2nd Gen Does Pokemon crystal have the most beautiful sprites "ever"?

[Mega_Kris]

With all the other Generations that come and passed, i continue to play Gen 2 the most.

And i look at my pokedex the most in that Gen more than any other series. I think its because when i look at the sprites, they somehow feel alive to me (especially in Gen 2). For me i've never seen such beautiful sprites in an 8-bit game before (let alone an 8-bit handheld). And i think the reason why is because there limitations it had.

Pokemon sprites only had three colors, and one was always black which was often used as the outline. The rest were just two colors, and were made to give the illusion that there was more than two colors when they made this mesh design. But it wasn't just that. Pokemon sprites took advantage of negative space too which adds a whole new level of dimension.

With Gen 3 an onward, they were able to add all the colors necessary. Which isn't bad, but pokemon started to feel the same for me. They didn't have that artistic-design anymore. It's almost as if they were just lazy with Pokemon. Even with Gen 3, we see lack of shadows and lighting. Tries too hard to emulate the anime rather than the official art.

But maybe thats just me.

 

[Raburesu]

I think the official art tried to imitate the anime's style more as time passed, which had an effect on the sprites. Remember Sugimori's original watercolour artwork for the Pokémon in Gen I and II? That was gorgeous.

There is indeed something about the sprites, especially in Crystal. Apparently, some people grew tried of the animations as the series continued, but I really enjoy it!

 

[Hiidoran]

I think I somewhat agree with you, the sprite art in the first couple generations were special. It took a lot of effort to make them look presentable - and a lot of the success behind Pokémon was their ability to do just that so we would want to catch them all.

I was actually just thinking about this the other night. The sprites from the first games felt more real to me, but I just assumed it was the nostalgia talking. Glad to see someone else thinking of a similar idea but with different reasoning.

 

[Mega_Kris]

I agree completely, those watercolors had a unique look. I admit there was a little too shine, but it was slowly getting refined up to Gen 2. i personally think that Gen 2 (especially Crystal) did an amazing job resembling the artwork.

 

[COOLTRAINER♂]

The Gold / Silver sprites are very well drawn, and benefited greatly from the game's long development time to allow for things like the alternate sprite set in each game. They represent the Pokemon accurately and clearly and have a lot of dynamic poses for the battle sequence.

Ruby and Sapphire in contrast, suffer from a lot of poorer-drawn sprites (though some of the worst happen to be Pokemon impossible to obtain at the time) and a general sprite style that, I think, went overboard on trying to fit a shadow and a highlight color into a space barely any bigger than the sprites in GSC - and I think they realized this when looking at how the new sprites made for FRLG compare.

The DS games simplified the style from R/S which combined with the larger sprite size and generally better art quality helps make them look better overall - though, especially in later games, the Pokemon poses become a lot more static (more in BW as they needed less extreme poses to make animations from) and often end up being based off the official stock art (not that this never happened in Gen I or II but it's more noticeable here) leading to weird things like Zoroark totally facing the wrong way in a battle.
I think part of this was the increasing amount of Pokemon to draw and larger sprites needed meant they had less overall time to sketch out poses and convert them to sprites - something that lead to the effort to make a shared library of 3D models that developers worked from in most modern Pokemon games and apps.

 

[curiousnathan]

I'm not an expert in sprites. But I can confidently say that they were beautiful, for their time. I think because they were the first games that introduced colour sprites was what makes them memorable and gives them their beauty. I do think the current sprites (or at least, the latest) i.e HGSS/B2W2 are really good looking as well. I can say I'm not a massive fan of the 3D versions of Pokemon seen in the most recent games. They're pretty cool in concept and design, but I grew up playing games with sprites, so I suppose I'm more inclined to like them more.

 

[Mega_Kris]

I'm not an expert in sprites. But I can confidently say that they were beautiful, for their time. I think because they were the first games that introduced colour sprites was what makes them memorable and gives them their beauty. I do think the current sprites (or at least, the latest) i.e HGSS/B2W2 are really good looking as well. I can say I'm not a massive fan of the 3D versions of Pokemon seen in the most recent games. They're pretty cool in concept and design, but I grew up playing games with sprites, so I suppose I'm more inclined to like them more.

Perhaps. But I don't think that's it's the nostalgia that's doing all the talking. I own Pokemon Platinum and I shared my own copy of Pokemon crystal on a modified gameboy color.

My friends both said Pokemon Crystal has a unique design. And I think it's because despite their limitations, they we're able to overcome.


But maybe it's this generation of finally accepting pixel art as a really growing medium. But idk I still find Crystals sprites "timeless". And I think that is very important.

Pokemon RB and even Y are dated. And Pokemon RBE also have pretty okayish sprites. In fact they lack details. And the D's ones we're slowly getting better. But they just left them standing.

Now we have 3d sprites which are great. But obviously not the nest they can be. Crystals sprites look perfect to me. I don't think that's an exagerration.

 

[GiovanniViridian]

The sprites tried to follow the anime as one poster has posted before and I liked them for looking better compared with the originals.

Crystal was great for having animations and I liked the small addition.