My Top 5 Pokemon Spin-Off Games

I hope all of you are enjoying Pokemon Sun and Moon. For the past week I have been playing non-stop and I really love the new path they took with the seventh generation. It really felt similar to playing Red and Blue for the first time. Well except the feature that wild Pokemon can now call for Help during a battle. That feature can burn in the deepest depths of hell.

After 20 Years Pokemon has grown into one of the most successful and biggest franchises in the history of video games. The Mainline games excite young and old and with Pokemon Go the franchise created an unreal hype this past summer. Over the years Pokemon has grown from a simple video game into a multi-genre titan. Movies, TV-Series, Toys and everything else under the sun are created under the brand. However this is first and foremost still a video game blog. That's why I'd like to share my five Pics for the best Pokemon Spin-off games.

While looking into this topic I realized again how many of those games are out there. Pokemon truly has ventured into nearly every genre there is. And so it wasn't easy to narrow the pics down to only five.
The incredible diversity in Spin-Off games just shows the potential of the franchise. When a Fighting Game and a (kind of) Rail Shooter are released under the same brand, and both feel like a natural fit, you truly have a goldmine at hand.

But now don't lets waste any more time. Here are my Top 5 Pokemon Spin-off Games.

5: Pokken Tournament

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When this game was announced I was pretty puzzled. Could this work? Should this work? Well the answer is quite simple. Absolutely!

While the absolute ruler of fighting games on the Wii-U is undoubtedly Super Smash Bros. this game offered fans of more complex fighting games a great alternative. It got quite the deep fighting system with a lot of great combos and offers a high skill cap. It's the perfect game for fans of Tekken or Street Fighter, which want to truly master a game like that.

The selection of Pokemon is great. They managed to include not only the obvious choices, but also freshen things up with several unusual fighters. They even made Chandelure work.

It is a shame that only the Arcade Version of the game got several new characters so far, but I still hope that we'll see them as DLC for the Wii-U Version along the line.

So if you always dreamed of Pile Driving Gardevoir with a Pikachu dressed as a Lucha Libre, then this game is what you have been waiting for. Fans of Tekken and Pokemon got the ultimate Franchise Mix Up. A very good fighting game with some very unusual fighters.

4: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon:

The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series puts you into the shoes of a Pokemon. I was always wondering why it took them so long to release a game like that, but since Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue we got a steady supply of those games.
They take the well known Pokemon Formula and replace it with a Dungeon Crawler style of gameplay, which is quite refreshing and a great fit for those games.

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After choosing which Pokemon you'd like to play, you're thrust into the world. As newest Member of your respective rescue team your job is it to help other Pokemon, recruit them for your team and explore the dangerous dungeons.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is an entertaining Action Adventure series and it's success over the years is testament to that. It may lack the polish of the main line games, but if you like the Diablo like gameplay then these games are surely worth a buy.

3: Pokemon Trading Card Game

Like I said earlier Pokemon has grown into a multi-million dollar industry of its own over the course of twenty years. There have been some hit and misses, but one of the most successful franchise spin-offs was and is the Pokemon Trading Card Game. After all this years it's still going strong with regular tournaments and so forth.

But for this list I'm not talking about the physical Trading Card Game.

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During, what many consider the height of Pokemon, when Silver and Gold where just around the corner, Nintendo released a GameBoy Color Version of the Trading Card game. And it was brilliant.

It included all of the original 151 Pokemon and a lot of Trainer Cards. And while this number may seem a little bit small in comparison to today’s 801 Pokemin, but it was more than enough to build fun and diverse decks. Combined with the ability to battle your friends via Link battles this created just the same addicting fun as the main line Pokemon Games. It also offered a relative cheap version to play the Trading Card Game without investing hundreds of dollars for booster packs.

I'm sure a true successor with all currently released cards would be a huge success.

2: Pokemon Snap

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I'm still kinda pissed that this game didn't get a successor on the Wii-U. There was no console in history that was better suited for a Snap game, but Nintendo really dropped the ball with this one. Well at least we got the excellent original on the Virtual Console.

By todays standard it may seem a bit lackluster and small, but during it's initial release it was a groundbreaking next step for the Pokemon. After all it was the first time you could see your favorite Pokemon in 3D. Even before the release of Pokemon Stadium.

And what was even better it allowed you to spectate them in their natural habitat. Something that was never truly seen before.

The gameplay itself is easy to grasp, but still a lot of fun. Trying to capture that perfect picture for a better score was a great driving force. It may seem vain, but there have been countless hours spend just to get that perfect picture of a Pokemon. Of course this only seems vain to people, who have never played Snap.

Pokemon Snap, just like my Number One Pic, was released during the high time of Pokemon. The first generation created a never before known worldwide Hype and the second generation was right around the corner to drive it to new unknown heights. Nintendo and Game Freak tried to spread the franchise onto other genres and consoles and thanks to that we got one of the best and most unique N64 games. And of course we also got...

1: Pokemon Stadium 2

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While the first Stadium did lay the groundwork, the second installment perfected it. This is the perfect console Pokemon Game. Yes Colosseum and XD were great in their own right, but Stadium was better. Simply because it did it's own thing and didn't try to emulate the Mainline games. Instead it offered something that wasn't possible on the Handheld. Fully rendered 3D Pokemon Battles.

But these games did so much more.
Once again you could transfer your Pokemon from the Handheld to the Big Screen via the Transfer Pack, but this time you could also use all Pokemon from the second generation. Seeing your hard trained Feraligatr on the Big Screen defeating a Charizard is a feeling you can't describe.

But like I said the 3D Battles in the Stadium, while being the heart piece of the game, weren't everything. You could challenge the difficult to beat Gym Leaders or you could play the Mainline Games on the Big screen. There was even a possibility to run the games at twice or three times their normal speed. Then there was the trainer academy and of course the hidden stars of Pokemon Stadium 2. The Mini Games.

Who needs Mario Party if you have Pokemon Stadium 2. The Mini Game Tournaments are one of the most entertaining things you can play. Period. Even though I suck at them, I love to see the despair on my friends face when I overtake them during the last meters of Tumbling Togepi.

From all the games on this List the Stadium series is most in need, and most deserving of a new installment on the Switch. Make it happen Nintendo.

And that were my Top 5 pics for Pokemon Spin-Off games. What are your thoughts on that topic? What games did or do you enjoy the most? Let me know.

And as always

thanks for reading