Which area would YOU bring back?

Honestly hate that Paldea doesn't have a battle facility. I don't like playing competitive and I only battle friends, which is already a rare occurrence these days. The battle facility allowed me to actually try out my teams on opponents with the same levels

Unova's Dept Store being in a route instead of a city feels more like a nod to a lot of huge malls in the US being outside of cities.

The Safari Zone was litterally made for regional variants. It would surely be more interesting getting them in a dedicsted area rather than trading with some rando

You would think they could replace the game corner with like, the Pokemon version of Chuck E. Cheese's or something; an arcade with mini games based on skill so it isn't gambling.

I would include the Graveyard Towers as a recurring area no longer included. Lavender Town’s tower, Mt. Pyre, the one in Sinnoh, all those. They kind of gotten phased out or heavily reduced like the two little graveyards you see in Alola.

Oh i think the reason Kalos had no Cycling Road was because Cyllage City was meant to sorta allude to the Tour De France. The entire city has a large circling road meant for bikes, you get your bike in that city, and various sports are supposed to be popular there, like cycling and rock climbing.

The Bike Shop is another one. Last appearance outside of remakes would be in Kalos' Cyllage City. Gen 5, you get gifted a Bike, and Gen 8, you get gifted a Bike as well.

The department store in Platunum lets you buy poffins, so you never need to worry about growing berries to make your own poffins.

As someone who doesn't play competitive, the Battle Frontier gave me something to actually do with any teams I build in the postgame. Without that, there's no real incentive to catch and train new pokemon beyond beating the main story.

I'd bring back the PWT from Black 2 and White 2. I'd have it happen that once you beat the Pokémon League in the new region and are the newest Champion, Professor Tree hands you an invite to Unovas PWT and a plane ticket to Unova. Therefore giving you the ability to tackle every single Gym Leader and Champion in the entire franchise up to that point, plus get to explore good old Unova after and maybe even have a battle against the player characters from both Unova games. Sadly that will never happen. :(

The safari zone isn't dead they just made it a whole game called Pokémon legend Arceus. It's literally the safari zone complete with bait and mud throwing.

If we ever get a region in the Netherlands, they must bring back that bicycle area, there is not a single person here that does not have a bicycle

I'd have added the Game Freak office, were NPCs of the devs are. That was one of the first places i thought about It doesn't offer utility or some fun gameplay but it was iconic. It had appeared in all games until Scarlet Violet

The closest thing we have to a Safari Zone in more recent games is the Friend Safari from XY

Honestly I always hated the Safari Zone, the reliance on luck when you already have limited resources in the form of steps and safari balls made it frustrating if you wanted certain Pokémon

Alola had the Hau'oli City Mall and the Thrifty Megamart. Those were the last department stores.

Depart Stores are fun to be in. Having separate Pokémon Centers and Friendly Shops make you feel like you are traveling the region.

I rather have battle facilities back over the Safari Zone imo.

You did NOT just call the Veilstone Game Corner bad. That place is probably the only GC in series history where actually playing for coins is a viable way to get coins. And Simon Says with efairy is always fun.

Hard disagree with the battle facilities. They're the only place where you can have competitive battles in-game. Now you're locked out unless you pay the online subscription and when SV are no longer current gen it' be gone.

Love the new set! Try putting a light in front of you to one side-about a 45 degree angle. Your face looks a bit dim against the bright background, and it would really only take one light on one side to brighten you up a whole lot.

Since it is much easier to get competitive Pokémon thanks to the mechanics being much more apparent, I really battle frontiers and their brains to come back. I would love to finally beat these things because as a kid, I could not do it because I didn’t know what I was doing.

I mean isn't the wild area technically just one giant Safari Zone? At least that's the copium I'm going with 😂

The purpose of the Safari Zones was to give players access to Pokémon from previous generations. Now that the video game franchise has shifted to an open world concept with a larger Pokédex and DLC, the Safari zone has become an outdated concept.

1. Safari Zone. It just makes sense for there to actually be rare Pokémon in the sense that their numbers are dwindling, and having a nature preserve dedicated to keeping their numbers healthy while limiting captures for visiting trainers. 2. Department Store. Maybe it's to make getting certain items feel more rewarding to find due to scarcity, but that same concept could've been incorporated to the Department Store. For example, maybe having certain stones be available on certain days and have someone explain, "Oh! Importing this specific stone is a nightmare, so we only have them in stock on this specific day." It gives a logical reason, and also adds lore to the area. 3. Battle Facilities. Not everyone will agree and that's okay, since everyone replays for different reasons. I personally think there's no replayability to newer Pokemon games due to the loss of battle facilities, ORAS felt underwhelming as a result of the missing Battle Frontier as all the post-game content went to the Delta Episode. Maybe it's because the battling is all done online now, and there's tournaments with that in mind, but it doesn't mean the Battle Facilities should be axed in favor of online battles. 4. Game Corner. If Voltorb Flip was a kid-friendly way to avoid implying gambling, then more mini-games of that nature can be implemented. Heck, the Pokeathlon in HGSS could've even treated as the spiritual successor to the Game Corner and hand out prizes similar to the Game Corner. 5. Cycling Road. It isn't the craziest feature to add or remove, but it does add variety to the routes so that they're not all just connecting paths between cities and towns + patch of grass. I think Gen 3 did it best by having the option to either go through the grass or take the cycling path, one not compromising the other ("Perfectly balanced, as all things should be").

I want them to bring back Voltorb Flip so badly. Like Picross, it was a fun puzzle game. I wish they brought it back for ORAS's game corner instead of completely scrapping it.

I'd bring back the Battle Facilities, If done right they are a good test of one's team before goin into online battles. Like the Battle Tree in the original Sun and Moon was genuinely difficult , so much so they had to go and nerf it in the Ultra games.

Overworld Ability effects make the Safari Zone sort of an improvement.

if there's a thing that was staple in the series until gen7, it was the bicycle/surfing themes every generation have it's iconic riding/surfing theme, but in gen8 they killed this trend i know that gen9 has the riding variantions of the towns/areas but isn't the same thing as before

Y’all remember route gates? I know they weren’t really major (even being absent for the most of Hoenn), but they were a staple for the DS era and Kanto. I understand they existed for the sake of combatting technological limitations, but I still miss them for how iconic they were, even if useless for the most part.

And Fun fact: I always thought Carnivine was a steel type because of its cry. It liturally sounds like it should be a steel type

Bring back gen 3 version contests, I miss those alot. Plus it saves me from having to do a trade to get a milotic.

Ever since Legends came out I felt that its style of gameplay would work well for a revival of the Safari Zone in the main games no Pokemon, bait, mud, and Pokeballs it seemed like a good way to integrate the Legend style gameplay into the main games before we knew it would become it's own series.

Kinda off topic, but I was in a international food store today and bought Psyduck Juice.

I will never understand why Game Freak didn't add a battle facility into Scarlet and Violet. Maybe they thought that the battle-focused trainers of the Blueberry Academy would fill in the void but it's not the same.

The Safari Zone's original purpose was to allow trainers to catch Pokémon not native to that region so, now that regional forms are a thing, I think it would be the perfect location to house those.

The fact that SV lack any sort of battle facility is absolutely terrible. I love playing competitive formats, but playing versus other players, especially when just testing, makes me incredibly anxious. Gen 10 better bring Battle Tower back. Also Safari Zones are ass. Struggling to find a low encounter rate mon, only to have it come down to luck whether you actually get to catch it or not is awful game design.

out of all the ones you mentioned, i personally bring back both the battle frontier and the safari zone. the Safari Zone made it easier to capture Rare and Powerful Pokémon and depending on where it's location and the Players Progression and the difficulty of the game, the Safari Zone can really help each player make there Ideal team to take on upcoming challenges. out of all the Battle areas Game Freak and The Pokemon Company made, the Battle Frontier in the Hoenn and Sinnoh Region were the most effort and though out of all them and added a lot of unique challenges and really helped pushed the player in the Post Game in terms of Skill, Strategy, Team Composition and Strength. this is why i want both the Safari Zone and Battle Frontier to come back

With how easy it is to get into competitive now, I feel like a dynamic battle facility is the next step. Imagine a battle tower, but you can download top ranked teams from the competitive side of the game, teams that won events, and battle them as NPC’s. or better yet, the Pokemon company could hold contests to submit teams to be pushed out over the download for each month, so you aren’t just battling premade teams, you’re battling teams other people made. And then track those wins and losses for each team on some kind of leaderboard online. There’s so many opportunities that they just haven’t tapped into yet.

I would bring back Ash-Greninja ☝🏽🤓

I love how JPR continues to look like a young old man.

IMO, Unova should've had a Safari Zone, considering almost all of Unova is heavily populated with towns and cities akin to America, which Unova is based on. I know that GameFreak made a nature preserve in this region where you can catch that Shiny Haxorus, but it just doesn't feel the same. You'd think that with so many busy cities, there'd be a zoo, or an open National Park-like area of some kind, where wild Pokémon roam free and you can catch them in exchange for 50 PokéDollars or something. At least Kalos has the Friend Safari. Sure, that one's in the post-game, but the gimmick of that one feels very special, at least to me. Exchanging data with friends playing the same games as you and unlocking each other's Friend Safari was always exciting, and the music of this place hits so hard IMO! It's like you're on an actual safari with a Jeep and binoculars and stuff! Sure, it's very different from the Kanto, Hoenn and Sinnoh Safari Zone areas, but the new gimmick is very inventive for the time X&Y released, and I'd argue it still is!

I liked the galar Battle Tower because the NPCs were just good enough to check my stupid ideas before I took them online.

Doesn't JPR look like the human version of Mark Zuckerberg? Also, love your vids dude!!

Kalos had the Friend Safari. That was the actual demise of the Safari Zones.

Voltorb Flip became an obsession as a child. I can't tell you how many times I would boot up an old file on HeartGold, just to see what kind of team I had going, only to find that my progress stopped at 2-3 gym badges, because that was when I made it far enough into the game to play Voltorb Flip, and then my 10 year old trainer could not be pried away from the fun counting game.

I would bring back a department store and make it actually like a store: 1. Available items change, they get sold out and freshly brought. 2. Every TM is available, not just a couple a$s ones. Useful TMs are considered rare and sell for higher price. MUCH higher price! 3. It sells mostly clothes, just like normal shopping malls do. 4. Prices might be higher, but you can buy the vast majority of all items. 5. There's gonna be a shop with weird souveniers where you can buy stuff we usually sell: star dust, nugget, big mushroom, rare bone, pearl string, etc. Some fat guy would complain that a certain item isn't in stock and offer you greater deal for it, but woul only buy 1 of that item, cos even that was way too expensive for him. 6. There's gonna be some non shopping related facility like a movie theater or some minigame thing, cos real life shopping malls have them.

The recurring areas aren't all dead. You just tend to take them for granted if they still exist. Pokemon League. Daycare Center. Cemetery. Villain team hideout. Victory Road. If you want to get broad, you could cluster weird side events like Pokemon Contests, Pokestar Studios, which the game corners could qualify as.

The shopping district in Mesagoza is pretty much like a department store. You’ve got a variety of shops clustered close together, each providing different goods or services.

It's not really a replacement, but I think the whole concept of the tour de france cycling was limited to just the layout of Cyllage City in X&Y. The whole city is basically just one giant race course with an established method to travel (I'd say route, but routes exist in Kalos so not exactly the same lol). It can be done with roller skates or by cycling

There's a reference to the tour the France in XY The second gym the rock type they have NPC and lino himself talking about how we just missed the race and that tall road climbing up the side of the mountain connecting the city to the gym and further up to the cave that leads you to the battle castle where you rank in nobility and the Pokémon daycare That road is directly inspired by a famous mountain very important in the tour de France race

It is interesting how department stores were fazed out around the same time the Pokemon Centre and PokeMart could combine into one building instead of two Game Corner (replacing gambling with mini games) and battle facility would give the games more gameplay after you finish the main game and post game, instead of having the options be boiled down to “you can play online battles or you can shiny hunt”

Battle facilities are without a doubt the area I would bring back, to the point that I'm not sure I'll even bother getting the next mainline game if they refuse to bring them back. Sure, it can be fun to play online, but unless it's against my friends I don't really get much out of it. Playing against an various NPCs with competitive teams is like the most fun part of the postgames for me, especially now that it's become easier than ever to build a super strong team even without breeding.

Honestly, the Department store is the one thing I was missing in Scarlet/Violet. Even if it was just a shop that contains all other types of shops in one and not offering anything unique would be an upgrade over having to hunt through a billion different shops in different corners of a city just to get one round of shopping done.

Even though the prolonged tutorial for using it is a little annoying, I still think that HGSS's safari zone is the best iteration of the idea. It (mostly) solved the primary problem of Johto mons not being available in Johto proper, and you can't beat just how customizable it becomes, especially in the post game. No other safari zone offers as many different species as HGSS's. Also from a thematic perspective, the fact that you have so much control over it makes it feel special and personal (as opposed to the Great Marsh). It's probably the "recurring" thing in these games I miss the most (that and the PWT, but that specific battle facility was not recurring).

For the game corner they can just turn it into an arcade with a variety of mini games Meanwhile for the safari zone there can be different Pokémon everyday plus they can make it so we can transfer Pokémon go Pokémon into the game just like pal park And should make a battle frontier area in the post game so it can occupy players until they release new DLC areas

Bug Catchers also disappeared after regions stopped being based on Japan. It makes sense since bug catching isn't a common children's hobby in the rest of the world, but it would have been a cool call-back to bring them back in The Teal Mask.

I love how the Crystal Game Corner gives you the option of getting a Lv40 Larvitar, so you can literally steamroll Surge with a Pupitar when you first get to Kanto.

i kinda disagree with you on the "the last time a feature is included is when its being killed off/becoming an afterthought" point, particularly about the great marsh because i feel like its integrated with pastoria city well - on the same level as the kanto safari zone in fuschia city. it matches the surrounding routes in terms of aesthetics, its integrated more into the story (the team galactic grunt bit is more memorable than the gold teeth bit imo), and the npcs and town decor match well too

I think it would be interesting to see Safari Zone return again as a customizable area… but with further customization to allow a wider range of Pokémon to visit. Like… you could pick 4-5 different areas to have different terrains but also add an elemental item of some sort to a pedestal in each to change the secondary typing that is attracted to that spot. For example, if you have a pond area (water type), attracting Goldeen, Basculin and/or Krabby maybe, you could add a Grass element item to the pedestal in that area to attract Lotad and Ogerpon as well?

My understanding is the Game Corner was killed because of a European rating system called PEGI. Essentially, any video game there with "gambling references" is automatically given a higher age rating. So instead of having to bump it up for one market, they nixed it entirely.

Loving the new set up dude :)

There was no point in the safari zone in Pokémon let’s go. Only because it was smarter to have the rare Pokémon implemented in other areas.

3:05 RoyalPear: "And i took that personally"

I loved the Battle Tree in SM - seeing characters like Red and Blue reappear but older was awesome and kept me playing

Was the “weapons away” bit for Safari Zone an intentional shout out to the banned episode of the anime?

Despite addressing the Pokémon availability issue, HGSS’s Safari Zone still had its oddities. Namely Houndour can be found there… once you’ve gotten to the post game. And while it is cool to be able to find Misdreavus and Murkrow there, good luck using them as they are until Kanto because they thought it was a good idea to lock all the new stones and other evolution items for the Sinnoh cross-gens behind the post game as well (meaning only the “level up while knowing move” cross-gen evos can be used in the main story). The only no strings attached normally post game Johto Pokémon you can find there is Larvitar, though it is very underleveled.

To be fair, getting rid of the Safari Zone was probably one of the best things ever happened to Pokémon.

Honestly, out of all of these the only one that I've missed is the Battle Facility in Paldea, which hopefully will just be a one-off and will return in whatever the next generation may be. The Safari Zones and Game Corners were all just an RNG slog with very little strategy involved, the Cycling Routes were just a way to artificially create a roadblock until you unlock the Bicycle, and the Department Stores lost their use when GF made the rarer items/TMs available in other ways.

I'd love if the Safari Zone was brought back. It's just fun world building. This entire society revolves around Pokémon, so setting up a game where you try to catch as many rare ones in a short time makes perfect sense. Plus, the anime said that it was actually a way of protecting the Pokémon and their habitats, to prevent people from over catching in this area. It had a lot of thought put into it. Plus it made these Pokémon more memorable. Yeah, catching a Legendary can be hard, even if you've got a ton of Pokéballs and status conditions, but Chansey is a whole 'nother beast. Poison or Sleep can't help you here. It'll run from you, and you can't whittle it down like a Roaming Legendary. You just have to get...very...Lucky.

I actually miss the Safari zone so much. In my fan-made region that I'm still working on based on the state of Texas I actually put a safari zone in their based on Big Bend National Park. Because I thought that was the perfect place to put a safari zone.

I've always said that while BW & BW2 were great games, but they were the start of Pokémon games removing features, and this video basically explains it perfectly. Things started to get removed, but it wasn't horrible, but each generation slowly removed more and now the newer regions are getting blander.

As someone who lives close by the Pallisades Mall that the route 9 mall is referencing... I didn't know that!

Removing all of these features really contributes to the empty feeling you get playing the most recent games. Even when the iteration of the feature isn't great, it still gives substance to the towns and routes they're on.

I always liked the Department stores as I could just go there and buy most versions of the Pokeball or multiple good TMs. The one in Gold/Silver was great as they sold the elemental punches. Later games would make it so that they would sell the Dusk, Net, and Repeat ball at one store, then sell a different set of 3 more in various other cities, but good luck remembering which ones.

I don't miss the Safari Zone. The catching mechanics were tedious.

Hoen Department Store! Its probably my favorite building, always love to buy the items for secret bases. You could even play the lottery game, it was fun!

Dude I love that North Wilkesboro Wall Art for the studio! Looks sick. Also what car is the NAPA Fender from? (I'm also a pokemon & nascar fan lol)

I feel like the Wild Area in Galar is the spiritual successor to the Safari Zone. Then they just made the entire game like that.

Sadly not a recurring area, but the PWT in B2W2 was nicely done and quite challenging, but now there would so many gym leaders, elite four members, and champions to include that I doubt they'd do it again

It's not a recurring area, but can we PLEASE get another National Park like Johto had? I loved the bug catching contest, searching for the best Pokémon you could find within 20 minutes, and being limited to 20 Park balls. And unlike the Safari Zone, you got to bring 1 of your own Pokémon along! I love how the Safari Zone works, but this felt so special, I'm picking one of my partners that I trust to handle this. They've gotta be able to handle multiple battles without switching to another party member, and it's good if they can inflict a status condition to help you catch that rare bug. I'd love to see contests like this brought back in any form. Catch the best Flying type, Water type, Fire Type, go crazy! It was something I always looked forward to.

I would bring back the department store. It was a fun place to explore and is a perfect place to place unusual stuff to buy. It would be cool if there was one floor that had rotating vendors.

Victory Road is definitely another huge one that’s been completely absent for a few generations now.

The friend list feels kind of underutilized in Switch Pokemon games, I think getting the Friend Safari back would be really cool

Have you noticed only the Game Corner has an explanation for its disappearance? The rest just randomly dipped

It's not really a recurring area but I would want to see the underground from Sinnoh implemented in other regions. Before the Gen 9 open world it was a cool minigame for getting unlimited rare items like stones, treasure, shards, fossils, etc.

The Battle Tree was soooo cool. Bringing back classic trainers like Wally, Cynthia, Colress, and others. With the two atop it all being the OGs, Red and Blue. I still thinking giving us grown up versions of the original player character and his rival is one of the coolest things Pokémon has done. With characters like Ash, and the games generally being separate from one another, it can be hard to have a sense of time or progression in the Pokémon world. Gold and Silver take place 3 years after Red and Blue, and Black and White 2 take place two years after Black and White, but those are more self contained. Where is Hoenn in that timeline? Or Kalos? But here we see that Sun and Moon definitively take place 10-15 years after Red and Blue. And Anabel is older too, making it seem like Emerald was taking place around the same time as Kanto, or possibly Johto. Character ages are still a bit nebulous, but any sense that the the Pokémon world isn't frozen in place with Ash makes me happy.

I feel like you forgot a lot of recurring locations. We have our haunted towers (lavender town tower, mt pyre, lost tower, celestial tower) and our recurring GameFreak HQs across games. Can also give points to recurring facilities (contest halls, pokecenters/marts/leagues) and of course our recurring victory roads. There's recurring professor labs, particularily the labs responsible for the reigon's PC. There's recurring museums for a good while. I think the GTS was recurring for a bit. There's plenty of stuff if you think on it.

department stores got replaced by malls, check mauville in oras, that mall in ultra sun/moon on 1st island (cant remember its name). Gen 8 re-introduced veilstone department store and gen 9 has............I hate the inefficient use of having 1 store for x item, another store for y item etc.....

Hot take but I actually love the design of Unova's department store. The stairway design and having it all be in one room makes it much more quick and fun and less tedious to travers than having to wait through all the stairway and lift animations. Just my two cents.

Not me screaming when Kicketune popped up with a gun. 😂😂😂

the funny thing was the Battle Facility thing's death was actually due to players themselves

"It goes back to just slot machines!" Yeah... that's what I want from the game corner. Hate voltorb flip and the wheel...

I'm STILL mad they didn't include the Battle Frontier in OR AS and just teased us.

You actually forgot victory road and traditional rock tunnels. Both were half assed in Gen 8 and basically removed in Gen9.

I prefer battle facilities over safari zones. Sure, catching pokemon from other regions in a special pokeball is fine but once you catch them there's literally nothing to do there. At least battle facilities can be challenged multiple times, adding a bit of replay value to the game. And some of them are pretty cool. I particularly enjoyed the black tower in gen 5 since it kinda has a puzzle aspect to it in order to get to the trainers. And the one with Galar has pretty challenging npcs in my opinion and a really cool rematch with Leon as the final boss (and in a completely different outfit) since he's now the one running Galar's battle tower (on top of becoming the new chairman of the pokemon league). It's pretty cool to me that they used a battle facility to expand on the lore of the champion and that way explain what he decided to do after the player became the champion. Something that rarely gets explained in the games. Restricted sparring was also pretty fun since it challenges you to prove your mastery over a specific pokemon type. And works well with the Galar battle tower since the rewards of restricted sparring help you get BP for cool items in the store of the Galar battle tower. I also miss department stores but also just having buildings with multiple floors to explore having npcs to battle or that give you items are something that I miss as well.

Really wish Hybrid had content this good 😁

I mean....isn't the wild area basically a safari zone that's just less regulated...? 🤔

It is a little weird that there's no cycling road in Kalos, but there IS a whole town based around biking there so maybe close enough?