defeat Red.
A nice little feature in what I think is a nod to Pokemon Snap is that you can take certain photos
to commemorate an event in either Johto or Kanto. The breeding system is improved in HeartGold
and SoulSilver where one of three random IVs are inherited by the offspring can be guaranteed if a
parent holds a Power item, such as a Power Anklet, Power Band, etc. One of my favorite personal
additions is that Silver, your rival, is confirmed to be Giovanni's son through an event-related
encounter with Celebi. You travel back in time and witness his abandonment by Giovanni,
and then go on to fight Giovanni, preventing him from answering the call by the new Team Rocket at
the Goldenrod Radio Tower. A nice addition is the ability to now fly to the Pokemon League Reception
Gate in either Kanto or Johto. If you happen to knock out a special Pokemon such as Sudowoodo,
they will respawn in their respective location after defeating the Elite Four,
if you made it faint before you could catch it. This also applies to legendaries such as Ho-Oh
or Lugia. As mentioned above, regional Pokemon such as the legendary birds, are now available
in this version. You can find Omanyte or Kabuto depending on your version at the Ruins of Alph,
you can find Mewtwo in Cerulean Cave, and you can have your pick of Charmander,
Bulbasaur, or Squirtle from Professor Oak after defeating Red. This was a very nice fix as these
Pokemon you could only obtain in Generation II if you traded from Generation I. If you defeat all
16 Gym Leaders, you can obtain the GB Sounds item that allows you to switch the background music to
the original chiptune soundtrack from Generation II, in case you want some real nostalgia.
HeartGold and SoulSilver also have their version of Pal Park, much like Diamond, Pearl, and
Platinum, which allows you to permanently migrate Pokemon from the Generation III games of Ruby,
Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen. Also carrying over from Diamond, Pearl,
and Platinum, allows the use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi capabilities, such as Global Terminal,
Wi-Fi Club, trading, and of course battling. Personally, my favorite addition is that since
Double Battles were introduced in Generation III, when Lance teams up with you at Team
Rocket's Base in Mahogany Town, it now becomes a Double Battle where you battle alongside Lance!
The Johto region holds a very special place in my heart, as it was my first true Pokemon journey
and I was ecstatic when it got one of the best remakes of any game of all time in my opinion,
as I was able to relive my dream to Catch em' all. While Generation
II and its remakes are now outdated, we will always look back at what they
were – innovative steps towards the future of Pokemon gameplay mechanics.
Let me know what you guys think in the comments below – what was your first generation you played
and who was your first starter? Check out my poll for which retrospective & analysis you'd
like for me to cover next. If you liked the video, consider subscribing and liking and commenting,
as it helps with the YouTube Algorithm. Thanks for watching,
stay beautiful, stay awesome, and we'll catch you around next time.