Can you please pin me? 🥺

One thing you didn't mention about the block smash event is how each block has a small crack on it, and hitting that place will cause multiple blocks to break at once. Hitting cracks in succession will cause your combo to go up, and your Pokemon can enter a hyped up state where it won't get tired and can smash extra blocks with each tap. It adds a level of depth to the game where instead of just tapping as fast as you can and switching out, you also are scanning quickly with your eyes to find the crack, then trying to be accurate with your taps to hit it, while still trying to keep your speed up. That's why that one is my #1, easily. Circle Push is a very close second for me though.

SoulSilver was my first Pokemon game and I always got engaged with the Pokeathelon, but I rarely saw or heard discussions of it even when the game was fairly new. I'm glad to see a KZfaqr I enjoy talk about it, and funny enough during a time where I'm replaying the game and spent a lot of time on it, as I feel it's an underrated feature.

I remember playing the pokeathlon alot on heart gold as a kid. I used mostly legendaries and thought it was hilarious that the events would be like a abra or a radicate or something on the other teams competing against giant mythical beasts that some random kid owns

My personal ranking: 10 - Pennant Capture (words can't express how much I hate this minigame) 9 - Goal Roll 8 - Snow Throw 7 - Lamp Jump 6 - Disc Catch 5 - Circle Push 4 - Block Smash 3 - Hurdle Dash 2 - Relay Race 1 - Ring Drop Skill is by far the worst category. Imagine having to do Snow Throw, already be bored/exhausted, and then you see Ball Roll and FREAKING Pennant Capture following it... I always dreaded to try this one. I love Speed, Power... but most importantly... STAMINA. That is my goated category. You start with Ring Drop, the BEST, because it simply is the most satisfying minigame to pull off. You bombard your opponents with a barrage of hits to push them off (and frequently fall out yourself, which is a great way to prevent "rich become richer" scenarios, but dominating the art of not falling after pushing someone is OH so good...), and when you fill very surrounded, just tap your Pokémon to jump in the air and launch someone of the pitch like a cannonball! I'm also pretty sure you can shoot out multiple opponents. It's simply the most fun course, by far. Then you do a surprisingly skill based Relay Run. I usually find that in the Speed category, my pokémon are a bit too fast for me to handle them running without the RNG screwing me eventually. But in Stamina, with the higher times it takes for the Pokémon to tire themselves, combined with the overall slower running speeds, it just takes 1-2 laps to adapt to the path and then it's just muscle memory. Breaking records in this course is insanely satisfying too. And lastly... Block Smash. While not my favorite, I do enjoy it. For starters, it's a very fast minigame, so at least it doesn't bog you down. High stamina usually also means the Pokémon can keep punching for longer periods, but if they're not strong enough to break the plates at decent enough pace, the game becomes frustrating very fast... so, I'd say it's a double-edged sword. Speed would be the best if not for Pennant Capture... but it is still great because of Hurdle Dash being amazing, too. The mechanic of jumping the hurdle at the very last second to gain a speed boost is really fun, very high risk high reward, also. It requires you to divide your attention really equally between your 3 Pokémon, which isn't easy sometimes (especially at very high speeds). Disc Catch and Circle Push are also fun courses. I don't feel bothered playing them, but they also don't really give me that satisfaction of completing successfully. Besides these, Lamp Jump... I dunno if it's just me, but damn I suck at keeping my Pokémon away from each other when jumping. They always hit one another, and the added penalty time sucks. But the game can, otherwise, be a decent challenge. The bottom 3 are just bad games. I don't hate Snow Throw, it's just boring (and sometimes surprisingly unintuitive?), but the last two are just... hazardous, uncontrollable messes where you are always getting hit from all sides by the opponents/obstacles, and you feel like you can barely do anything to dominate the course and change it in your favor. So, boring and unfun. How enticing... So yeah, these are my opinions about this miniscule and neglected by many, piece of side content in Pokémon HGSS.

Hurdle Jump and Relay Run are easily my faves, I loved the Pokeathlon and one of my favourite funny things about HG/SS is Sunkern is one of the most optimal Pokeathlon Pokemon.

I love the Pokeathalon so much, I'm so glad other people loved it! The Jump and Speed courses were always my favorite

This is genuinely one of my favorite mechanics in all of pokemon! Glad to see a video on it. Agreed on the three skill events being the lowest ranked, that's my least favorite course.

I got all 5 course medals on all 493 Pokémon - my proudest achievement as a teenager lol. Took years

Spending the entire round of Snow Throw doing nothing but pelting one Pokémon on one of the enemy teams with all three of yours is cathartic, and the game deserved higher for this reason alone. I must just suck at Lamp Jump because I hate this minigame, it literally felt purely random to me, Hurdles, Relay, and Disc Catch were always my favourites. But I'm glad we can all come together to agree, disrespectfully, *Fuck Goal Roll*

Not me forgetting Lamp Jump even existed 💀

I have a similar list, but I didnt really enjoy lamp jump, and I did enjoy the 4 way soccer game, haha. They dont switch spots or anything, but the goal game is a few spots higher, and lamp jump a lot of spots lower

This was one of the best features! Thank you for making this

I missed HGSS as a kid, but this makes me wanna go back and try it.

What I would really love besides a time extension is if Pennant Capture would give an earlier warning for the end if the round. I usually manage to cash in and tag out when the time warning hits so I've just got a new Pokémon that can maybe get 1 before it can get back instead of waiting with the previous Pokémon to collect an extra 3 knowing that the round is almost over.

I was always really good at goal roll, but it was always extremely annoying. I remember throwing my ds sometimes while playing

Was not expecting Lamp Jump to be number one. It’s really hard to figure out how to win the first time around as the computer players will almost always get more points than you.

"That's an iss-me, not an iss-ue" :D

The skill course is easily the most difficult one to beat.

I always really enjoyed goal roll

Here's the ACTUAL list: 10: Lamp Jump. Can't believe this guy put it first, the controls are obnoxious, unresponsible, and unintuitive. It's like playing Getting Over it, but at least you can master that game's controls. Half the time you will pull a mon down 3 times and the game just won't respond. Saying it has "no luck" is erroneous, because the controls are so bad and unintuitive that you might as well be flying in random directions. My high score for this mini game is 513, and it single handedly makes getting 500+ max score for the jump course a nearly impossible task. 9: Pennant Capture. The maps actually are randomised, which makes it even worse. I've barely gotten 50 high score on this, and due to annoying NPCs, I missed out on getting a 54 high score once. 8: Circle Push. It's just obnoxious trying to push all the Pokémon in and out of the ring, you can get a max score of 66 I believe, which I have gotten multiple times, it's just not fun. 7: Goal Roll. Fun fact, I would've put this at the bottom of the list a few months ago, but after ginding like fk to get all those cards, I ended up getting quite good at it. It's a game of complete skill. You just need good Pokémon to compete, not a freaking sentret LOL. One mon on goal, two on offense, learn the controls and how the balls move, stay calm and recognise when you can take your time. If you HAVE to, you can own goal to refuse anyone else a point, and make sure you switch out your goalies every dozen seconds or so. Once you get good you can pot most of the balls as soon as they spawn. Micromanagement is the key to this minigame. I believe my high score is 11 6: Snow Throw. As easy as this game is (my high score is around 100), it's literally just spamming snowballs at the team on the left for 60 seconds. 5. Block Smash. It's good, if you hit the cracks you can get an insane power boost, and if you can jitter tap like I can, you can easily get over 120, my high score is 142. 4. Disc Catch. Again, if you're playing with a Togepi and a Sentret you're going to have a bad time on this one. Get a strong, fast, and jumpy Pokémon that can just sweep the entire field, keep your other 2 mons in the bottom and left corners, with one main mon to dominate. My high score for this game is 92 3. Hurdle Dash. It's a classic one, the first minigame probably any of us have ever played, it's pretty easy to win, and there's a lot of skill involved (If you want to get sub 80 seconds, don't ever use Dugtrio, because it can't get a boost). Micromanagement and timing is crucial to succeeding in this minigame. My high score (or low score technically) is 78 seconds. 2. Ring Drop. A very fun, very skill based game. It's easy to overshoot and fly off the edge, so this game teaches you to time your swipes accordingly. With strong Pokémon (Steelix, Feraligatr, Mewtwo, Lugia etc) I can easily max out the score at 200 any day, unless I make a mistake myself. You can get into a perfect rhythm of knocking everyone off as soon as they spawn in, and just dominate. 1. Relay run. It's the perfectly designed minigame, the randomness keeps it interesting, as you have to adapt quickly. Sometimes you get better maps and sometimes they are more difficult, but overall you can get into a perfect rhythm and with some effort, reach 20 laps. My high score is 19 laps, because I bumped something at the last second.

i can confidently say no one’s favorite event is goal roll

i love the video😁

HGSS are my favorite games and the Pokéathalon was my absolute FAVORITE part of it. Though I always hated snow throw.

When are you making a short?

Well... Have you played them with a stylus like they were meant to be played? 😂 It seems to me like using a mouse makes the experience a totally different one.

My all time favorite along with voltorb flip. Unfortunate that this type of feature cant ever happen. I feel like the 3d would make it too much of a hassel.

To be completely honest...i love relay run, i hate ball roll and pennant capture, and all the others are kinda meh

The only decathlon is know is a French sports shop. ^_^`

Lamp jump is one of my least favs xp

Bro really hated on my favorite goal roll...😢