>>12013534>>12014347what everyone seems to be forgetting in this thread is why the over all designs have become more flashy and complex, and it's the games they are from, the original gameboy had a 4 shades palette of monochrome on an 160x144 pixel display so of course the designs were extremely simple, gen II had gameboy color but was still limited to the pixel count so the designs were more or less the same quality, how ever it's the smallest generation because the limited amount of information Gamefreak could program into the cartridge because Gen II had to be able to hold not just gen II Pokemon but all of Gen I as well because of trading possibilities. Now it's usually agreed that a noticeable shift in design happened in Gen III and the cause is the franchise's movement to the Gameboy advanced which had 240x160 pixel display and 15 bit color palette which allowed for much more complicated designs and the amount of information a cartridge could hold also allowed much more pokemon/moves/ect. Gen IV was an experimental Generation, with increased memory of the actual system the DS and Gamefreaks major overhaul as a company as a whole, the designs really reflected this change. Gen IV is personally my least favorite Generation (though I'm actually quite fond of the mascot legendaries). Gen V simply continued from where gen IV left off design-wise, but as a whole toned down the complexity but increased the "flare" it seems to have opted for a more attention grabbing look which is understandable for a aging franchise.
So as a nostalgiafag my choices are 1 > 3 > 2 > 5 > 4 with 2 and 5 being almost equal for their sum of qualities
as an artist and a gamer I'm a Hoennbaby at 3 > 1 > 2 > 5 > 4 because 3 was the break out for design freedom because the advancement of technology but still tried to keep the "feel" of gen 1 & 2 and 1 & 2 being the classic standard and 5 & 4 being experiments not gone wrong, but definitely not right
cautiously optimistic for Gen VI
