Pokémon Stadium

released on Apr 30, 1999

In the game's Stadium Mode, one player competes in 80 different battles, divided into four tournaments. Beat the Stadium Mode and you're in for a bonus battle against the ultimate Pokémon warrior, Mewtwo, as well as a secret mode that gives you 80 brand-new, and devilishly tough battles. There is virtually no way you can beat the secret mode without having trained your own, elite Pokémon. One to four players compete against each other or the computer in a no-holds-barred battle with customizable rules. You can select rental Pokémon for these battles -- but that makes them much too predictable since their selection of techniques isn't determined by the trainer. You can also select quick and easy versus and random battles.


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This was another one that was so cool because you could see your Pokemon in 3D in the 90s. The stadium battles were fun, but the minigames were even better.

Unlike with the third Pokemon Stadium game I beat last week, there’s really just no way to not put this game’s title in a way where it’s not very confusing on what I’m talking about XD. This is the game we know in English as just “Pokemon Stadium”, but in Japan, it’s the second of these games (and far more feature complete than its predecessor). Just as with the third game that I beat last week, this was another one I had as a kid and played the mini-games in a ton, but had really given up all hope of ever seeing the end of its quite hard single-player content. However, in the midst of my most recent N64 and Pokemon madness, I decided that, just like with its sequel, I’d sit down and finally see the credits of this game as well. I have no idea how to really say how long it took me to beat this game (given that it doesn’t record playtime and it’s also hard to say how much I should factor in the playtime of my Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Green ‘mons that I used for beating this in the first place), but it took me about a week of playing and grinding up Pokemon to finish it, at least. I played through the Japanese version and I did it on real hardware.

As with the other two Pokemon Stadium games, this game really has no narrative to speak of. It has a few mini-games (which are super fun to play, and I by and large prefer the ones in this game to the ones in the sequel) and a free battle mode to play with friends, and it also has a pile of single-player tournaments and challenges you can try your hand at if you’d like to see the credits. Just like its sequel, it has two rounds of this stuff: an easier first one, which I did, and a FAR harder second one which I have no interest in slamming my head against XD. That said, this game is definitely FAR easier to complete the first round in than it is for the sequel. That’s not to say it’s “easy”, per se, so much as it is to say that the second game’s balancing and AI teams are brutal, whereas this game’s tournament design as well as overall balance of AI teams is far more forgiving, and I found it a lot more easy to actually have fun even when using rental teams of Pokemon rather than my own trained up Pokemon.

Speaking of the tournaments, that is a very important difference this game has with its English language counterpart. Both versions have the gym leader tower where you fight the Kanto gym leaders and then the Elite Four + Champion in little mini gauntlets with no continues. That’s all the same between both versions (and a very fun time!). Where the English port of this game has four tournaments (two with one division and two with four), the original Japanese version here has six (four with one division and two with four). While two of the single-division tournaments and one of the four-division tournaments are the same in each version, the English version’s “Poke Cup” is entirely exclusive to itself.

The Japanese version, meanwhile, has three tournaments based off of official Nintendo tournaments actually held in Japan, and even the Pokemon present in several of those tournaments are based on teams actually used by finalists in those tournaments. My personal favorite of them was the Nintendo Cup ’99 one, which is the four-division tournament unique to the Japanese version. All 25 Pokemon used by the Nintendo Cup ’97 finalists are banned, so you’re left to make a powerful team out of the generally “Just OK” power levels of the remaining 125 or so. It’s a really fun challenge, and I had a blast putting together a team to tackle it with the weird and oddball restrictions it had.

The other big point of difference between the English and Japanese versions is that a lot of the rental Pokemon (ones the game already has that you can build a team out of if you don’t want to build your own team in one of the GameBoy games and transfer it over) are actually worse in this version. A lot of them have a lot more sub-optimal and weak move sets than their counterparts in the international versions of this game. It doesn’t make the game that much harder, at least for the first round, but it certainly made beating the harder tournaments I needed to use rental Pokemon for that much more difficult to do XP

The aesthetics of this game are pretty darn similar to the stuff its sequel uses, so I won’t dwell on them too much as to not repeat the same points again. The Pokemon are the main event, and they all look awesome! Once again, it’s no surprise that 50%+ of the credits for this game are the 3D modelling team, since they did a downright fantastic job bringing the original 151 Pokemon to life. The music is also really fun, with a bunch of really great versions of songs from the GameBoy games recreated here with the power of the N64. My main complaint about the aesthetics in this version specifically, is that the localization has better sound design, particularly in the mini-games. The localization went really hard in getting sound clips and voice talent from the anime adaptation to use in that version, and it has a very distinct point of nostalgia for me as a result. The Pokemon in the mini-games in the Japanese version, by contrast, just use normal little sound effects that are much more boring. It’s not a problem in the more holistic sense, but it’s something that does make me value having an English version to play via the Switch Online either way~.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. While I’d certainly recommend this game much more highly than the sequel due to the better difficulty balancing, this is still a very particular kind of game for a very particular kind of Pokemon fan. I learned a lot about how to play competitive Pokemon with the gen 1 rule set during my time with Pokemon Stadium 2, but if you’re not really caught by the idea of training up your own Pokemon team or trudging through the RNG of a rental Pokemon team, then actually trying to beat this game is likely going to be far more frustration than fun for even a big fan of Pokemon. That said, if that stuff does sound fun for you, then this is a game really worth checking out! Even if you don’t end up beating all of the single-player content to see the credits like I did, the mini-games and free battle stuff on their own make for a really fun time with friends, and they’re well worth checking this game out for, particularly if you have access to it via the Switch Online N64 Service~.

Childhood classic. My grandparents had a Nintendo 64 and I'd play it growing up every time I went to their house. Pokémon stadium was one of the games they had. The announcer, mini games, choosing Pokémon before a battle, etc. will forever be nostalgic

the mini games are where it's at

A 3D Poké-battle simulator with GB cartridge compatibility was a real "you had to be there" thing for kids in the 90s. Nowadays it's only worth revisiting for the surprisingly fun mini-games and expressive Pokémon animations. (What happened to those, GameFreak?)