Pokémon Battle Revolution by developer Genius Sorority wasn’t a great game. It was released in North America in 2007 and served as Pokemon‘s Wii debut, but was more or less an extension of the DS games Pokemon Diamond And pearl. A 3D combat simulator in fact, it made more competitive fights more appealing, but as a video game it was an absolute nothing burger. It has no real story content, and much of the gameplay is spent pitting your teams created in another game against preset challenges. Despite this, it offered the most detailed combat animations the series had ever seen. And now, while the game has been largely forgotten by the general public, amid talk of the animation quality of the Pokemon Series that fans look back on combat revolution with friendlier eyes.
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In order to be fair to everyone involved, combat revolution Being so unassuming is probably why it’s able to put so much love into animating all of the Pokémon in its simulated battles. It supports all of the first four generations of Pokemon, from Bulbasaur to Arceus, and since there’s not much gameplay surrounding these battles, a lot of work has gone into capturing the essence of nearly 500 monsters.
Some of the best examples are the fainting animations. At the time all the most Pokemon Games were sprites that disappeared from the screen when a monster was killed. Similar to Pokémon Stadium before (several animations of the game iterate over what Stadion and its sequel on the Nintendo 64), combat revolution has original animations for each Pokemon when they faint, and they range from a creature just passing out to something much more theatrical.
Take Honchkrow for example. The dark/flying bird wears a fedora, and if it falls in battle, it will punch back dramatically and, just before returning to its Poké Ball, will tip its hat as a sign of respect to its opponent. It’s not just the fainting animations, though. There are small touches in each Pokemon’s moves that give a real sense of character. Roselia puts her hands on her hips and takes a cheeky stroll while recovering from an enemy attack. Wild Pokémon like Houndoom roar and growl from their side of the battlefield. Even if Pokemon are not displayed directly in a scrap, combat revolution places a lot of emphasis on representing who a Pokémon is, and it’s fun to look back on after 17 years.
Part of what makes combat revolutionThe animations of differ even in comparison to modern 3D Pokemon Games is that battles allow Pokémon to make visible contact when using attacks. Mostly play games like Scarlet fever And Violet animate battles so Pokémon can stay in their designated place on the field. Even physical attacks like a punch or kick are animated as such, with a quick graphic of a fist or foot hitting the target rather than the Pokémon itself running across the screen to strike. But I have clear memories of my Raichu and Torterra walking up to an enemy to attack them with Iron Tail or Wood Hammer. Now the same moves are depicted with a dismembered appendage instead of Raichu walking over and slamming a metal tail at an enemy.
While combat revolutionThe lack of features and content is probably why making each Pokemon look and act differently can waste time and resources. The Wii game has been cited, perhaps unfairly, in ongoing conversations about Modern Pokemon Game Animations and Game Freaks Rationale for getting rid of the National Dex that contains every Pokemon in newer games. At the height of this controversy (colloquially known as “Leave”) in 2019, longtime series producer Junichi Masuda explained that among other reasons like game balance, the development of games like sword And Sign on the Switch allowed the team to create “higher quality animations,” and reducing the number of Pokémon in a game is a good way to keep that hypothetical quality intact.
“There’s a few different ways of thinking behind it, but the main reason for that is really just the sheer number of Pokémon,” Masuda said US gamer. “We already have well over 800 species of Pokémon, and more will be added in these games. And now that they’re on the Nintendo Switch, we’re making them with much higher fidelity and higher-quality animations.”
But ultimately when you look at it sword And Sign or Scarlet fever And Violetit’s clear that Matsuda’s argument about higher quality animations didn’t really work, especially when you look at those games alongside the animations in them combat revolution. (The validity of Masuda’s claims remains a regular point of debate within the Pokemon community in conversations about the quality of newer games.) There are of course a dozen other reasons for this Scarlet fever And Violet Are a buggy mess and why its animations aren’t up to par with something like that combat revolution. Game Freak doesn’t develop these games in isolation; They are a component in a massive multimedia franchise that makes the most money from goods. As much as the hardcore fanbase would like to believe that The Pokémon Company’s primary focus is the games we buy each year, the money tells a different story.
On the whole the Pokemon The series has a lot of great systems and character designs, but Game Freak’s translation of those ideas into a 3D space has always been lacking. Ahead of a complete overhaul of the development of these games, I’d be surprised to see a major line Pokemon game achieve the same level of animation quality that combat revolution obsessed, especially since the series has finally surpassed the 1000 Pokémon mark Scarlet fever And Violet. But looking back at what Genius Sorority was able to achieve on the Wii, when instead of creating a new world with RPG systems and designing brand new monsters, it really only had to worry about whether the Pokémon battles looked good or not it is difficult not to imagine the possibilities.
