Reviews VideoGame / Pokemon Stadium

Pokemon Battle Revolution

Amoung the Pokemon Stadium spinoffs this one is generally believed to be the weakest. However I would argue that it wasn't because of what it did have but rather because of what it did not include.

Pokemon Battle Revolution was criticized for "punishing" players who did not have a copy of the hand held versions. While Pokemon Stadium (and its sequel) had a bunch of rental pokemon (virtually all of them excluding a few Legendaries) for you to choose from and the Gamecube spin offs (Colosseum and Gale of Darkness) allowed you to capture Pokemon in-game, this one gives you a "rental pass" of six pokemon (the team varies whether you pick a male or female avatar). If you play online (punishing people without wifi) you can acquire more rental passes from other people all over the world.

No RPG theme from the gamecube spin offs and no minigames or virtual gameboy/Nintendo DS like the original stadium games.

None of the features the game actually included were that bad, my personal favorite was the fortune battle. That battle setting potentially eliminates the Stop Having Fun Guys Serious Business metagame because both opponents randomly compile a team from a Wheel of both players' Pokemon. Thus eliminating whatever strategy the player was going to use. Unfortunately it was limited to vs. CPU gameplay.

I liked the ability to "cash in" some of the points for winning to acquire items and Pokemon (though most items are usable in the hand held games only). I also liked the ability to customize my avatar (though it's fairly limited). If Gamefreak/Nintendo creates another Stadium spin off for the Wii U this game should not be forgotten. Hopefully they'll use this game as well as its predecessors as a base for the possible sequel.