>>57423392No, I'd acknowledge it as a former dexcut, and ultimately a ploy to get veteran players and the current generation of kids alike to buy the DLC if they didn't already have a Nidoking in HOME, being a familiar old face for the veterans who missed it, and a brand new monster for the kids who are experiencing Pokemon for the first time.
I'm also not going to play nice and view any instances of the past as "different" when it comes to the cashgrab perspective. Even if they aren't true dexcuts by merit of "this Pokemon is literally not in the data", they're still exploiting the player missing those Pokemon and being inclined to buy to "get them back."
They very much took advantage of kids without friends by forcing them to buy a second Gameboy and Link Cable in order to get the Pokemon of RGBY that can't be obtained in GSC.
They very much took advantage of the hardware incompatibilities between GB and GBA with the explicit intent of selling back old Pokemon to you in FRLG, Emerald, Colosseum and GoD.
Sinnoh with the GBA Slot or Pal Park exclusives, Unova with the Poke Transporter exclusives, Kalos and Alola with the Bank exclusives, so on and so forth...
But it wasn't until LGPE that they actively removed those Pokemon from the data. And I don't see them coming back to LGPE to add any more Pokemon, likewise with all the other Switch era games now that they're done updating them.
