Pokémon has always had a special place in our hearts, just like Harry Potter, Pogs, and all the other weird and wonderful things I grew up with in the 90s. I recently read an article about a study at Stanford that concluded adults who played Pokémon games have a unique region of the brain that lights up when they see the characters, which must be why my brain is constantly on high alert as I see Pikachu pretty much every day in my line of work.
I would spend hours playing Pokémon on my original yellow Game Boy DMG while sitting on my bed, revelling in a new world inhabited by these interesting creatures. I think as kids we always wanted there to be something more out there in the world, for talking animals with special powers to be real – look at all the programmes we watched with Dragons or powerful critters in them throughout the 90s and tell me I’m wrong. I can’t count how many times I’ve asked my dog to talk to me or show me he can pull off a Quick Attack since I first discovered Meowth on the Pokémon TV show, and I still think about the programme with the talking hot water bottle and characters like Woody and Buzz coming to life to this day.
I loved Pokémon Red when I was a kid, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to feel like I was a part of the battles and not just watching them happen, to see my Pokémon squaring up against each other on the big screen just like Ash, Misty, and Brock did while adventuring across Kanto. While the storyline of becoming the champion and acquiring all of the badges in the original games is great, it’s the battles that we all look forward to, the things we spend the whole game training to be better at.
So, when Pokémon Stadium dropped into our lives with a Transfer Pak to bring our finely honed Pokémon Team from our Game Boys to our TVs, that dream finally happened. Seeing the Charizard that I had trained right from being a Level 5 Charmander in the very first patches of grass at the beginning of the game was unlike anything I had ever seen. My trusty Pidgeot, Mewtwo, Scyther, Zapdos – they were all there with the weird nicknames I’d given them, and it felt incredible.
Moves like Dig, Fly, and Surf finally had some oomph about them, Psyshock and Psychic utilising colours and screen-shifting visuals to draw us in. And while the Pokémon didn’t actually hit each other or cause any visual damage like Bron Breakker taking IShowSpeed out with a spear, the animations were all we needed to make us finally feel like Pokémon trainers.
Over the course of this article, I’m going to look into the early origins of Pokémon Stadium, how it became such an iconic title, and relive some of my favourite moments of a game that played such a big part in my childhood. A 26th birthday might not seem that important to you (I can’t actually remember mine…), but by the end of this article, I think you’ll be joining me in lighting some candles and having a slice of cake for this incredible game.
It Began With The Forging Of The 64DD
Like so many Nintendo games that went on to do great things, Pokémon Stadium’s origins began on the 64DD, Nintendo’s ill-fated add-on for the N64. Nintendo EAD originally created Pocket Monsters Stadium for the 64DD, no doubt hoping that it would be one of the crowning jewels of the system and a game that would encourage everyone to buy into it. We all know how the 64DD turned out, however, and the game was subsequently released on the N64 in Japan.
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Pocket Monsters Stadium had grand plans (didn’t everything on the 64DD). It was originally supposed to have all of the Pokémon from the DMG games available to pick from to battle with. Yet for some reason, they only ever ended up having 40 critters available to battle with. It’s one of those instances where Nintendo promised a lot and delivered a little, which was essentially what haunted the company throughout the 64DD period. I’m guessing that Nintendo wanted to expand on this original roster of 40 characters by having gamers head to the download points I spoke about in my deep dive into the game Cabbage, with a view of us buying DLC to increase the number to 151. This is speculation, however, and until I sit down with Miyamoto, I probably won’t know for certain!
Eventually, Pocket Monsters Stadium arrived on the N64 on the very cartridge you can see in the picture above. It pulled together the artwork from Pocket Monsters Red and Green, the original Pokémon games that released in Japan, aswell as Pokémon Blue and a little image of Pikachu to appease the fans. This was the start of the Pokémon Stadium movement, but the game itself felt a little rushed. If you’ve not played it before, then think of it in the same way as the Wii U was the stepping stone to the Nintendo Switch; Nintendo trialled their ideas out in this first iteration of the game and found their feet with aspects like graphics and battle mechanics, but it could have been better.
Still, even though there were only 40 Pokémon available to use, it was the closest that gamers had got to using their favourite characters in actual Pokémon battles, though sadly, it only ever released in Japan. Just look at the picture above though; the box art alone is enough to give me goosebumps. I was lucky enough to see this mint-condition boxed version of Pocket Monsters Stadium when Brandon and I went to visit Europe’s largest Nintendo collection. It was given out as part of an ANA Airlines competition bundle with a branded N64 and ‘Hey You, Pikachu!’ and is worth significantly more than my loose copy!
Pocket Monsters Stadium 2 & The Transition Into Pokémon Stadium
Credit: Sore Thumb Retro Games
Pocket Monsters Stadium 2 released on April 30th 1999, and it’s this version of the game that would go on to become Pokémon Stadium worldwide. It’s the exact same game with the same gameplay that you’ve played in England, Germany, Australia or Argentina, but it began its life as Pocket Monsters Stadium 2, which makes sense considering Nintendo were trying to convince Japanese audiences that they had nailed the formula this time. The sequel dropped with artwork that looks incredible compared to the eventual Pokémon Stadium box we ended up with too. I get that for new players, seeing Blastoise and Charizard battling in an arena setting made it instantly apparent what the game was and how it was different to the RPG adventures, but come on – having Mewtwo on the cover makes everything better!
It wasn’t till the following year that the game was rebranded as Pokémon Stadium for worldwide release, releasing in the US first on March 6th, followed by Australia on March 23rd and Europe on April 7th. So, while Pokémon Stadium as you know it might not be 26 years old today, the gameplay itself is.
As I said above, seeing two black and white Pokémon on a screen was all well and good, but our imaginations were running riot, and we wanted more. You only ever saw the front of your Pokémon if you went into your team list, and whenever a Charizard was used by an opponent, it was always a case of going ‘Oh yeah, that’s what mine looks like!’ as we only ever saw the back of its head. I wanted to see my Pokémon battling, see the flames coming from Charizard’s open maw and to see him soar up into the sky and hover their waiting for the next attack as opposed to just imagining it when he disappeared off my Game Boy screen.
Undoubtedly, the animations were what made Pokémon Stadium so great, not to mention the tense battle music and cheesy commentary that made each bout so memorable. Still, Pokémon Stadium holds a special place in my heart for two other reasons – the arrival of the Transfer Pak, and the mini games.
The Transfer Pak
There are three instances where I’ve been more excited than usual to open up a Nintendo game; the day I unwrapped Donkey Kong 64, the day I bought Lylat Wars, and the day Pokémon Stadium arrived at the front door. DK had the Expansion Pak, Fox McCloud the Rumble Pak, and Pokémon Stadium the Transfer Pak, essentially turning the N64 remote into a prop gun from Star Trek. I’d already been using the Super Game Boy cartridge in the SNES for a while, but this was so much more compact, more futuristic, even.
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Finally, I could pull my Pokémon that I had been training in Kanto onto the big screen, putting them to the test against Pokémon my friends had been training on Pokémon Blue or their own Red save files, freeing them from the confines of the 8-bit screen and seeing them in glorious 64-bit for the first time. That was the moment where Pokémon became real for me, where I finally sat back and thought, ‘this is as close as I’m going to get to ever being a real Pokémon Trainer.’
And you know what, I stand by that too – I get more of an awestruck feeling when I play Pokémon Stadium than when I play Legends: Arceus or Scarlet and Violet, though I suppose that’s the power of nostalgia for you. I just like the simplicity of Pokémon Stadium; it brings a type of calm, measured brilliance that showcases what your Pokémon can do without getting too complicated. I wasn’t a fan of Pokken Tournament for that very reason; it lost what made Pokémon Stadium so special.
Having the chance to play Pokémon Red and Blue in colour on the TV was wild too I mean sure, we’d all stuck our Game Boy carts into a Game Boy Color to get that Red or Blue hue to the graphics and marvelled at that, but the coloured border, the Pokémon cards, and the fact that the sprites seemed to have more colours and textures to them was just mindblowing back when I was 10 years old. I’d gone from perching on the top of the stairs using the landing light to see what I was doing on the DMG screen to riding around Kanto on my bike in glorious colour on the N64 – Pokémon Stadium was the gift that just kept on giving.
Ekans Hoop Hurl & Dig! Dig! Dig!
I don’t know whether Nintendo realised that the Kids Corner segment of Pokémon Stadium would be so addictive, but it’s one of the most played parts of the entire game for me. My mum and I still talk about the days we spent playing these minigames together, and while Run Rattatta Run and Snore Wars were great, it was Ekans Hoop Hurl and four Sandslashes digging like their lives depended on it that we loved the most.
Ekans Hoop Hurl was a Pokémon-themed version of the fairground ring toss game, firing coiled Ekans onto the heads of Digletts. It was so incredibly addictive that we would spend hours playing it, just simple multiplayer fun that I suppose, thinking back, we loved so much because they felt like they could have jumped straight out of a Mario Party game.
Dig! Dig! Dig! was great because, if you placed the controller on the floor against the bottom of the sofa, you could just slap the L and R buttons like you were trying to do the world’s fastest drum roll and dig incredibly fast. We’d often have sore hands by the time we finished playing, but it was totally worth it.
Those mini games, all nine of them, in fact, were more than just part of a ‘Kids Corner’; they were light relief from tense battles and allowed gamers of any ability to jump into the world of Pokémon for a little bit. I still wish that a Mario & Pokémon Party would release one day, but perhaps I’ll have to look to the ROM hacking community to put this one together for me.
Final Thoughts
Some of you might have started this article thinking, ‘Why is this guy celebrating 26 years of Pokémon Stadium like it’s a massive thing?’. For me, this is a game worth honouring no matter how old it is, and it’s not because its necessarily the best game on the console or that it revolutionised the world of gaming as we know it, but it brought so much to the table in terms of allowing our imaginations to leave the small screen in our hands and spring to life on our televisions. For those of us who grew up with Pokémon, it was everything, just like WWF SmackDown brought wrestling fans closer to the action or Rogue Squadron put Star Wars fans in the cockpit of their favourite crafts.
For me, Pokémon Stadium is a title that will forever be synonymous with the time I spent as a kid playing games with my Mum, a time playing games with my mates all scrunched onto the same sofa, and a time where Pokémon was at its peak with the original 151 monsters that catapulted the series to insane heights. It symbolises a golden age of couch multiplayer gaming, which is pretty good for a game idea that could well have been scrapped with the downfall of the 64DD.
What are your thoughts on Pokémon Stadium? Are you as much a fan of it as I am? Is this the first time you’ve even heard about this game? Let me know in the comments below!
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