Pokemon Stadium with more mons, more moves, and more content. I played this as Pokemon Stadium GS, so I had the challenge of reading Japanese in addition to beating the game. While most trainer text went by too fast for me to make out more than a few words, I at least got the mon names and moves.
I also beat the game only using Rentals and it's definitely much easier if you use your own game, but I haven't replaced my Silver's save battery and I don't think it works with American versions anyways. But when I talk about the difficulty, keep me using Rentals Only in mind.
Of course I did the minigames first and of course all of them are fun. The only one I'd say I didn't like was the Mr. Mime and Igglybuff/Cleffa ones and the Eevee one was just okay but that means 9 good ones.
The Gym Leader Battle is standard affair, the Johto side has trainers in most gyms (the exception being best girl Jasmine which is true to her Gym). Bring your team that matches theirs, if you lose once you're back to the start. It is kind of frustrating but adds more strategies for you to prepare for a gauntlet. It lacks a continue mechanic that the Stadium Cups have that I'll get to later, but I like it in most cases. It's only bad when the boss throws a huge wrench and that's 20 minutes of your life gone. It's only really bad in the Team Rocket interruption, where you don't know what to expect and all of their teams have a gimmick (Self-Destruct, Toxic Stall, I forget, and Sun) so if one whacks you do it all again. The Kanto side just has the Gym Leaders which makes them too easy, should have made their mons harder to beat to compensate, and then Red who's just a disappointment compared to his games. The real final boss isn't but read on I'll get to it.
Now we get the true hell, the Stadiums. This is a special kind of hell as you have to win 8 consecutive battles, only earning a Continue if you get a Perfect win against a Trainer. This makes actually beating the cups incredibly hard and it feels like unless you get lucky you can't just do it with any old Rental Team. Run out of Continues, there's 45 minutes to an hour of your life gone. Of course, all of this would be true if there wasn't a glitch where if you hit Suspend and then Continue Without Suspending, your stock of Continues doesn't decrease. Infinite retries makes it infinitely more bearable. There are 4 cups all with their unique kind of Hell, get ready.
Little Cup only allows level 5 Pokemon which would make you think it sounds broken but no it can actually get really tough. Stat increasing moves are pointless here and every HP counts, so give it your all or die trying! For not using Rentals you definitely have to breed specifically for this, as the Rentals are good but you can still run into hard walls.
The Nintendo Cup (at least that's what it's called in GS) is your standard battling nothing special cup at level 50 with 4 ranks (Poke-Great-Ultra-Master). Outside the Continue system (assuming you don't exploit it) being frustrating this is probably the best of them.
Prime Cup is Level 100 mons, only one Rank. You'd think it's like Nintendo but it's a lot harder, especially the final opponent who breaks the rules in a way you'll have to see for yourself. Of course, losing to this opponent a lot (without exploiting again) means back to the beginning for you!
Challenge Cup is the biggest middle finger. Your mons and moves are chosen completely at random (with mild stipulations, no too useless/too overpowered mons, and they'll always get attacking moves of their type) and your opponents are random too. Work with what you got, you can't prepare for anything here! Eventually you'll get so hard walled that even with the infinite continue exploits you may find yourself wanting to restart just to reroll for a better team. For example, I had the hardest time on Great/Super, the second difficulty. Did I mention this is also 4 ranks meaning you have to do this 4 times?
The final boss is a pretty cool send-off to the game. The Champion remix is saved just for him, and he uses Lugia, Ho-Oh, and Mewtwo vs your entire team. I chose the guys I went on the whole adventure with:
カビゴン, God of GSC
エアームド, Walling Metal Bird
ソーナンス, Exploiting bad AI until it dies because Wynaut
サンドパン, the Earthquaking miracle
パラセクト, the Sporing Star that rose from Little Cup
ユンゲラ, I bent the rules like a spoon and peeked at a guide for a sec
And this team, after a few losses and re-strategizing, managed to overcome the final boss. It was triumphant.
Would I recommend this for someone getting into Pokemon for the first time? Hell no. Would I recommend this for a Pokemon fan re-discovering Gen 2? Absolutely. Just bring your own cart if you don't want to get aggrevated at the foes that rely on Confuse Ray's 100% accuracy or double team spam or lucky flinches and so on.
It's well animated and the music is good. I legit didn't know Nintendo themselves made the Stadium games!
I also beat the game only using Rentals and it's definitely much easier if you use your own game, but I haven't replaced my Silver's save battery and I don't think it works with American versions anyways. But when I talk about the difficulty, keep me using Rentals Only in mind.
Of course I did the minigames first and of course all of them are fun. The only one I'd say I didn't like was the Mr. Mime and Igglybuff/Cleffa ones and the Eevee one was just okay but that means 9 good ones.
The Gym Leader Battle is standard affair, the Johto side has trainers in most gyms (the exception being best girl Jasmine which is true to her Gym). Bring your team that matches theirs, if you lose once you're back to the start. It is kind of frustrating but adds more strategies for you to prepare for a gauntlet. It lacks a continue mechanic that the Stadium Cups have that I'll get to later, but I like it in most cases. It's only bad when the boss throws a huge wrench and that's 20 minutes of your life gone. It's only really bad in the Team Rocket interruption, where you don't know what to expect and all of their teams have a gimmick (Self-Destruct, Toxic Stall, I forget, and Sun) so if one whacks you do it all again. The Kanto side just has the Gym Leaders which makes them too easy, should have made their mons harder to beat to compensate, and then Red who's just a disappointment compared to his games. The real final boss isn't but read on I'll get to it.
Now we get the true hell, the Stadiums. This is a special kind of hell as you have to win 8 consecutive battles, only earning a Continue if you get a Perfect win against a Trainer. This makes actually beating the cups incredibly hard and it feels like unless you get lucky you can't just do it with any old Rental Team. Run out of Continues, there's 45 minutes to an hour of your life gone. Of course, all of this would be true if there wasn't a glitch where if you hit Suspend and then Continue Without Suspending, your stock of Continues doesn't decrease. Infinite retries makes it infinitely more bearable. There are 4 cups all with their unique kind of Hell, get ready.
Little Cup only allows level 5 Pokemon which would make you think it sounds broken but no it can actually get really tough. Stat increasing moves are pointless here and every HP counts, so give it your all or die trying! For not using Rentals you definitely have to breed specifically for this, as the Rentals are good but you can still run into hard walls.
The Nintendo Cup (at least that's what it's called in GS) is your standard battling nothing special cup at level 50 with 4 ranks (Poke-Great-Ultra-Master). Outside the Continue system (assuming you don't exploit it) being frustrating this is probably the best of them.
Prime Cup is Level 100 mons, only one Rank. You'd think it's like Nintendo but it's a lot harder, especially the final opponent who breaks the rules in a way you'll have to see for yourself. Of course, losing to this opponent a lot (without exploiting again) means back to the beginning for you!
Challenge Cup is the biggest middle finger. Your mons and moves are chosen completely at random (with mild stipulations, no too useless/too overpowered mons, and they'll always get attacking moves of their type) and your opponents are random too. Work with what you got, you can't prepare for anything here! Eventually you'll get so hard walled that even with the infinite continue exploits you may find yourself wanting to restart just to reroll for a better team. For example, I had the hardest time on Great/Super, the second difficulty. Did I mention this is also 4 ranks meaning you have to do this 4 times?
The final boss is a pretty cool send-off to the game. The Champion remix is saved just for him, and he uses Lugia, Ho-Oh, and Mewtwo vs your entire team. I chose the guys I went on the whole adventure with:
カビゴン, God of GSC
エアームド, Walling Metal Bird
ソーナンス, Exploiting bad AI until it dies because Wynaut
サンドパン, the Earthquaking miracle
パラセクト, the Sporing Star that rose from Little Cup
ユンゲラ, I bent the rules like a spoon and peeked at a guide for a sec
And this team, after a few losses and re-strategizing, managed to overcome the final boss. It was triumphant.
Would I recommend this for someone getting into Pokemon for the first time? Hell no. Would I recommend this for a Pokemon fan re-discovering Gen 2? Absolutely. Just bring your own cart if you don't want to get aggrevated at the foes that rely on Confuse Ray's 100% accuracy or double team spam or lucky flinches and so on.
It's well animated and the music is good. I legit didn't know Nintendo themselves made the Stadium games!