What would the Pokemon franchise look like today if Pokemania hadn't died prematurely in Gen 2?

Exactly the same as it does now.

>>57944385 (OP)
Gen 3 would have been compatible with gens 1-2 and would have linked to them instead of being completely off from them (which is why no one gave a fuck about that gen - what's the point when you cant bring your mons over?)

>>57944385 (OP)
>What would the Pokemon franchise look like today if Pokemania hadn't died prematurely in Gen 2?
That's hard to say because Gen II was always doomed to fail considering the circumstances we have to deal with in this timeline. You cannot simply keep everything as is, flip the reception, and still have a coherent reality. Actual questions to ask would be "What if Tajiri had given Masuda control from the start? What if Gen III's aesthetic direction had been introduced a gen sooner? What would Pokemon look like after *that* managed to keep Pokemania going for another gen?"

>>57944385 (OP)
There's no world in which that doesn't happen because every time a property like this arbitrarily changes its status quo the fanbase always turns on it extremely quickly.
It happened to Yu-Gi-Oh
It happened to Power Rangers
It happened to Digimon
It happened to Final Fantasy
And obviously it happened to Pokemon.
The only way to keep Pokemania going would have been to keep releasing Kanto games with the original 151 mons, but stagnation would have hit that hard and we'd probably be in a much worse place now, assuming the franchise wouldn't have died outright.

>>57944388
FPBP
"Pokemania" was always destined to fade, but Pokemon as a franchise would continue, it didn't matter if the normalfag masses ignored it, it still existed. Nothing would've actually changed about Gen 3's development, we still would've gotten the spin-offs, maybe a few more would've come existence, but by now they'd probably be thrown in the rest. But all in all everything that already happened with Pokemon would've still happened unchanged

Pokemania wasn't as influtential to the franchise as poeple like to think

>>57944385 (OP)
>prematurely
The very nature of fads are to be brief

>>57944965
You should try being less autistic.

>>57945015
GX "failed" because the balance got too bad and there was too much shovelware cards and archetypes.

>>57944385 (OP)
It didn't die prematurely, it died when it had to.
Its unrealistic to expect that level to be constant.
If anything, pokemon managed much better than most(if not all) brands out there

>>57945015
It had nothing to do with the status quo.
It had to to with the first batch of kids growing out of it.
Keeping the original mons wouldn't change shit.

I love Chikorita so much bros

>>57944385 (OP)
Gen 2 really 2oubded Pokémon, a wound its still recovering from.
Thanks to Scarlet and Violet, it looks like the franchise is finally back on its feet.

>>57945428
>It had to to with the first batch of kids growing out of it.
>He says on the dedicated Pokemon board

>>57945441
Here's the (You)

>>57944385 (OP)
Love how the /vp/ narrative switched from "gen 3 killed Pokemania" to "it was gonna die anyway." Gen 2 killed most of the hype by dragging the anime and marketing itself to younger kids.

>>57945441
sorry had another minor stroke, should say
>Gen 2 really wounded Pokémon, a wound it's still recovering from

Thanks for reading, and be sure to take care of your arteries

>>57945447
>Love how the /vp/ narrative switched from "gen 3 killed Pokemania" to "it was gonna die anyway."
johtods switched to the latter after everyone else started flipping the script on them and they had no other way to spin it

>>57945442
The kids that actually liked pokemon remained anon, you should know this.
>>57945447
/vp/ wasn't welcoming to nostalgiafags at the begining.
That said, "it was gonna die anyway" is what actually happened.

>>57945472
>/vp/ wasn't welcoming to nostalgiafags at the begining
/vp/ and most Pokemanchildren online were jizzing themselves to Johto for years so that's wrong.

>>57945492
You just have no idea what a nostalgiafag is.

>>57945497
They're the same. The KANTOOOOOOfags who wanted online cred switched to Johto. Bonus points for GSC including Kanto so "you can go to Kanto" is a reason they try using legitimately.

>>57944965
This was a media-wide phenomenon. Gamers were growing up in their teenage years in the 2000s so vidya reflected that. Edgekino peaked with Sinnoh.

>>57945419
Came here to say that. OP and everyone else pushing this narrative are full of shit. Anyone making these claims was either not old enough to remember the end of Pokémania or not even alive yet.

>>57945447
Gen3 didn't kill Pokémania but it did fail to be as successful as the generations before it and the same goes for everything before the Switch, as >>57945455 shows.

>Gen 2 killed most of the hype
No this was definitely what Gen3 did. Gen2 was seen as Gen1+ while Gen3 was a soft reboot, which alienated genwunners.

Same thing happened with Digimon, like >>57945015 said.

>>57945436
Me too, bro. Easily one of the best characters from the anime.

>>57944965
johto not beating the “intentionally made to insult Pokémonfans by treating them like retarded babies to get Pokémon to flop” allegations

>>57945369
You're ignoring the fact that GX the show also failed compared to Duel Monsters, even if nowadays a lot of people who grew up with it are willing to bat for it.
The quality didn't matter, all that mattered was that it wasn't Duel Monsters so it was shit.

Hoenn was a half-finished Ship of Theseus that was part of the process to actually change Pokemon into the perfect juggernaut it is today. It started with Johto being an actual sequel, Hoenn being a soft reboot and Sinnoh being the perfected form of Hoenn. Anything post-Sinnoh should be thanking Sinnoh for laying the final groundwork of what a Pokemon game is. And anything Hoenn did, Johto or Sinnoh did better, because Hoenn was immature growing pains from a man who decided to take Pokemon in a more controlled direction so he didn't have to keep trying to reach the standard of what Johto established

The hardest thing you can do with a franchise is lower the standard in a way that you can consistently reach the exact same bar and people won't get tired of it. Hoenn is that low bar

>>57946339
Gen II killed Pokemania, toddy. If you don't sell as much or more than the peak despite directly following it up, you're an objective failure.

15+ million less sales. 15,000,000+. Fifteen million plus.

>>57946493
Dude... Tears of the Kingdom is a failure... You know, despite outselling 99% of games in existence... It didn't sell more than Breath of the Wild...

>>57946400
>You're ignoring the fact that GX the show also failed compared to Duel Monsters
because it's irrelevant when it's based on and heavily tied to the game.
>The quality didn't matter, all that mattered was that it wasn't Duel Monsters so it was shit.
This is how johtods cope with gen 2 being less successful than gen 1. Newsflash: that's wrong.

>>57946496
Correct.
Where's this energy for 23 million copies of RSE, johtard?

>>57946424
>Hoenn was a half-finished
>Sinnoh being the perfected form of Hoenn
>anything Hoenn did, Johto or Sinnoh did better
>Hoenn was immature growing pains
>Johto
>standards
>Hoenn is that low bar
horrendously false

>>57946498
Nigga are you serious?
You know the Yu-Gi-Oh anime came before the game right?
They made GX because they ran out of Duel Monsters manga to adapt but they wanted to keep the money train rolling.

>>57945455
This graph needs to be updated. Emerald outsold Crystal 7m to 6m.

>>57946400
A Duel Monsters school was such a lame premise to me. I never gave GX a chance because of that. I did like the Ancient Golem archetype and some others. Otherwise it looked like a watered down 'how do you do fellow kids' feel to me instead of the grittier mix of occult, ancient egypt, and urban style that somehow mixed so well. I heard the GX manga was much different and the anime got better in later seasons though.

>>57945369
GX is when they started to actually balance the game. Archetypes only became a problem during 5Ds.

>>57947390
Personally, I feel all the GX seasons were a mixed bag. The GX manga is significantly different from the Anime. The Manga did some things better than the Anime and other times it didn't. Overall, I liked it.

GS sold 75.52% of RGB numbers
RS sold 68.43% of GS numbers (and 51.68% of RGB numbers)
cold hard TRUTHNUKE is that gen 3 had a harder drop in global consumer interest and not in raw millions alone

>b-but muh third versions!!
face it, most of the people who bought them were double dippers who already had the original release, possibly excluding part of yellow sales for being released literally at the peak

>b-but it was on a different, newer system!!
wanna use that argument for crystal too which was a GBC exclusive and not playable with the original gameboy or pocket unlike GS?

>>57948041
So gen 3 was the true victim of gen 2's incompetence until romhackers gave it the attention it deserved.

>>57948041
People like to larp this is due to Gen II's incompetence, but Gen II/III are two sides of the same autist because loads of Hoenn's ideas stem from what Masuda learned being the lead director of GS/C, including all of the bad decisions that would go onto making Pokemon the current mess that it is

>>57948119
It's more of a victim of the GBA's failure to establish itself in the market. Pokemon was carrying that console, not the other way around. And it was carrying it because Gen I and II were massive successes

More people had a DS and those that skipped Gen III because of the lack of connectivity between Gens II~III were rewarded with a much more cohesive and well put together game that added back all the shit that Gen III cut

>>57948183
>those that skipped Gen III because of the lack of connectivity between Gens II~III
so the 5 genwar autists here? i never saw anyone outside here who cared about that

>>57948183
GBA sales weren't even that bad in comparison. If not importing your Charizard is your biggest gripe then gen 3 really were great games that were robbed.

>gen 2 was a massive success
>25% drop in sales
Nope. If we're correlating gen 2 with GB sales and gen 3 with GBA sales, then they performed similarly.

Let's be honest, it was the anime and its filler before Johto (the Orange Islands, first nail in the coffin) and then the TWENTY SIX and SIXTEEN EPISODE gaps between Whitney and Morty (second nail in the coffin).

If they had paced the anime better, they wouldn't have lost hype/merchandising momentum for the kids.

>>57948241
Real. As a Pokemania kid, everyone played the games with new teams and quit after the credits. The anime and TCG got far more attention than the games.

>>57948295
>TCG
for us it was card collecting, not even playing the card game

>>57948241
Let's be real, most people who did what I said don't post here to begin with. They'd be fucking ancient by this point. Sinnoh was nearly 20 years ago. If a 20 year old who grew up with Gen I+II and skipped Gen III to play Gen IV, they'd be fucking 40 by now and definitely not playing these shit ass games anymore, let alone posting on this fucking board. I'd argue 80% of the users here are still in their 20s, maybe even teenagers

Look at Joe, he knows his life is over since his job is dedicated to this franchise

>>57948285
People keep blaming the games but really it was the loss of Shudo that killed Pokemania because the anime was the main attraction up until Gen III where it became more obvious it was a commercial for the games. The games were good but the anime really was something else and the games never caught up to being "better than the anime" until Gen IV and especially Gen V given that's where the anime nosedived into a quality that it never recovered from

>>57948338
I'm not saying it was the entire picture as to the 'decline of Pokemania', but Shudo was an underrated storyteller and genuinely breathed soul and life into the franchise. I wish they had entertained some of his edgier ideas; his passing was a hugely overlooked factor of the franchise losing momentum. Without him you're right, the anime became far more of a commercial, and the downstream effects were lowered quality in the anime which really reduced hype for the games and toys.

>>57945015
GX wasn't arbitrary the original manga ended. Yu-Gi-Oh GX did a lot better than Dragon Ball GT. So making a new cast instead of non stop post ceremonial duel adventures was the right decision.

>>57948426
It's always the right decision if you're trying to make a never ending franchise. It makes it easier to restart from scratch so that newcomers don't feel alienated and the stakes can reset to zero after they reach their limit in the previous series. That's why people hated Nomura's crazy ride with Kingdom Hearts between 2-3 because it became impossible to follow without needing to wiki crawl or play a bunch of games that don't play like each other. Even Nomura watches lore videos to catch himself up with the lore these days

Or the on-topic version, the fucking Ashnime going on far too long than it should have and having detrimental effects for the franchise as a whole. If the games didn't continue doing numbers like they did, fuck Pokemania, the franchise would've been dead by Sinnoh

>>57947390
Silly nigga, Yugioh got popular when it was a school manga.

>>57947957
>GX is when they started to actually balance the game.
stuffing packs full of shitty weak and situational cards which were less useable than what came before like Radiant Mirror Force is not "balancing" the game dipshit, it's insulting the customer's intelligence and wallet, which is what really was killing the game during GX era

go on duelingbook and filter for Gladiator Beast format, and then just start waltzing through the cardpool like you would for Goat or Edison, you will be disgusted

>>57948041
Gold/Silver sold 8 million less units than the biggest home videogame in history. It didn't keep on par, nor did it even outsell. It lost 8 million sales. Gen II obviously killed Pokemania.

>>57944385 (OP)
Gen 3 would have been objectively worse because there'd be "nothing to prove," and so would the rest of the franchise as a result, because Pokemon would have fallen into its "we'll always win no matter what we do" complacency much earlier compared to when it only really cemented itself with GO (arguably Gen 6 before it) and Switch Era Pokemon.