>>48570237>picI bet you can find a bunch of GBC games prettier than Crystal too, but when you put most of your dev team's time and most of your ROM space into hundreds of monsters, moves and battle mechanics, making different large tilesets for every couple screens takes a back seat.
>All these things in gen 3 and 4 that require you to have friends or an extra set of games and consolesYou mean like mixing records, multiplayer pokeblock churning, and trading to complete your dex? All this is either optional, or required in other gens too.
>You will never be able to do them again.Joke's on you, I have a couple GBAs, a link cable, and multiple cartridges. I only have 1 GBA wireless adapter though, so I can't do anything in the Union Room in Emerald/Fire/Leaf, but everything you can do there can also be done over a link cable. And like anyone who got gen 4 new and also played gens 6-7 who didn't trade in their old DS, I have a DS Lite and a 3DS, which is enough to trade pokes between gen 4 games. Flash carts are also readily available for GBA and DS, and are suitable for everything other than Pal Park (gen 3 to 4) and PokeTransporter (gen 5 to Bank). You need at least 1 real gen 3 and gen 5 game to transfer up from; you can use flash carts for other games and trade to that one to transfer up.
And for anyone who doesn't have that, there are emulators that can link either on the same or different PCs.
I will admit though, gen 3 is the hardest to complete the national dex on. You need Ruby, Sapphire, Fire, Leaf, Colosseum and XD to get all non-event stuff, and there was no internet linking ever.
