>>39073941>Were they like Battle Revolution where all it was was battling and you only got good pokemon if you traded them from the main games?I didn't play Battle Revolution but I can give you a brief summary of my experience with PS and PS2.
They were mostly about set style battles in stadiums with rental pokemon, who had really mediocre move sets but enough to play around. The games were really designed to port your own pokemon though since the rentals had this strange balance where the first stages had really strong moves while the last stages had med/weak moves or some of them relied on awkward combos. The Doduo/Dodrio Tower let you play the GB games with double/triple the speed which was fucking amazing at the time. Together with the Pokemon Lab you could manage too many things that were a pain in the ass to do in the GB (trading, item management, pokemon storage, etc). Beating the E4 had a bonus since you could get the only-once pokemon like the starters/fossil.
Another strong point was the minigames, they were extremely fun and in PS2 you could actually use your own pokemon to play some of them. PS2 also added Pokemon Academy (the one in GSC in Violet City). I can't say enough good things about this addition, it was completely amazing. Most of my knowledge at the time came from doing the tests and quizzes since they actually taught you the new mechanics like the weather combos, held items, etc, and how to battle more efficiently. The Academy had a Library as well, where you could check pretty much everything related to pokemon, moves, TM's, items, groups (really useful for breeding).
I remember spending hours checking/learning in the Academy and playing the minigames honestly. The Pokemon Stadium games were quite comprehensive in terms of pokemon experience. The only thing it needed to be perfect was a 3D adventure mode like the one Colosseum got later. Probably the most memorable thing was the announcer though.
