The varying stats in each game encourage you to use Pokemon sitting in storage that might not have seen the light of day otherwise. The mini-games themselves are quite simple, but offer plenty of variety in how you approach the games, and what Pokemon you use. Game Freak have not made much of an effort to create a similar feature since. The Pokeathlon is a series of mini-games you could use your Pokemon in you play the games, you earn points, then you exchange those points to unlock hard to obtain items. The Pokeathlon replaced the contest system from the third-generation games, and offered significantly more involved gameplay compared to contests. Two things that were truly unique to these games were the Pokeathlon and Voltorb Flip. RELATED: Pokemon Scarlet/Violet Generation 9 Starters Explained.

HeartGold and SoulSilver were the first time the feature had a fully-fledged return since Pokemon Yellow on the original GameBoy.

While this could technically be done in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, it could only be done in a specific area of the game. The ability to turn around and interact with your Pokemon at any time was a nice addition. One of the other back-of-the-box features was Pokemon that actually followed you around, letting you interact with them. Connecting your Pokewalker with other players' would allow you to mix records, unlock their current player info and active party in the trainer house - a nondescript building in the latter stages of the postgame. If you ever used a Nintendo DS during its lifetime, you will remember what a nightmare it was inputting peoples' friend codes in order to play with them online. The device also made interacting with other players effortless.

By earning ‘watts’ through regular pedometer usage, players could catch Pokemon and find items that could be transferred over to their Nintendo DS.

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