I Miss Pokémon Sprites 

Pokemon Crystal is probably my favorite set of sprites. They had an extra level of cartoony compared to later sprites, while still being fully detailed. It was just so clean looking.

i'm really new to pokémon, so i never knew how much was missed about older generations. the sprite work is absolutely top notch!

This is like one of the first videos that took a RESPECTFUL look at both the sprites and the 3D models. The advancements the models make isn’t glossed over and it’s also not saying pokemon needs to go back to only 2D games. It would be cool to SEE a stylized 2D game again, but it also doesn’t have to be the new norm.

I loved when black and white sprites were animated

I also belong on the "Sprites are better" gang, but I am completely fine with 3D models in Pokemon. Especially after Scarlet and Violet fixing a couple issues like Typhlosion not having flames in battle or Eelektross finally standing up. Even though they look nice, a lot of us can't deny that sprites are a lot more charming than 3D models.

I just wish they'd look at the Colosseum/Revolution models and just give them that bit of pop in the main games

100% agree. The Black and White games had amazing sprites, and the idle animations each one had made the Pokémon feel so alive. It really sucks that the 3D models look the way they do half the time. I miss the pixels and uniqueness of sprites that 3D could never truly replicate.

I'd say one of the few exceptions to the rule here is Ludicolo. His 3D animation made him pop personality wise and he became one of my favorite Pokemon because of his idle stance. Also, his battlecry cracks me up every time.

Early 2010s pokemon fandom gaslit us into thinking that gen 1 sprites were bad. Gotta be the most expressive they ever looked.

One of the things that made me love Gengar was its GSC sprite - that smile is so menacing

I miss them, too. I thought the pixelated art style was cute.

I think it'd be cool if the 3d models had sorta poses they did after a few seconds. It'd take even more work to put in every game for every mon but it would go a long way.

I hope we go back to sprites in Pokémon someday

I agree, having a new sprite every gen helped reinvent the pokemon. Gen 4 Arcanine and a not flying honchcrow were better. But at the same time, 3D Toxicroak and Spinda are more dynamic and interesting. I think we could be happy with 3D animated, but with better poses and idle animation to break the monotony. Luxray for example got an improvement in Legends. But that's a lot of work.

For as much as I generally like the gen 6 games, I will forever hold the believe that they should have had a better transition into 3D after black and white, like a main series Pokémon game in between gen 5 and 6 with arguably lower quality 3D sprites that integrate into 2D better in order to seamlessly ease into the 3D era of Pokémon would have been a better route to go for, giving game freak more time to work on and perfect 3D sprites

0:55 That lickitung evolution looks SICK!

Pokedex 3D Pro actually had so Good Idles and the Worst Part is that Gamefreak didnt import them into newer Games. I think it would help the Game if Pokemon actually had more Special Interactions such as Flying Pokemon first standing on the Ground but then flying up once a Ground Type Move is being used. Have Pokemon who miss their Attacks actually miss their Attacks instead of showing a Text Box. Use their sleeping Animations when asleep in Battle rather than closing Eyes. The Pokemon should get knockbacked by Attacks like how they used to in PLA. Use the Pokemons Dizzy Animations when confused and actually show the Flames and Ice when a Pokemon is frozen or burned instead of just slowing down the Idle or stopping it completely. The Pokemons Attacking Animations should get faster or slower depending on how the Speed is boosted. Why does a Pokemon not rush towards other Pokemon with its Running Animation like Twinkle Tackle or Flare Blitz?! Why does a Pokemon not use its Friendship Animation when attracted?! Why do Flying Pokemon who have a Standing Animation not fall down when they get hit by Moves that apparently do that? Why do Special Attacking Pokemon run towards Pokemon in Lets Go Mode when they can snipe them?

Apparently the main reason as to why so many flying Pokémon awkwardly glid-oh, sorry I meant flew instead of standing were because of Gen 6's Sky Battles. A feature that literally only appeared in X & Y. I do wish they fixed them sooner though. Xatu is literally one of my favorite Pokémon due to how cool it is. And I just can't take it seriously with how stilted it looks now. I remember seeing this one gif where somebody took Skarmory's flying animation and attached puppet strings to it. I literally cannot unsee it now

Typhlosion's (and the rest of the Cyndaquil line's) flames only appear when they attack. It's supposed to take a bit of effort to fart them out, and so it would be kinda dumb for them to have them out while not currently attacking.

2069:I miss 3d models

I miss the pixel art sprites in the boxes. I don't get why they switched to regular 2d ones

The reason for the desaturated colors is to make them more accurate to the official art. Metagross is a prime example of this

My favorite sprites are the ones in Crystal. Not only the intro animations, but also the color pallette making use of whites and blacks and dynamic shading.

At the very least, I do appreciate Game Freak are trying to return to posing the Pokemon instead of having Lucario just t-posing.

I really love the sprites too! They look so so gorgeous! Especially in HGSS and BW 1 & 2. :D

The best part of 2D sprites (at least for me) is the community invested in creating cool sprite edits, like SuperSonicGX and 205twoohfive.

I think the best middle ground is HD anime styled sprites maybe with subtle cell shading. Everything except the games are in one style, except for the games which are 3D for no good reason and soulless. Idk why not a lot of games use hand drawn 2d graphics cause nowadays it’s either 3D or pixel art. I think Pokémon using hd animated drawn sprites could push it more into the mainstream as well.

There really was something nice about those old sprites I remember being aghast when Hitmontop's 3d model was standing upright instead of balanced on its head

*James has seen some things in that frame* 💀

I’m Planning Out Animations for Pokémon and When I finally find a Good Modeling Software I plan on Making them

2:25 counter point, levitate

Excadrill is the biggest example, from one of the coolest looking pokemon ever made in 2D to a dull thing in 3D

No need to give the billion dollar company too much of a pass because they would have to do “a lot of work” to make things better.

I genuinely want to see pokemon do what Octopath traveler did

Honestly another missed opportunity with 3rd was not having something like having animation for attack missing or getting dodged like imagine a enemy pokémon using hyper beam then your pokémon actually barley Dodging it instead of the animation not playing then having text tell you it missed.

Even though gen 9 is literally broken, i like how they changed dratistclly theyr position

I loved when sprites were animated. Not just pokemon but trainers as well. One of my favorite pokemon games Pokemon Conquest has superb almost full art piece type sprites and a little bit of animation for the mini sprites. Its not a mainstream game but it was all done really well.

2:49 Scizor With it’s Metallic Body

in defense of land swim eelektross, it is levitating, as its ability heavily implies that it does

This is the video and type of Pokémon content I’ve been waiting on

I would love to see the Pokédex 3D Pro models actually used again

6:12 remember sky battles? Me neither.

Pokemon Pixel art is the Dark Souls of drawings and feelings

I’d much prefer the wonderfully and artistically hand crafted sprites over soulless character models today. They were so full of personality with sprite art.

I deliberately hold out from looking up all the sprites just so if I come across them anywhere I'll see something new for the 1st time. In particular, I still havent seen every single sprite from G2, as they're more than double the no. of Pokémon due to GS having different sprites between the 2 versions. I love how saturated the colours r in the original series & I want just that.

honestly the only issue I have with the 3d models are the idle animations during battles are just...too idle if that makes sense.

Another upside to bringing back sprites is that they'd probably be able to bring back the National Dex due to sprites taking up FAR LESS space than 3D models.

Kids today never will kno the infamous ditto sprites and clefairy sprites when using transform

"I cant name any sprites that improved in 3D". Spinda, toxicroak, archeops, porygon, porygon 2, porygon z, zubat, archeops, LUDICOLO, chimchar, hitmonlee, hitmonchan, hitmontop, crogunk, wooper, magnimite, rotom, poliwirl, poliwrath, polytoad, zubat, hopip, skipbloom, jumpluff, skoripi, raticate, diglet, dugtrio, muk, grimer, vileplume, manky, primeape, fearow, drowzee, hypno, and sandslash: What about us? What about us? Why do we matter to no one else but us?

Charizard, Persian, and Mewtwo got new models in Scarlet/Violet.

its pretty damn depressing that we went from seeing a pokemon have a different look every gen to all pokemon looking exactly the same since 2013

i miss the pixels tbh

Don't shit on my boi Gen 1 Golbat. It's a silly mon with a silly sprite.

The skarmory black and white models idle animation was so sick and would love to see it in 3D

As a pixel art guy I really like the gen 3-4 sprites but the gen 5 ones look off to me

The closest pokemon I could barely think of being a neat little change is Purrloin going from Black and White into X and Y. Back when the game came out Purloin was always seen as 4 legs in the sprite work. But when the western was finally seeing the anime to feature Unova and slowly X and Y was coming out, the anime showed Purrloin walking on 2 legs and would use the anime to insert that into the 3D modeling in X and Y. Until I get back to playing every gen I own and reach X and Y, Sun and Ultra Moon then I could give a better answer is some pokemon that came out in 3D if they work well as 3D or if they should be seen in 2D sprites. I can agree that in all honesty I miss seeing Sprite in later pokemon gens when you have pokemons from Gen 1 all the way to Gen 5 each sprite in many versions range from "what am I even looking at" to "aww thats adorable, tough or awesome." Least favorite 2D sprite that always comes to my head is Gen 5 with Azurill. Why on earth did they make him so sad??? He was a happy little baby boi who like to hop on his own tail bouncing with a cute smile.

Gen 5 idle animations affect the music too Whenever I hear the wild battle theme, I just wanna vibe for some reason

They nailed it in Colosseum/Revolution

Gen 4 and Gen 5 were peak Pokemon art style.

This just pop into my mind right now what if they release a pixel Pokemon game just like how Red, Blue, Gold, and Silver looked like back then

Pokemon fans be like: Ugh I cant believe Gamefreak hasnt done a single main series 3d game. Pokemon fans also be like: UGH 3D SUCKS, GO BACK TO SPRITES

I remember thinking how EVIL Gengar looked back when I played gen 2 as a kid. Those sprites were legendary

Legends Arceus made the 3D work for a bunch of pokemon, for example Luxray takes on a more fitting battle pose, Sneaseler looks ready to tear you a new one (and Hisuian Sneasel looks cute but menancing) Gallade looks ready to fight you and so on

I couldn’t play after x and y, and I had no idea why. This makes sense. I also miss the watercolor sugimori art of the first 2 gens.

Couldn’t they just keep using the same models like they have been, but in each new generation just pose each model differently with attention to it being expressive. That’s. Just different and more expressive idle models. Literally just posing them differently for each game. And then once you have a bank of different poses after 4-5 generations of development, you could mix and match the older poses to creatively reuse them, that way it doesn’t feel the same. E.g. in gen 15, Torchic’s expressive idle pose is from gen 10, Grookey’s is from gen 12, etc, etc. You see? In the long-run, they’ll make better games + able to be creatively lazy.

They could add more character and personality to the 3d models. They jus gotta work on it

gen 3 was my favorite pokemon aesthetic

I think if the 3d models had a few animations while they were stationary example haxorus clenching its claws,slaming its tail and swinging its face around you basically fix almost everything negative about 3d models

Loved your point about idle animations, they really should have different ones after X/Y instead of keeping them all the same static idle, there's barely any posing (some exceptions are Megas like Mega Mawile or Sceptile which turn their head at their foe)

PokeBall XD had 3d models and looked alive, take notes pokemon company

Bring the sprites back , like in pokemon go i wish there was a sprite option

Amazing Pokémon just make ever game have sprites

Sprites will always look better for the simple fact that they are quicker and cheaper to do well, and that matters a lot when there's over a thousand pokemon.

Scarlet fixed a lot of them.

Can we take a minute to appreciate Quaquavel? He has a vibrant color-scheme, is full of live and has great animations.

omg the 3d project is so good.

i have two big problems with pokemon nowadays i dont know why i always play pokemon in emulator and i increase the speed but sometimes i feel the battle being too slow so i would like to have a speed boost in the battle and the another thing that I never noticed but I remember seeing some youtuber talk about it, which is the movement of the camera in the old days in pokemon games the camera is rotating during the battle and every time someone gave an attack the camera changed all the time it makes the battle busier nowadays it just kind of stands behind our pokemon doing nothing this coupled with no speed boost for me makes me very nauseous and not interested in current games for some reason i miss the old pokemon

I don't think many people want pokemon in ultra 4k or anything, at least I don't. I just want it to have the same level of polish as other big named nintendo franchises. And how gamefreaks model of pumping out content works, I'm sure the devs are overworked as well as making mainline entries have lesser quality as a result.

Pokémon is kind of a fighting game

The Pokémon Company should give more resources and time to Game Freak.

The lack of posing definitely hurts the 3d models. They could definitely convey more personality if they just bothered to have them pose in a distinct way rather than just stand in a neutral position

I wish they added idle animations earlier my first game was black and it’s the most dynamic of the 2d sprite games and then when I played through diamond or heart gold the Pokemon had arthritis and don’t move and then x and y came and we never got anymore idle animation :(

The biggest problem with the 3d models for me, is that they're all the same from gen 6 to now. They're like lifeless inflatable balloons of Pokémon.

I think a lot of the reason the Pokémon have such simple posing in 3D is because going 3D introduced camera angles. Sprites would only ever be viewed from one angle, but a posed model can be viewed from more than just the over the shoulder angle of the old games. I guess they were afraid of angling making their cool poses look dumb, so they just opted not to make cool poses.

They literally "just" need to up the saturation/change color on most mons (fairly easy) and give them cooler idle animation (less easy and more time needed). I think they would benefit so much from this, take Hitmontop for example, constantly hopping around in a capoeira stance. They could do the same with the other hitmons, maybe have lee in a pugilist stance that throws some warm-up jabs while idling, and have lee bouncing a bit on its legs and then going on a 1 leg standing position every once in a while, then going back to the original pose. Then do something like this for every mon. Which are more than 1k. It's not an easy task, but it would spark so much more life in our favorite picket creatures, which are btw the main focus of the game. I can look past certain things as long as my mons are the coolest they can be. (Just thought about Spidops making a net like in its dex entry while idling, that mon needs some love)

For all the flying 'mons (and Eelektrotoss) I blame gen6 Sky battles. They had to keep flying or gliding- and I think they did not feel like also adding standing models for these.

In one generation they go from static sprites to the fastest, most animated and full of life. And in one other generation they from the fastest, most animated and full of life sprites into statics models without any personality. As you said, the problem isn't the models but how immobile and generic they are. (and don't get me started on the fact that game freak told that there wouldn't be every pokémon in Gen 8 to rework the models but in reality didn't do anything and is literally the same thing).

I hate what they did to xatu. Xatu was in my first play through of pokemon crystal which was the first pokemon game I played. I always enjoyed how it looked like a statue. But now it floats in the air.

Even though it would take time. If they animated the B/W sprites as 3D models. I feel like people would like them more....

I think the biggest problem isn't the models, it's just the weird awful posing. I agree that Gen 2 Gengar is the peak Gengar anything ever, but if only we had Lucario in an actual battle stance, or Marshtomp doing... Anything...

I like pokemon Scarlet and Violet, but I do think they rushed the game a lot. Some pokemon have swimming animations, but some just - don't - and instead have a big blank floatie in place of where a swimming animation should be. I guess it would be a tad difficult to make an animation for every pokemon with every move, but I think if they focused on one game and did updates over a few years, they could progressively get all the animations done and get people excited/promote the games while putting out the updates. Giving all pokemon who can swim, swimming animations, and all pokemon who can fly, flying animations, then giving all pokemon sleeping animations, then all pokemon paralyzed animations, and throwing in some move animations. Maybe focusing on one move at a time and doing an animation for all of the pokemon with that move. I think that'd be cool. Something that would really get the games being much cooler is to have an actual voice actor for the moves. Like a referee voice or your own trainer calling moves out. The voices could even be super cheesy and ai sounding like tamadatchi life style you pick a pitch and tone to represent your voice, and it'd improve the game quite a lot.

Its not a Sprite vs 3D animation problem. From Pokemon Stadium until Pokemon Revolution, they have made plenty of fleshed out, dynamic 3d animations with personality.

Golden Sun/The Lost Age still hold up as well 💯

You’ve become one of my favorite poketuber! I love yo it comedy and I always love watching your videos on my break at work :)

I think the should just give the models animations and poses and they would be what sprites were but better

The only complaint in the video was the first generation, but have you seen the original japanese sprites from the first generation!? It really makes you wonder, what were they trying when they changed them when they exported the game elsewhere

The oldest topic in history of art, old vs new. The most interesting thing Is why are you not ashemed tò share with others. And then, Just not tò feel empty inside, i reallu liked your video!

Yeah 2D Sprites are cool… but imagine they have 3D models that are posed like the 2D sprites, almost like they’re Amiibos

So it's not the sprites you miss, it's the effort that you want back.

Some my favorite sprites come from gen 1, 2, and 3.