Why does no one remember the 4 years of Pokemon Dark Ages? Are they just too young?
>Ruby & Sapphire has to follow Crystal and the popular 2nd gen after an almost 2 year wait
>Tons of previously established mechanics gutted, (time of day cycles, animations, ect)
>Deprived of classic Pokemon, forced to accept Hoenn Pokedex which are full of soulless copycats (a trend that still persists)
>remove all backwards compatibility to the first 2 gens
>literally years before national dex can be completed without cheating
>event Pokemon like Celebi region locked to Japan
>anime changes art style and story direction and fan favorite characters leave
>need to own a gamecube, special game, and transfer equipment just to have an adequate of amount of Pokemon storage
>water, Wingulls, and trumpets
>start of the "Team Retard" trend
>no access to Kanto/Johto
>no physical/special split
>FR/LG were premature and should have been held till gen 4, ended up with even less replay value than the originals
>forced, broken double battles
>weird direction with the Coliseum games which take an already limited roster of available Pokemon and pair that down even further and make the whole game double battles
>all those spinoff games later and still incredibly hard to piece together a national dex
>intense battling meta autism intensifies for the first time
>e-reader shilling
>the TCG struggles with licensing trouble, with Wizards getting shafted so Nintendo can make more money by printing their own, shittier cards
>all the older cards forced out of TCG standard and even more e-reader shilling
>Nintendo Power is on its deathbed
>worst possible timing with the original fans growing out of the franchise, still too early to be saved by nostalgia
I could go on but its hard to remember every last bit of how shitty things were. Any other oldfags feel free to add.