Line #21 YMMV/PokemonStadium


1	* AccidentalInnuendo:
2	** One of the Team Rocket members in ''Stadium 2'' has a Wobbuffet nicknamed... Wobbu'''fap'''. It's ''even worse'' considering what Wobbuffet looks like.
3	** A Swimmer named Cora in Little Cup Round 1 has a Cleffa named Cleffaps. Remember that it's a [[{{Squick}} baby Pokémon]].
4	** The animation of [[https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/c1d9k3/another_example_of_a_well_animated_attack_from/ Golem using Mud-Slap]] consists of it rolling on its back and appearing to spray mud from between its legs, infamously looking like it's [[DungFu crapping on its opponent]].
5	* AntiClimaxBoss:
6	** Mewtwo in ''Pokémon Stadium'' on both rounds, with only one of him against your six (and said six can even include one of him). If you have a decent strategy, the battle becomes pitifully easy compared to the cheaters you had to beat to reach him. While using rentals will make things harder, you still have to actively try to lose.
7	** The Cooltrainers in Johto Gym Leader Castle are the last cronies you face, and they are a complete joke in both Rounds 1 and 2, especially the Male Cooltrainer. The Female Cooltrainer really wants to utilize Sleep moves as her main strategy, except it's crippled hard by 2 main things: Sleep clause, and 1-3 turn wakeups, which even makes her Prime Cup battles rather underwhelming in comparison with the other fights. The Male Cooltrainer literally uses first stage starter Pokémon right before Clair, while in Round 2, he uses ''second stage'' starter Pokémon, though they all do have some Counter moves, without much of the stats. What makes this egregious is that they are intended to be the {{Elite Mook}}s of both the handhelds and especially ''Pokémon Stadium 1'', and the fact that the commentary the announcer gives to the Male Cooltrainer: "He is sure to be a tough opponent!", especially since Pryce's Gym trainers, Team Rocket, and even Chuck's OHKO-abusing underlings are more dangerous, even in Round 2.
8	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[AwesomeMusic/{{Pokemon}} Shares a page with the rest of the series.]] The game gives really cool renditions and variation of the iconic themes. Notably two intense-sounding remixes of the gen 1 trainer battle theme, an epic fast-paced and melodic FinalBoss theme for Mewtwo, and the closest thing to an instrumental remake of the Champion/Rival theme for the final trainer of Prime Cup Master Ball.
9	* BreatherBoss: In Stadium 1's Poké Cup, there's the Jugglers and Tamers in all ranks in both Rounds. The Juggler may use some scary Pokémon but for most of his mons their only attacking move is the completely random Metronome, which most of the time is going to get him something subpar or nigh-useless, and if his Pokémon have anything else it'll just be the easy-to-play around Counter (just don't attack him with Normal and Fighting moves), the [[UselessUsefulSpell horribly unreliable]] FixedDamageAttack Psywave, and the impractical Dream Eater that can't work if your Pokémon isn't asleep. Then the Tamer's gimmick is that all his Pokémon will hyperfixate on one strategy shared between them all and none of them will even have full movesets, and this strategy is often something easily countered (such as his whole team relying on trapping moves when simple switching will make them deal minimal damage until they miss) or outright impractical (such as his whole team relying on weak flinching moves when they'll only flinch 20-30% of the time). This is especially noticeable with the Tamers in Round 2 when they're the semi-final opponent. These two trainers should pretty much always be a source of free continues for the players, which is especially appreciated with the Tamers in Round 2 as their semi-final placement usually ensures the player will go into the final battle against the Psychic with at least one continue.
10	* CommonKnowledge: Whenever discussion about the ''Stadium'' games comes up, one can expect much of it to center around how much these games supposedly cheat and how the RNG gets rigged against the player. Some opponents do cheat, as in having some Pokémon with certain moves or move combinations that are impossible for the Pokémon to legitimately learn, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as the general fandom would have one believe, and there's nothing that gives the AI the ability to read the players moves. As for the RNG being in the AI's favor, there's nothing in the game's coding that alters the RNG for the player nor the AI, Pokémon at its core has simply always been a notoriously random game where you will inevitably run into bad luck at times, as any competitive player will attest to.
11	* ContestedSequel: ''Battle Revolution''. On one hand it has the much superior Gen 4 battle mechanics (which is where the Pokémon battling mechanics GrewTheBeard and became modern), so the actual battling itself is a lot better and you and your opponents got way more that you can do in terms of strategy, and more unique battle rules were introduced to play under, while you also got more rewards like valuable items and [=TMs=] to transfer to your DPP/HGSS files. Plus it's a lot easier to actually use your own Pokémon, as besides not requiring a Transfer Pak, the game will auto-level all your Pokémon over level 50 down to 50 for all its Colosseums besides the Little Battle in Sunny Park, so you don't need to have your Pokémon at very specific levels to use them nor have to level them up to level 100 like the Prime Cup required in the two Stadium games. However it's missing '''''a lot''''' of the content the original Stadiums had, such as no Gym Leader Castle nor any of the characters from the actual games, no Rental Pokémon system, no Laboratory, no Academy to get in-depth information about each Pokémon's capabilities and the battle mechanics, and most bemoaned of all, no minigames. Also while the game can still have some difficult battles, it's significantly easier, as the AI is a lot worse and will never switch their Pokémon out at all, while a big appeal of the original two Stadiums is their difficulty and having actually competent AI in a Pokémon game. Plus the inability to play on easier ranks you already beaten in Colosseums as covered in the ScrappyMechanic section is an asinine restriction that severely limits how you can play as you progress through the game. It's still an enjoyable game and you'll have more fun here than you will in the handheld games' Battle Tower, but it's definitely a step down as an overall package than the original two Stadiums.
12	* EvenBetterSequel: Stadium 2 brushed up on the presentation and rough edges, has quite a bit more content, features a lot more interesting and varied battles, and of course being Gen 2 the battling itself is considerably more balanced and there's a lot more strategy to utilize. However this is if you have your own Gen 2 Pokémon game and built up your own competent teams to use, without such [=PS2=] can be near-unplayable at times with its severely gimped Rental Pokémon without relying on very specific strategies, whereas the first Pokémon Stadium was still a very beatable and enjoyable game with its halfway-competent Rentals that had a decent variety of viable picks.
13	* GameBreaker:
14	** ''Pokémon Stadium 1'' Substitute Mewtwo is what you get when Substitute has been upgraded to block status-changing moves (which didn't happen in the original handheld titles), OHKO moves, Explosion, sometimes Wrap moves, and stat reduction moves. It does reduce HP, but Mewtwo has Recover, making it near untouchable. Add in Amnesia (which raises its Special Attack and Special Defense) and Psychic (which no Pokémon is immune to, and even when resisted, 30% Special drops), and nothing in the game bar a lucky speed tie (another Mewtwo or a Jolteon with Thunder Wave), or a Thunder Wave Electrode can even inconvenience this monster. It is the single most broken moveset in ''Pokémon'' history.
15	** In Stadium 1's Pika Cup, Dragon Rage is broken. Since the Pokémon in this Cup are at level 15-20, everything but Chansey or a higher-levelled Lapras and Wigglytuff will get 2HKO'd by a move that always deals 40 damage no matter what, and with some weaker Pokémon they might even get OHKO'd by it. The move essentially has no counterplay and nothing but Chansey with Soft-boiled can switch in to a Dragon Rage user, while it'll just let Pokémon straight up ignore type disadvantages. Plus you get Dragon Rage as a TM in Gen 1, so you don't even need to exploit Gen 2 tradebacks to get a Dragon Rage user at such low levels.
16	*** In Stadium 1's Petit Cup even though the levels are substantially higher at 25-30, with it only being restricted to first stage Pokémon and weak single-stage Pokémon, there are very few Pokémon that can have more HP than 80, meaning Dragon Rage is busted in this Cup too as a perfect coverage move that will guarantee 2HKO nearly every mon.
17	** The Pika Cup can additionally be absolutely snapped in half by using a GameBreaker Gen 1 Pokémon like Alakazam or Tauros as your sole level 20 mon; at such low levels every additional level provides a significant advantage (a Mon at level 20 is about 30ish% stronger than it is at level 15), so combine that amplification of power with the broken mons who lack real counters and you could feasibly solo the entire Cup with them as the vast majority of opposing Pokémon you fight can't even survive a turn with them. To take it even farther you can exploit tradebacks from the Gen 2 games to get level up moves at legal levels for the Pika Cup that in Gen 1 a Pokémon couldn't learn in time (such as Recover for Starmie) and to get broken Pokémon who you normally wouldn't be able to get at legal levels in Gen 1 for the Pika Cup (such as Snorlax). Abusing this strat will be an easy way to get terrible or outright useless Pokémon like the unevolved bugs and Magikarp into the Hall Of Fame, as you can fill your team up with mons you'll never use when you can rely on one Pokémon to handle about everything and so won't actually need a real full team.
18	** In Stadium 1's Petit Cup, Abra is essentially a mini-Alakazam in a meta where all the broken Normal type Pokémon are gone, there are no other strong Psychic types, Zapdos and Jolteon don't exist, and the strong Water types aren't around either, making it a terrifying force with no real competition. To explain, Abra is one of the only two Psychic types legal here (the other being Exeggcute who has much less impressive relative stats than its GameBreaker evolution Exeggutor has), while Abra possesses a base Special stat higher than most fully-evolved Pokémon at 105, which is completely ludicrous compared to what the other first stage and weak single-stage Pokémon legal in the Cup have and nothing but the type-disadvantaged Gastly of the legal mons have a base Special that comes remotely close. Then it's also tied with Meowth and Pikachu for being the second fastest Pokémon in the Cup, with only the weak Voltorb outspeeding it. Its very powerful STAB Psychic is resisted by nothing in the Cup but itself and Exeggcute, and a strong Abra will OHKO and 2HKO everything but itself with Psychic. Then if you abuse tradebacks from the Gen 2 games, you can get it the elemental punches too to hit many mons super effectively and OHKO them when Psychic comes up short of doing so. And being Stadium you can give it Substitute too to protect it from all status moves against Pokémon that might survive a hit like Exeggcute. The only things that can really stop Abra is a Voltorb out-speeding and paralyzing it with Thunder Wave or sacrificing itself with Explosion, or a Meowth with a better Speed DV and stat experience (or winning the speed tie if they're both maxed out) hitting it with its powerful critical STAB Slash to exploit Abra's near non-existent physical durability, but then an Abra user can easily cover that and pack a Geodude that Voltorb can't touch or a Gastly that is immune to Explosion and can't be touched by Meowth. The developers seemingly recognized this though and the Rental Abra has an awful moveset with no Special moves (having the terrible FixedDamageAttack Psywave and the completely random Metronome), so if you want to break Petit Cup with Abra you'll have to train up your own.
19	** In Battle Revolution's Sunny Park Colosseum where the Little Battle is ran, it allows only Pokémon that can evolve and are at their lowest evolution stage, but it has no banlist beyond that. If you want to make it a complete cakewalk, you can use Pokémon that were given evolutions in later Gens but were originally made as decently strong single-stage Pokémon, so Pokémon like Scyther, Sneasel, Misdreavus, and Tangela are fully legal to use here when with their stats they're essentially ubers compared to the vast majority of first stage unevolved Pokémon. It also makes no restriction for the Berry Juice item, which when Pokémon are at level 5, the 20 HP it heals is a full life recovery the instant any Pokémon's health drops below half.
20	*** Stadium 2's Little Cup similarly has no banlist beyond the requirement that a Pokémon has to be unevolved and have an evolution to be legal. While this wasn't such a major issue here as this was before Gen 4 introduced a lot of evolutions for previously single-stage Pokémon, Scyther and Chansey (as this was before Gen 4 introduced Happiny as a pre-evolution) still fulfilled the criteria and are legal to be used, despite their stats being way beyond the other legal Pokémon, making the former a near-unstoppable sweeper even with its lack of good STAB moves and the latter is near-unkillable by anything but Scyther.
21	** ''Battle Revolution''[='=]s Sunset Colosseum runs on a very annoying Select Battle where you and your opponent pick from the same pool of Lv 30 Pokémon. Some of those pools include some ''very'' broken Pokémon.
22	*** Your first time through, each of your opponents chooses one of six pre-determined Pokémon, which you are also allowed to pick out. Girl in Love Grace has a Dragonair and a Gabite, both of which have Dragon Rage, and ''nothing''[[labelnote:*]] that can appear at the Colosseum[[/labelnote]] has more than a hundred HP at level 30. So long as she does not pick both of them and have them both out at the same time, good''bye'', Little Girl.
23	*** Repeat efforts do not include the fixed half of the pool, but they do include a wider variety of Pokémon to make up for it. One of these Pokémon is a [[PowerCopying Smeargle]] with the following moves: Spore[[labelnote:]]100% guaranteed to inflict sleep[[/labelnote]], Lock-On[[labelnote:]]guarantees that your next attack will connect[[/labelnote]], and ''Sheer Cold''[[labelnote:**]]the only OneHitKO move in Generation IV that can hit any Pokémon regardless of type[[/labelnote]]. Since Double Battles are only enforced for your ''first'' time through the Colosseum, having this Smeargle show up in your selection for Single Battles basically hands you the win.
24	* GoddamnedBoss: Any trainer whose strategy relies on boosting evasion with Double Team and Minimize, especially when combined with Toxic to slowly drain your mon's health and durability-boosting moves like Reflect and Light Screen. Usually their Pokémon aren't very threatening and often you can just beat them down taking little to no damage before they get enough evasion boosts in, but have some bad luck early on and they can become long drawn out and boring battles that hinge on you [[LuckBasedMission getting lucky with RNG rolls enough times to win before they whittle you down or you run out of power points]]. And the intended counterplay to these moves is using the moves designed to [[AlwaysAccurateAttack never miss]] or the evasion-nullifying moves, which for the former all but Aura Sphere have no more than a mediocre 60 base power, and for the latter they're a [[UselessUsefulSpell waste of a moveslot]] 99% of the time, so you're just hurting yourself for the rest of the battles if you try to have counterplay to this strat on your team. It's at its absolute worst in Stadium 1, where the only evasion-nullifying move was Haze, which was limited in distribution to only Vaporeon and crappy Poison types, and the only never-miss move was the 60 power Normal-type Swift, so counterplay that isn't praying to the RNG is essentially nonexistent. To make matters worse, ''every Pokémon'' that can learn [=TMs=] can be taught Double Team, so these evasion trainers can try this strat with any Pokémon, including the very bulky ones and those with recovery moves to make things even more drawn out, and this means even if you do include a Pokémon with anti-evasion moves on your team there's no guarantee it won't be at a type disadvantage that makes it incapable of beating the evasion user anyway.
25	* HilariousInHindsight: [[HilariousInHindsight/{{Pokemon}} Check the main page]].
26	* ItsShortSoItSucks: A common complaint about ''Battle Revolution'' is that beyond its Battle Frontier-like area, there is pretty much nothing else to do the way there is in the ''Stadium'' and ''Colosseum'' games.
27	* JustHereForGodzilla: The single most remembered moment in ''Battle Revolution'' is the final Mysterial fight with a full team of OlympusMons led by the Gen 4's notorious HighTierScrappy Kyogre, one that exploits the highly used competitive strategy to almost its full potential.
28	* LowTierLetdown: It can't be stated enough how awful the Rental Pokémon in ''Stadium 2'' are. The first Stadium's Rentals still left a lot to be desired to encourage using your own Pokémon from the mainline games, but remained usable enough to enjoy the game with them and have fun playing PVP with friends using the Rentals. By contrast, the sequel's rentals have very low stats for their species and level, and most of the fully-evolved Pokémon know worthless attacks — standouts include the Feraligatr with Water Gun as its STAB move, the Blissey with no recovery moves, and the Zapdos whose only attacks are Thunder and ''Rock Smash''. Only a few, like Fearow, managed to squeak by with passable stats and movesets — most of the Pokémon with good moves are unevolved, making them even more useless than the evolved ones. This aspect of the first Stadium didn't need to be gutted to get people to play with their own Pokémon.
29	* MemeticMutation: Honchkrow's fainting animation in ''Battle Revolution,'' where it falls over and tips its hat to the opponent before fainting, has seen a slight surge in popularity due to how "classy" it is, as well as inviting "m'lady" jokes[[note]] since fedora-tipping is commonly associated with neckbeards nowadays [[/note]] and [[WesternAnimation/{{Rango}} Rattlesnake Jake]] references.
30	* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound:
31	** Thunderbolt creates some bass-tastic booms when used, especially in ''Stadium 2''. The gen 2 games changed Thunderbolt to sound like the weak Thundershock, but ''Stadium 2'' lets the move sound powerful again.
32	** If your active Pokémon's going on a rampage with Thrash or Petal Dance, hearing the announcer say "There's nothing you can do now!" to the opponent is satisfying.
33	* NarmCharm:
34	** The announcer is either the shining example of this, or he's TheScrappy (it helps that it's the same voice as the narrator from ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries''). In ''Battle Revolution'', poisoning will cause him to say "___ is slowly losing its health!" Mind that he says the last three words in a very dramatic way, as if he's about to break into tears.
35	** The Spanish announcer (actually two different voices) in the ''Stadium'' games is even worse/better. The Spanish translations use the English Pokémon names, and he manages to mispronounce every single one of them. It's more SoBadItsGood than anything. ''Battle Revolution'' gets a new announcer who is much better at pronunciation.
36	** In the ''Stadium'' games, Nidoking acts like a LargeHam. When it enters battle, it roars and laughs to the sky. When it gets knocked out, it rolls in a very exaggerated manner to the center of the stage, then dramatically puts its hand on its chest and gives an expression as if to say, "And....scene."
37	** Vileplume has a knock out animation similar to Jynx, in that it mysteriously disappears underneath its flower. However, it becomes pretty funny once Vileplume's petals start thumping against the floor, almost as if it's "tapping out".
38	** Most of the animations in general are really silly, exaggerated, or over-dramatic, but that is why so many players liked them. This is most prevalent with the Gen 1 Pokémon; as the series went on, the animations were generally dialed back with the newer Pokémon, though not to the degree that the mainline 3D games did.
39	* NintendoHard: For both ''Stadium'' and ''Stadium 2'', which are considered to be the hardest standalone Pokémon games in the series, with their Round 2 modes rivaling/surpassing the various battle facilities in the mainline games. Alongside the aforementioned ArtificialBrilliance, you can’t use healing items like in the original games, you can't play on the Shift/Switch battle mode like you can in the mainline games (meaning you're not given the option to switch out your Pokémon when you KO the opponent's, so players have to actually think about safe switch-ins), many enemies utilize various advanced strategies and type coverage, and the opposing AI here will actually utilize Stat [=EXPs=]/[=EVs=] to make their Pokémon stronger. Additionally, as you progress in the game, opposing trainers won’t just [[PoorPredictableRock use a complete team of their specialty type,]] instead mixing in Pokémon of various other types to cover their weaknesses, preventing you from just using a Pokémon with a type advantage to mindlessly sweep their team. Then there's the fact you can bring six Pokémon, but you can only use three in each battle for a 3 vs 3 (while the opponent selects three of their own), which makes battles a lot faster but introduces another element of luck to each battle, as battles become a lot harder or even nigh-unwinnable if the opponent's picks ended up being good counters to yours. Then if you complete the Gym Leader Castle and all the Cups on all the ranks, there's the even harder Round 2, where opponents diversify their teams farther, have ramped up stats, and have even better movesets. Beating Round 1 with just the Rental Pokémon, infamous for having poor movesets and/or stats (''especially'' in ''Stadium 2''), is already seen as a challenge. Attempting to do so with Round 2 is considered pure madness.
40	* OnceOriginalNowCommon:
41	** With the current main series of handheld games now featuring full 3D battles that exceed the quality of these games' graphics, it might be difficult for someone only familiar with the modern games to see the appeal of the Stadium-type games.
42	** These games' infamous difficulty; modern players with proper competitive knowledge visiting the Stadiums today with properly built teams that have good [=DVs=] and maxed out Stat EXP will probably blow through much of these games with ease, wondering how they got such a reputation for difficulty in the forst place. But for a long time after Stadium 1 and 2 came out, the competitive Pokémon knowledge at the time for most players boiled down to "just click the super effective move and Psychic is broken", while just about no one knew what a DV or stat experience was, beyond a vague idea of what the Stadium manuals hinted about them and there was no easy-to-access online competitive database like Smogon to find out what was the most optimal strategy for their team, so many a player found themselves hitting brick walls when just filling their team up with Pokémon strong against the Gym Leader's type ended up failing against Gym Leaders using actual coverage moves and Pokémon outside their type theme to cover their weaknesses. Players also found their own teams slacking behind the opposition with inferior stats because they unknowingly used Pokémon with bad [=DVs=] and insufficient stat experience (especially with those who used the Missingno glitch or a cheating device to get a mass of Rare Candies to level up their Pokémon, which would have levelled their Pokémon up without them getting any stat experience). Even players back then who did know how to build competent teams would need to spend [[ForcedLevelGrinding tens to hundreds of hours grinding]] their Pokémon's levels and Stat EXP up in the main games and if they wanted to use a one-time available TM on more than one Pokémon, they would have to abuse glitches, get a cheating device, or play through another Pokémon cartridge to get another copy of the desired [=TMs=]. Nowadays with emulators available, having speedup to make raising Pokémon much faster and easy cheat code insertion to do things like get duplicates of one-time [=TMs=] much easier, as well as save editors being available to instantly build optimal teams, it takes so much less work to build good teams for Gym Leader Castle and each of the Cups when playing on emulators. Not to mention that enhanced difficulty romhacks for every Pokémon game are commonplace now, so people who played such games are already acclimated to even more difficult Pokémon games. Those trying to beat the Stadiums with just the Rentals though will still have a rough time, especially in Stadium 2.
43	** Adding to the above, the SurpriseDifficulty of the Stadium games, where the opposing trainers would use actual coverage moves and strategies, would eventually migrate to the main games starting from ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' and increased competitive knowledge makes the Stadium trainers' strategies seem unimpressive by comparison.
44	* PortingDisaster: Stadium 1 and 2 get a rerelease on NSO for the Switch, and while they play perfectly fine, it was also announced that these versions would have no Transfer Pak functionality nor any way for a player to use their own Pokémon in them. This means that players will only be able to use rental Pokémon, and any content that requires connecting your own Pokémon game, such as the Pokémon Lab, will be inaccessible. For Stadium 1, this isn't ''too'' bad, but Stadium 2 is a different story. Considering that players can only use rentals, and the [[LowTierLetdown quality of the rentals in Stadium 2]] is subpar at best, players ''will'' feel the dip in quality from this fact alone.
45	* ScrappyMechanic:
46	** The basic combat of the Cups and Gym Leader Castle of the stadium games can be very tedious for some people. In both modes, the player chooses six Pokémon to use for the entire Cup/gym and when you challenge the computer, the player is only able to select half of the Pokémon on their team instead of using everyone on their team. The computer also uses half of the Pokémon on their team when battling against the player. The difference between this and the battle facilities that were introduced in Generation II is that the player knows what Pokémon the computer has on its team and vice-versa. Because of this mechanic, the player is better off picking which Pokémon to use at random because even if it looks like the player might have a type advantage against certain Pokémon, it's not guaranteed to work since the computer can choose that are resistant to the player or has an advantage over their type.
47	** The Challenge Cup of Stadium 2 is very unfair in some levels because while the players' team is completely random, only half of the computers' team will be random as half of their team will always be the same if the player challenges it again or if they have to redo it after losing in previous attempts.
48	** Both Stadium 1 and 2 having no autolevel mechanic for the Pokémon you use from the handheld games, so to use them in the various Cups you have to have them at very specific levels (both games' Poké Cup only allows level 50-55 Pokémon, Stadium 2's Little Cup only allows level 5 Pokémon, Stadium 1's Petit Cup only allows level 25-30 Pokémon, and Stadium 1's Pika Cup only allows level 15-20 Pokémon). Then while their Gym Leader Castles technically allow Pokémon at any level, if you use any Pokémon over level 50 the levels of all your opponents' Pokémon will be scaled to that of your highest level Pokémon, so to not be at any disadvantage here every Pokémon on your team essentially has to be at the same exact level and if you're using Pokémon over level 50 then you can forget about potentially using any Rental Pokémon to plug in holes, as they'll remain level 50. Then the Prime Cup in both Stadiums also technically allow Pokémon of any level to be used, but all of your opponents' Pokémon will be at level 100 regardless of what your levels are at, so you're essentially required to level up all your Pokémon to level 100 before using them there, which grinding six Pokémon up to level 100 took a very long time in the Gen 1 and Gen 2 games. And since there's no auto-levelling and each Cup has such specific level requirements, you'll have to tailor make and build seperate teams for each Cup, which in the Gen 1 games can be especially painful without glitching or just cheating as it had very few [=TMs=] you could obtain more than one of, no breeding, and no Pokérus to speed up EV training. Battle Revolution was drastically more user friendly in this regard, as it would just autolevel all your Pokémon over level 50 down to 50 for every Colosseum besides its own Little Battle format, making it much simpler to build and just use your preexisting teams there.
49	** In Battle Revolution, each Colosseum has a rank and you go up in rank each time you beat it, where as the rank increases the opponents gradually get stronger Pokémon with better moves, eventually culminating in the final 8th rank where even the basic trainers have teams full of Ubers. However except with the Stargazer Colosseum, once you clear a rank on a specific colosseum, the game will not let you replay an earlier rank on that stage by choice. The only way to revert is to lose or retreat over and over until it gets low enough, but then the player will have to replay the lower ranks to return to the higher ones. Want to try out a team with weaker Pokémon on a specific coliseum where you got a high rank, or just want some more variety than only fighting teams full of the same legendaries over and over? Sorry, programming a simple rank select was too hard for the developers, apparently.
50	** Battle Revolution's Rental Pass system replacing the Rental Pokémon system of the Stadium games. Instead of being able to choose from a selection of Rental Pokémon whenever, you're given a preset six Pokémon to use based on if you're a boy or a girl, and to get more Pokémon, you must play the Gateway Colosseum, beat an opponent to then permanently swap one of your Pokémon with theirs, and then beat the Colosseum to keep that team. You can additionally get a few more Rental passes from progressing through the game where you can then swap around the Pokémon you have on each Rental Pass, but you'll still only have access to a minority of Pokémon. This means Battle Revolution is pretty much unplayable without having a Gen 4 game with sufficient progress on it. However since very few people would have gotten this game without having already owned a Gen 4 game, and you don't need any additional accessories like the Transfer Pak to use your Pokémon, while the game's autolevelling mechanic makes it much simpler to use your own Pokémon, the lack of Rentals is less of an issue than it was in the N64 Stadiums, where even most people who had a completed Gen 1/2 Pokémon game still needed to use the Rentals as they didn't have complete trained teams that met the strict level requirements.
51	* SequelDifficultyDrop: In ''Battle Revolution'', none of the cups besides Little Cup bars you from using Ubers, so you're free to just stomp through most of the ranks before opponents start using Ubers themselves in the highest ranks. Additionally, for some reason, the AI completely forgets that switching your Pokémon out is an option, despite the AI taking full advantage of switching back in the N64 ''Stadium'' games.
52	* SequelDifficultySpike: The first game can be beaten without too much issue by using only Rentals; while they were significantly weaker than what you could build up in the main games, they still had decent enough stats and usable movesets. Additionally, the Rentals would have different movesets for each Cup and Gym Leader Castle.[[note]]For instance, Slowbro knows Psychic/Surf/Withdraw/Disable for Poké Cup and Surf/Dig/Headbutt/Disable for Gym Leader Castle[[/note]] However, the second game makes many of the Rentals much worse, as fully evolved Pokémon have worse stats, and are intentionally given awful movesets with outright inferior moves to its preevolutions[[note]]for example, the rental Feraligatr has '''''Water Gun''''' as its STAB move[[/note]] or given one really strong but inaccurate move and three useless ones[[note]]for example, the rental Zapdos has Thunder, followed by Detect, Rock Smash, and Flash)[[/note]]. So if you're using Rentals in ''Stadium 2'', you have to pick between weak Pokémon with good moves, or strong Pokémon with awful moves; either choice putting you at a massive disadvantage when fighting opponents using strong Pokémon with good movesets. Plus almost every Pokémon shares the same moveset among battle game modes, be it Stadium Cup or Gym Leader castle, with the only exceptions being in Prime Cup/Anything Goes, where 16 Rental Pokémon will have different movesets[[note]] (Golduck, Primeape, Hitmonlee, Tauros, Articuno, Dragonair, Dragonite, Croconaw, Quagsire, Girafarig, Gligar, Heracross, Sneasel, Miltank and Suicune, plus Rental Pikachu will know Surf if used in Round 2 of Prime Cup, bringing the count to 17.)[[/note]]. The only other exceptions are Challenge Cup, where every team and moveset you get is random and Little Cup.
53	** In addition to Rental Pokémon being a lot worse, opponents in Stadium 2 are also considerably harder right from the get-go, with more varied and better teams, having better moves with better type coverage, better strategies, held items that can screw you over by negating status effects you put on them, introducing more elements of strategy and more potential to be screwed over by luck with luck-based items and the simple fact that Gen II is just a more balanced experience than the easily exploitable Gen I. Getting through this game with even trained teams that have good movesets and maxed out Stat EXP can be hard, to say nothing about the even harder Round 2, where trying to do it with Rental Pokémon goes from challenging to near-impossible without some damn good (and cheesy) strategies and a fair bit of luck. The Prima guide for the game outright states that the rentals for the Round 2 Master Cup cannot match the power of the Pokémon in the cup; half of the Rental Pokémon that were able to beat it used Destiny Bond, Counter/Mirror Coat, or explosive moves to do so, which came to be the prominent strategy for Rental-only speedruns; use a decent Rental Pokémon or two that snuck through with good moves (like Fearow) and then fill the rest of your team up with Mons that have one of the aforementioned moves.
54	* SidetrackedByTheGoldSaucer: Minigames in the ''Stadium'' games could easily distract players from the main gameplay which was all about the Pokémon battles.
55	* SurpriseDifficulty: The Pokémon series is infamous for having really easy games and having boss trainers suffering from blatant PoorPredictableRock and ArtificialStupidity, with the Gym Leaders and Elite Four being easily beaten by sweeping them with a Pokémon that has a type advantage over their predominantly mono-typed teams or just going in with an overlevelled Pokémon and stomping them regardless of typing, or failing that they could abuse items in battle to win nearly any match they would have lost normally. So players were in for a world of shock when they had to fight on equal levels, fight trainers subverting their themes, fight trainers with actual coverage moves to handle their weaknesses, deal with actual strategies, deal with only being able to play on the Set battle mode so they couldn't get free switches to an advantageous mon after [=KOing=] the opponent, not have items to fall back on in losing battles and deal with AIs that actually switched their Pokémon out when against bad matchups. Everyone remembers the first time they went into Lt. Surge's gym with a team of Ground Pokémon and then got annihilated by his Raichu and Pikachu with Surf. It's probably part of why the Stadiums have such a daunting reputation; most Pokémon players just weren't prepared for such a big spike in difficulty from the mainline games they're used to.
56	* TearJerker:
57	** Some fainting animations can come across as this, especially if they're of your favorite Pokémon.
58	** Togepi's in particular is especially sad, as it's shown visibly cowering before attempting to run over to its trainer for comfort, only to trip and fall on its face before being called back into its ball.
59	** The ending credits animation, with all the developers' names played over empty shots of the various battle backgrounds, has a rather melancholy feel when combined with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE6yqnWINK8 the music]].
60	* ThatOneBoss:
61	** The final trainer of Prime Cup Master Ball in ''Pokémon Stadium 1'' is a Male Cooltrainer with a '''Mew''', in both rounds. Round 2 kicks it up several notches, as his Mew has higher stats, '''softboiled''', and overused competitive teammates like Tauros, Exeggutor, and Starmie. To a lesser extent, the Female Cooltrainer in round 2 Master Ball, as she's the only one that can make the gamebreaking Substitute Mewtwo users think twice. How? With an Electrode that will outspeed and paralyze Mewtwo before it sets up, or just power through with Body Slam Snorlax. Good luck beating those two, especially with a rental team.
62	*** Even in ''Pokémon Stadium 2'', the Male Cooltrainer will use a Mew too, but in both rounds 1 & 2, he is hard as hell to defeat. If you use a Dragon type Pokémon, Mew will more than likely use Blizzard that will almost always strike, despite the 70% accuracy and OneHitKill it no matter what and even trying to counter it with a Wobbuffet is all but fruitless, as he'll just switch it out for his Tyranitar that'll use Crunch to take it out quickly. Along with whatever else he'll chose, which can range from Starmie to Umbreon, he's the bane of all trainers in the Prime Cup.
63	** '''Any FinalBoss with a Snorlax''' in any of ''Pokémon Stadium 2''[='=]s Round 2 cups. Snorlax is extremely versatile, extremely hard to kill, and can easily destroy your Pokémon from the transfer packs (Including Mewtwo), especially rentals. Gym Leader Castle’s final boss, Pokémon Trainer Red’s signature Pokémon is a Snorlax, and even among a team of legendaries, it is by far the most dangerous Pokémon, but is covered well by the two non-legendaries. Poké Cup Master Ball Finalist Pokémaniac Pedro’s Snorlax is level 55, has Leftovers, and uses a Belly Drum/Rest/Snore/Earthquake combo, and if he rests after belly drumming, you have already lost, but he could choose the much “easier” level 55 Dragonite instead. There is a reason why you never face Snorlax in Round 1 ''Pokémon Stadium 2''… outside of Challenge Cup Master Ball.
64	** Compared to what a joke he was from the games, ''Pokémon Stadium 1'' included, Round 2 ''Pokémon Stadium 2'' Bruno ironically became arguably the hardest boss in Johto Gym Leader castle, as his incredibly powerful Machamp is paired with very powerful physical attackers. It is bulky, has insane coverage, and it hits very hard with Cross Chop and Rock Slide, but it also has Quick Claw, and worst of all, Fissure, (ironically, it was a useless special moveset for Bruno’s Machamp in Red and Blue) that can ruin your day. He's no slouch either if he selects Kangaskhan and Blastoise in Round 1.
65	** The level 20 Alakazam in Pika Cup, who knows Psychic and Thunder Wave. Doesn't sound that intimidating, right? ''Wrong''. He's almost impossible[[note]]If you get lucky enough, powerful rental mons like Starmie are able to power through it[[/note]] to beat with rental Pokémon barring miraculous freeze hax that you'll have only one chance at pulling off or else you die. The guides even advise the player to use a Transfer Pak, or pray that your opponent end up being the level 20 Dragonair.
66	*** Speaking of the Pika Cup, the semi-final opponent Lass, can grind you on your nerve as she has Tentacruel, Arcanine, and Gyarados; all of them which are hard to out-speed, and in addition that Tentacruel has Wrap that will prevent you the chance to attack. But it got worse in R2, as the two of them know Dragon Rage, a move that precisely takes 40-HP which every rental Pokémon can be taken two times by that. Pray that your Starmie can one-KO them, or you are doomed with the worst lucks imaginable.
67	** Dusty, the Leader of the aforementioned Sunset Colosseum in Battle Revolution can be an absolute nightmare to fight. Firstly, you'll be battling him under the Select Battle rules, which means that you're forced to choose from 12 Pokémon (Six of which are his, and the other six are randomly generated based on your rank) to fight him. [[GameBreaker Hoping to sweep him with an overpowered team copied from one of your Gen IV games?]] Too bad! In theory, the Select Battle is supposed to test your knowledge, and the previous three Trainers can indeed be beaten with the Pokémon you're given, as they have several tools (i.e.: entry hazards, stalling moves, etc.) that can help you win. Against Dusty, however, you're at the mercy of [[RandomNumberGod R.N. Jesus]] himself. To start, if this is your first time fighting him, don't bother choosing the random Pokémon—None of them will stand a chance against Dusty's gang. And even if you choose from Dusty's Battle Pass, the battle from there will become a stats game: Which Pokémon will strike first? Which will do more damage? Which will survive a super effective attack? Since the battle will likely be a mirror match, you better know how the game handles Speed ties, because if you just happen to get [[StatusEffects paralyzed]] by his [[LightningBruiser Vigoroth's]] Body Slam or his [[MightyGlacier Luxio's]] Spark, you might as well just throw the match right then and there. Not helping things is that the fact that Dusty's AI is [[ArtificialBrilliance significantly more merciless]] than your [[ArtificialStupidity last few opponents,]] as one mistake could kill your run, and force you to start all over again unless you've saved up some Continues by defeating the Trainers without letting a single one of your Pokémon faint. Good luck, you're gonna need it!
68	** The final two opponents from ''2'' Poké Cup Ultra Ball are insanely brutal. The boarder has two Pokémon that are weak against electric moves, so one might think using an electric type might give you a good advantage? '''Wrong!'''. His Articuno knows Hidden Power that specifically deals ground damage and any electric Pokémon you'll use ''will'' lose more than half of its hit points. He also has a Blissey that uses the standard strategy of Reflect so normal moves won't do much of anything against them and he'll use Seismic Toss on nearly every Pokémon and Icy Wind and Thurderbolt on anything weak against said Pokémon. The rest of his team is just as brutal as the aforementioned Pokémon.
69	** The psychic trainer has nearly no open weaknesses, with an electric type, two psychic types, a water type and two fighting types. Just try to think of a way to fight through without losing a Pokémon to his very first choice.
70	* ThatOneLevel: ''Battle Revolution''[='=]s Neon Colosseum. Colosseum Leader Rosie is the only one who can put up a fight with her own Pokémon; everyone else has horrible Pokémon with horrible movesets. The problem with this is that Neon Colosseum runs the Fortune Battle, which means that all twelve Pokémon on your pass and your opponent's pass go on a roulette wheel, and you throw Poké Balls at them. Even the Pokémon on the Rental Passes are better than your opponent's. There's a seven-or-eight slot delay between your pressing the button and the Ball landing, which means you need to be careful if there's someone particular you want to pick up. And since your first time through is a mandatory Double Battle, you need to throw your first couple Balls in preparation for ''any'' combination your opponent might catch. Yes, Sunset Colosseum runs a very randomized Rental Battle, but at least you're sharing the disadvantage with your opponent!
71	* ThatOneSidequest:
72	** ''Pokémon Stadium 2''[='=]s Challenge Cup Ultra Ball, especially in Round 2. There are several issues with this particular cup compared to every cup in the game:
73	*** The problem with this division and level in particular is that the random selections are completely imbalanced. For starters, there are NO fully evolved Fire-types, the only Fire-types you get are Charmeleon, Quilava, and ''Ponyta'', whereas the other starter mid-evos are available in Great Ball. Compared to stuff like Skarmory, Quagsire, Kadabra, Hitmonlee and Clefable, they are terrible selections.
74	*** The second issue is the standard movesets: You usually have two attacking moves, one of the primary type, and if you are dual-typed, the secondary type, or a coverage move if you are not, or don't have moves. Then it's a stat/status-related move, and a defensive move. Many enemies, with a few exceptions, use this basic setup. However, they can give really low-powered moves like Tackle or Bubble if you are unlucky, or high-powered moves with low accuracy. This cripples Pokémon choices like Shuckle, Sneasel, and Chansey, who can't use their STAB moves effectively.
75	*** The other thing is that you can't use ANY recovery moves like Recover and Rest, so if you can't get a Pokémon with Safeguard or Substitute, you are more suspectible to status moves, and the majority of trainers in this cup use the most status moves.
76	*** The most pressing issue are the Round 2 trainers, and to some extent, Round 1. Only two trainers are relatively harmless compared to six.
77	*** In Round 2, the Male Executive in the second fight has a Toxic/Protect strategy that will run through many random choices, regardless of stats, along with other moves.
78	*** The worst by far is the Guitarist in the fourth fight, who gets off on paralyzing your team with a difficult combination of Electric-types, Grass-types with Stun Spore, and other random types that can have Thunder Wave or Body Slam.
79	*** The fifth fight, a Fisherman, has a mostly Rain Dance-based Water-type team with Ice moves, with the only non-random signature Pokémon Quagsire that he will ALWAYS have, and its type synergy is incredibly solid against many Pokémon.
80	*** The sixth is a Swagger-abusing team, with powerful Psychic-types that are extremely difficult to wall. Your only Dark-type selections are Sneasel, with crap Special Attack, and Murkrow, who dies to everything but Psychic and can even die to Swagger damage.
81	*** The seventh is a Normal-type-using Female Executive, who actually breaks the Challenge Cup standard moveset structure among teams, and uses more than two kinds of attacking moves. Her Normal-types has some dual-type coverage and, with their generally high stats, are the powerhouses of the cup. And she likes to flinch you if she has the speed advantage, usually with STAB Headbutt or Hyper Fang.
82	*** The eighth battle has a Juggler with a completely random team, but his AI tends to be higher than the other trainers, and you probably have no continues left by this point.
83	** The Little Cup in round 2 is an absolute nightmare, especially when compared to round 1. Rex aside, who has a team that consists of Pokémon that have move combinations that are impossible to obtain, the 3rd and 6th trainers love to make sure that you can't attack them period. The 3rd trainer will constantly use Swagger to increase your attack by 100% with each use and confuse you so you'll take much more damage than normal if you attack yourself, which essentially turns the battle into a LuckBasedMission. The 6th trainer, Swimmer Cora, has a whole team of Pokémon that know the move Attract to keep any Pokémon of the opposite sex from attacking half the time, but that's just the start of the hell. Half of her team also knows Thunder Wave to paralyze you, keeping you from attacking first and from attacking at all a quarter of the time. Then on top of the 50% chance of not attacking with Attract and 25% chance of not attacking with Paralysis, each of her Pokémon knows a move that have a chance of making your Pokémon flinch, adding another 20% chance into the mix that you won't be able to act if you're slower, which means if you're inflicted by all three of those effects you'll only have a 30% chance to make a move at all each turn. If you don't avoid the status and luck isn't on your side you'll lose at least one continue on her, and if your luck goes really bad, you may end up using all of them on her.
84	* UnintentionalUncannyValley: While Eevee is normally a RidiculouslyCuteCritter, its [[https://archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Stadium133.png Stadium model]] looks decidedly ''off'' due to the appearance of its eyes and mouth.
85	* VindicatedByHistory: When it first came out, ''Pokémon Battle Revolution'' was criticized for its lack of content compared to the other Stadium games. However, the game has become slightly more beloved over time for having some of the most expressive animations out of any Pokémon game, especially compared to the 3DS titles. It's frequently favorably compared to ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' in terms of animation quality, with people lamenting that a full-fledged home console Pokémon game has worse animations than a spinoff game from multiple generations ago did. This is especially ironic because ''Battle Revolution'' was originally criticized for being a case of NeverTrustATrailer, as the end result was a significant downgrade (the producers even promised destructible environments, the initial trailers for instance showcased Groudon launching a Hyper Beam which left a huge molten trail along the ground while also blowing out the far side of the colosseum).

Context YMMV / PokemonStadium