I Want To Vote The Very Best . . . Pokémon Game

You might have heard that Luke Loves It. He bloody does, you know. He's played a bloody lot of them, too, and doesn't really count them among other, lesser JRPGs.

As for Vote Threads . . . Luke's feelings are mixed. They're kind of fun but a lot of work and they can be a bit much. But Luke's an absolute top lad, so he's gonna do it because you lot demanded it.

RULES

• PM Your votes to me
  
• Include comments, the enjoyment of these things is sharing our thoughts and having discussions. Only tedious nerds get obsessed with the minutiae of putting things in order and the numerical values we assign.
  
• MAIN SERIES GAMES:
  Pokémon Red & Blue
  Pokémon Yellow
  Pokémon Gold, Silver & Crystal
  Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald
  Pokémon Fire Red & Leaf Green
  Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum
  Pokémon Heart Gold & Soul Silver
  Pokémon Black & White
  Pokémon Black 2 & White 2
  Pokémon X & Y
  Pokémon Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon
  
• SPIN OFF GAMES:
  Any officially licensed Pokémon game. Does not include Smash Bros or any other Nintendo property in which Pokémon have cameo appearances. Obviously. Don't be a pedantic dick.
  

CATEGORIES

• Best Main Series Pokémon Game
  5 Votes, 1st place is 5 points and 5th is 1
  
• Best Spin-off game
  5 Votes, 1st place is 5 points and 5th is 1
  Best Pokémon Game
  10 Votes, 1st place is 10 points and 10th is 1
  
• Favourite Pokémon
  6 Votes, of equal weight
  

CLOSING DATE: OCTOBER 11TH
That's one whole month. No complaining.

Obviously, taglines and promotion appreciated.

Original Discussion:

I want an overall vote so I can upset you all by putting spinoffs above the main series

Well Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky is way better than the main series (unless you just can't stand rogue-likes). Actual difficulty, great whimsical music, and a story that starts off seemingly more childish than the main series before it goes full-on with the feels (one of them ain't called darkness for nothing!).

Drunkalilly wrote:

I'm thinking overall Top Ten, a Top Three spin-offs and a Top Three Main Series.

Aye, this one works best I reckon. I'm also down for a Top Five Favourite Pokémon category too.

I quite like Pokemon Quest. Should I still vote?

I've played Pokemans conquest for like an hour so....that get's my vote.

I've not played much of the spin-offs and I do view Red, Blue, Green and Yellow as the same game the same with the next gen and so on

Yass!  I am well up for this, and I think it's good timing for it as well. My suggestions, take or leave them:

Drunkalilly wrote:

I'm thinking overall Top Ten, a Top Three spin-offs and a Top Three Main Series.
Or should we skip the overall one and do two Top Fives?

I think that a main ten is good.  I'd definitely stick some of the spin-offs near the top. Could probably do Top Five Spin-Offs to be honest.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Where do Coliseum and XD fit into that?

Spin-offs - but, y'know, really good spin-offs.

Drunkalilly wrote:

With main series games, do we count Red, Blue, Green, Yellow as one game? What differentiates a Version enough to make it a distinct game?

I'd say Gold & Silver are together, Crystal separate, Heart Gold & Soul Silver separate (but together... er).  If they were released at once, count 'em as one game.

Drunkalilly wrote:

I reckon I'll include some kind of vote for Best Pokémon as well. It probably won't give us an actual result, but it might show us a surprising popular 'mon, and it'll help me sneakily accrue comments which I can later pretend are listener interaction on LLP.

Shrug. I was planning on doing some discussion on favourite and least-favourite 'Mons on a gen.-by-gen. basis closer to launch of Let's Go!, but there's room for an overarching vote too.  I just don't think we'll get anywhere close to a consensus, but you've anticipated that, so!

JayMoyles wrote:

Aye, this one works best I reckon. I'm also down for a Top Five Favourite Pokémon category too.

I mean, it'd have to be top six, right?

Jimbob wrote:

I quite like Pokemon Quest. Should I still vote?

Yeah boi! I actually don't mind quest either.

Balladeer wrote:

I'd say Gold & Silver are together, Crystal separate, Heart Gold & Soul Silver separate (but together... er).  If they were released at once, count 'em as one game.

I don't fully agree, I don't think most of the third versions changed enough that it's worth splitting the vote. For my money, Yellow version and B&W2 are separate from R&B and B&W respectively, but anything else can be lumped in with the others.

Robert Ballatheon, First of His Name wrote:

Shrug.  I was planning on doing some discussion on favourite and least-favourite 'Mons on a gen.-by-gen. basis closer to launch of Let's Go!, but there's room for an overarching vote too.  I just don't think we'll get anywhere close to a consensus, but you've anticipated that, so!

Yeah, i'm just thinking it'd be a laugh and this shouldn't see us stepping on eachothers toes.

Okay, cool, I'll finalise my thoughts and update the first post later.

Thinking about it you might be right about yellow due it forcing you to start with Pikachu. Black and White 2 are certainly there own games unlike a Platinum also remakes like HeartGold are different to Gold that to me it's

Red, Blue, Green
Yellow
Gold, Silver, Crystal
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum
Black and White
Black and White 2
X, Y
Sun and Moon, Ultra Sun and Moon
Fire Red, Leaf Green
Heart Gold, Soul Silver
Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire

I'm inclined to agree with Mas' list, although I've not played USUM and I don't really know either way.

I think Zero said it was rather barebones of a upgrade.

Y'all probably know better than I do, to be fair.  I've only played two 'third versions': Yellow and Platinum.  Thing is, Platinum raised what I felt was actually a pretty mediocre generation to possibly being one of my favourites.  Meanwhile it sounds like USUM did pretty much the opposite.

Ultimately I don't care much either way, though.  I'm more concerned with trying to think up my top Pokémon.  How many choices for that?  Ten?  It's surprisingly tough!

Drunkalilly wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

Aye, this one works best I reckon. I'm also down for a Top Five Favourite Pokémon category too.

I mean, it'd have to be top six, right?

Well, of course!

Aye, I'm happy enough to roll with Mas's list as well with US&UM being the only question mark on there for me due to simply not knowing enough about them.

It hath begun!

And Cappa has already hit me up with a top ten, before I'd even finalised the votes


I can extrapolate his separate top fives from that list easily enough, but obviously actually dividing into the four votes is appreciated from everyone else.

I'll PM you the rest of the stuff soon!

Did my votes send? I can't see the sent PM :/

It'll be in your outbox if Drunka's not actually seen it yet.

I'll fire mine across tomorrow.

I'm not seeing a new message :/
Might need to try again.

Sent mine over

I have too, incidentally. My top six monsters included one that surprised even me.

I sat down to draft my votes up this evening and it turns out that I've a lot more to say about Pokémon than I'd thought, so hang fire for my votes for the time being. I see you've given us a very generous deadline though, so all should be well.

It's not just Balla that has seen this Drunka

Some of those placings look very good to me.

Before I finalise my list I need to get something clear.  Are third versions being counted separately or being lumped with their (often fairly inferior) predecessors?  Because my list changes quite dramatically if Platinum is unable to be voted on its own (given it feels like a Game of the Year Directors Cut Edition compared to the predecessors that feel like beta versions that were rushed out the door for a quick buck.)

Probably seems like a minor thing to get all anal about, but given Platinum's easily my favourite Pokemon game while diamond and pearl are so tedious they're right down the bottom with Sun and Moon, yeah, need some clarification before I write up my list.