Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal

Pokémon Gold and Silver are a pair of role playing games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. During development, they were originally known as Pokémon 2: Gold and Silver. An enhanced version, Pokémon Crystal was later released.

Enhanced remakes of the games were released as Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver ten years after the original release.

Why It Makes You Gotta Catch 'Em All in Johto

 * 1) A whole new region to explore, named Johto, which based on Kansai, Japan.
 * 2) It has the biggest post-game content in any Pokémon game to date (not counting the remakes), as you can explore the Kanto region and obtain all the Gym Badges. Since the game takes place 3 years after Generation I, many elements of Kanto have changed.
 * 3) The game features a hundred new species of Pokémon, a big deal at the time.
 * 4) Improved graphics, including for the first time in the main series, fully colored graphics, both for the Pokémon "sprites" as well as the overworld, making it much more interesting to look at.
 * 5) * In Pokémon Crystal, Pokémon have battle encounter animations, a first in the series. In fact, because there was 251 Pokémon at the time and every one of them had an animation, the game ended up pushing the Game Boy Color to it's limit.
 * 6) Shiny Pokémon are introduced, which are Pokémon with different coloring from the standard, they are extremely rare to find.
 * 7) * There's a Gyarados that's 100% guaranteed to be Shiny found in-game, which informs the player of Shiny Pokémon's existence.
 * 8) A day and night cycle is introduced into the game which influences the Pokémon that can be caught in the games. And unlike other games at the time, The ingame time is affected by the real time.
 * 9) *Also, some evolutions take advantage of the day and night cycle such as Eevee evolving into an Espeon at day or into an Umbreon at night.
 * 10) Pokémon friendship is now applied to all Pokémon, and is now used to determine the power of the Frustration and Return moves, as well as allowing evolution by friendship. Friendship is gained by taking care of a Pokémon well, and is degraded by letting it faint or feeding it bitter items.
 * 11) Most Pokémon now have genders, which ties into the new ability to breed Pokémon together to get Pokémon eggs. If you put a compatible male and female in the Daycare center, they'll produce an egg that will hatch into a new Pokémon of the mother's species and learns a special move depending of the father's species
 * 12) You can trade Pokémon from Generation I into the Generation II games and vice versa.
 * 13) Lavender Town's music is changed so that it is now more cheerful than before, resolving the whiplash of emotions found in Generation I games.
 * 14) Separate pockets were introduced for the bag to hold a specific type of item.
 * 15) It has the most epic final battle in the franchise as you battle Red, the original player character from Generation I meaning that your final challenge is your battle against your past self.
 * 16) The Crystal Version is the first game in the series that allows you to play as a female character (Kris).
 * 17) There is a glitch that allows you to have all 3 Johto starter Pokémon.
 * 18) The game features a lot of optional places and rewards you when you explore them such as rewarding you with a level 20 Lapras when you explore the optional parts of Union Cave.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Gen II introduced many mediocre to downright useless Pokémon like the baby Pokémon, Girafarig, Xatu, Stantler, Delibird, Murkrow, Sneasel, Misdreavus, Noctowl, Ariados, Ledian, Sunflora with the most infamous being Shuckle (Despite having the best defensive stats in the game) which became a meme by the Pokémon Community.
 * 2) While not as bugged as the first generation, the second generation still has a lot of bugs and glitches in them, including multiple glitches that allow the execution of code the player has created.
 * 3) * Some examples being the Status effects not increasing your chances of catching a pokemon or some of Kurt's pokeballs not working properly such as the Love Ball was meant to work on Pokémon with the opposite gender of your active pokemon but instead works on Pokémon with the same gender as yours.
 * 4) The Crystal Version is not playable on the original Game Boy. Korean Gold and Silver also has this.
 * 5) The game has an overreliance on Kanto, even more than Pokémon X and Y.
 * 6) * Most of the Gym Leaders are using mostly Gen 1 Pokémon instead of Gen 2 Pokémon, with Falkner, Bugsy, Morty, and Chuck not using a single Gen 2 Pokémon.
 * 7) ** And the gym leaders who have johto pokemon usually have 1 johto pokemon in their team with the rest being kanto pokemon.
 * 8) * While revisiting Kanto makes for a solid post-game, the region itself feels rather empty with not much to do other than doing a brief quest with a Team Rocket grunt and confronting the gym leaders and Red.
 * 9) ** The Remakes fixes it a bit by adding a brief quest with Suicune and adding some legendaries to catch plus the battle frontier but It still feels empty.
 * 10) * Most of the pokémon in the wild grass are from Generation I meaning that it’s hard to find new Pokémon in the tall grass. Even the best Generation II Pokémon such as Larvitar, Scarmory and Houndour can only be obtained post-game.
 * 11) * Typhlosion literally has the same base stats as Charizard.
 * 12) The only Ghost and Dragon-types introduced in Johto are Misdreavus and Kingdra. If that is the case, why are Morty and Clair Gym Leaders?
 * 13) Your bag has limited space still, though this is alleviated by the additional pockets in the bag.
 * 14) While the Day and Night cycle is a good mechanic, It shares the same battery with the save data causing the cartridge's backup battery to last shorter compared to Generation I.
 * 15) Enemy trainers and wild pokémon in Johto are severely underleveled (i.e., evolved Pokémon which are at a lower level than the set level at which they evolve for their pre-evolutions), this makes level grinding take significantly longer.
 * 16) * This is more noticeable when you are preparing for the battle with Red, as his Pokémon are extremely overleveled (as his Pikachu is level 83) and there is no good place to grind.
 * 17) Professor Elm is not an interesting Professor. His only role in the game is giving the player their Starter.
 * 18) When you have a trainer's phone number, they call any time.
 * 19) Pokémon Crystal is considered the weakest enhanced version in the series due to having few changes (mostly graphical) from Gold and Silver, not fixing some issues that Gold and Silver had and making some fan beloved pokémon like Ampharos unavailable to catch.
 * 20) The Elementary Stones aren't available in the Main game. Thankfully you can obtain the elementary stones earlier in Crystal and the Remakes by registering some specific trainer numbers.
 * 21) Some Trainers have hacked Pokémon such as Falkner having a level 9 (level 12 in the remakes) Pidgeotto and Lancer having Level 50 Dragonite with illegal moves and an Aerodactyl knowing Rock Slide.
 * 22) Barebones story with nothing interesting happening.
 * 23) * This is excused because the Pokemon games aren't focused at stories at the time.

Tips

 * Totodile is the best starter to choose as you can teach it Ice Punch and beat all Champion Lance's Pokémon and most of Clair's Pokémon. You can buy the Ice Punch TM on the Goldenrod Department Store for 6,000 pokedollars
 * Chikorita is the worst choice for a starter as it is weak to Falkner and Bugsy and most of Team Rocket's Pokémon
 * The easiest way to beat Whitney is by using rock/ground type Pokémon which you can obtain one by catching a Geodude in Route 45 or by trading a Bellsprout for an Onix at Violet City. If you don't want a rock type or a ground type Pokémon on your team you can trade a Drowzee for a Machop on the Goldenrod Department Store. Make sure your Pokémon are female to make Miltank's Attract useless.
 * In the Crystal Version, You can also catch a Sandshrew in the Union Cave.

Trivia

 * The real life Kanto and Kansai regions in Japan are neighbors just like the Johto and Kanto regions in the games.
 * Pokémon Gold and Silver were originally meant to be the last games in the Pokémon franchise because the developers thought that the Pokémon craze was over.
 * There was a demo which was shown at Nintendo Space World '97, as it looked very similar with Red and Green. On May 26, 2018, the ROM files of this demo were dumped and released by an anonymous donor.
 * There was another demo which was shown at Nintendo Space World '99 which It looked similar to the finished game except with some differences.
 * A lot of Pokémon from the demos have been cut or redesigned during development.
 * Red was meant to have your party from Pokemon Red by reading the save files from Pokémon Red, but it was scrapped due to technical limitations.