Omg chuggaconroy! Great to see you. I’ve been watching you way back when you started uploading Luigi’s mansion, super Mario sunshine and pikmin. You’re literally my inspiration
Their use of perspective tricks is so impressive. I had no idea the sprites were layers, makes me wonder how they’re able to spin around in the musical minigame
From my making GB games I would say that's simply sprite/actor swapping. Here it seems you can overlay multiple actors to get whatever bits in front you need?
Gen V was truly the peak of the pokemon game design. the team had enough time and experience to make games that were truly well thought out and cared for. the focus on story, the immersion of the world, and the engaging music were all so well done. seeing this video really opened my eyes to see the remarkable programming that sits underneath. I really hate how the community didn't understand how good these games were when they were released, but I'm glad people are finally starting to come around to seeing it.
I had a rough idea of how the sprites worked in Black/White, I knew from sprite sheets I found online that they were divided up into different parts, but I could never fully imagine how they put them together to animate them! Really clever!
The constant running static/ snow layer is pretty interesting! I'm sure it's not resource demanding in the slightest, which is why it's no problem to make it work that way, but it's still unexpected.
I don't think the old pokemon games will ever really die out, the old games just have so much charm, and thought put into them that they just keep coming back.
Gen V is gorgeous. Easily the best looking Pokemon games. It makes sense when I think about it that it's really a 3D environment given how much the camera likes to show off. That bit about the ferris wheel in Nimbasa City was wild. Very curious if it stayed the same in the sequels.
@@ThibautMahringer Kinda, from what I understand. It's more about the camera being locked in place like in 2D, but enviroment being 3D. F.e. original The Sims apparently is a 2.5D game (despite that the only 3D stuff in it are Sims, rest is images). Probably gen 4 is also a 2.5D. Gen 5 is weird, because some stuff is definietly 2.5D, but others are 3D with 2D sprites (like bridges or main part of Castelia City). I think Heroes of Might and Magic 4 also is one, but I'm not sure, they used a weird technique where they took a screenshot of a 3D model for each frame, then animated stuff using those. So basically game lacks 3D models in the files, but it theoretically uses them, but they're just flat images of 3D stuff (it's weird, and I don't think I ever encountered that in a different game, but it's definietly a decent space saving technique). Outside of than that I can't recall examples of other 2.5D games that aren't platformers.
@@dozzy9984 There's no official definition of what it truly is. But to me, 2.5D define a character that only move left or right, but in a 3D environment, even with camera effects. All my examples are from Sonic, but if you look at games like Sonic Unleashed, Generations and Colors, the 2D parts can have camera effects to emphasize the action / speed, yet Sonic is still moving from left to right, to me it's still 2.5D, even with the camera shifts (though the camera shifts are scripted). I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong though, it also makes sense. Though, 3D models turned into sprites was also used in the Donkey Country games on SNES amongst others, and they are very much 2D games as everything is sprites, there's no 3D anywhere in those games. Anyway, I agree, 2.5D is inherently tied to platformers, you could also say that fighting games are 2.5D, at least with my interpretation but that pretty much ends there.
As someone who did happen to use an Action Replay after beating the games, seeing those rocks from buildings is all too common for me. And the quadrants being loaded in out of view is also something they have done since Diamond and Pearl. In those games, you could easily speed past load-zones (but only if you intended on doing so) and corrupt a quadrant, causing very interesting effects with how the zones load in.
I always loved that they used this 2D/3D mix in these games. They look absolutely great if you properly scale them up in Emulation. A bit sad GF seemingly would'nt go such route, even as a toggle in settings.
I think, since all the Pokémon need to be viewed from the back when used by the player, a lot of them have, let's say "economical" layering so that when flipped, there's less sprite models to fully swap and replace, which would be why so many almost work just when flipping the pov
Really satisfying to see that whole Dragonite skeleton. Also super cool to see how the Pokemon sprites were put together, I think that's my favorite part. The B/W sprites are by far my favorite sprites of the franchise. Anyway, thanks for covering one of my favorite Pokemon games, I'd love to see you delve into it more when you have the time.
I'd love to see some of these areas (eg. the Castelia City skyline) at different times of day to see if there are any differences (eg. Brightened light sources, potential additions to the skyboxes like stars etc.)
Man watching this makes me really impressed with how the PokeMMO devs took this and made it support any resolution and many zoom values, because they had to probably just have everything loaded at once but keep all the effects in the same manner
not showing late game places like black city, victory road, or even the cut scene when the plasma castle come out of the ground in the elite four is a crime lmao
Several years back, I found out an oddity with Pokeballs when using a sprite ripping tool that works on gameplay. If you look at ripped sprite on a sheet, apparently every ball that can be used to catch pokemon has two angled sprites that's usually unseen by the player due to the flashy effects while catching a pokemon. The oddity is, The Pokeball has a 3rd frame to this while all the others do not. I dunno if this'll work but maybe your free camera can show it off from a back perspective. It's strange how only one of them have this but none of the others do but it could be a sudden decision by the devs to just leave it as 2 as no one would see. This 3rd sprite would easily line up a smooth animation to the open ball sprite (I still have these sprites as proof). I mentioned it in Chuggaaconroy's Black and White Video but it was left out.
10:05 The textures are actually ok, is just that the layer behind the facade (the one that gives the glass effect), and the facade itself are z-fighting because of the very low vertex accuracy.
Pokémon Black and White were two damn masterpieces and really ambitious projects (no old pokemon but all new, mature plot etc.)... but... it sold so poorly that I feel like it had a part in the franchise's slow degradation 😢
It didn't sell all that poorly; around 15 million copies while other new generations around this time sold around 16-18 million. But they were unfairly hated for both being "too similar" with "not enough changes", while others said it felt "too different" with many not wanting to read the plot details.
@@Dad_Shoesthis is actually so true. I remember a few years back i interacted with the online pokemon community for the first time and got clowned on for liking Gen 5. Now basically everyone came around and says they're (some of) the best and that they love them. I wonder how exactly they all changed their minds so quickly, honestly
@BlueSodaPop_ You wanna talk about being made fun of, Garbodor is unironically one of my favorite Pokémon of all time. I don't care that people think it's "just a living pile of trash", it's just as valid as any other Pokémon. People say Gen 5 Pokémon were "running out of ideas", I say they've always been out of ideas. A seal literally just named Seel. A psychic duck named Psyduck. Gen 1 was no more creative than Gen 5.
It's almost like Gamefreak were masters of small-scale, 2D graphics, and the decision to go full 3D with such a tiny and inexperienced team has hamstrung the series for over a decade now!
The arena is massive because it's designed for triple battles where all the Pokémon are Wailords. Yes, that means 6 Wailords on screen at the same time and it's as ridiculous as you think it is so that setup does require a lot of arena space.
yes please! It's so bizarre to see my fave pokémon game being made and modelled like this, give such a different perspective. I'm stoked to see more of it!
If memory serves there's a glitch used in speedruns to get out of bounds in this game that has something to do with the way the tiles are loaded. I think they literally just find a spot where 4 tiles meet and use a bike to go really fast over the transition point which confuses the engine and causes things not to load correctly. It might have been a different Pokemon game and I might be confusing 2 runs but I remember the blinking eye thing being a sore spot for runners because every time the characters blink it advances RNG which ruins RNG manipulation strats. Runners can set up manipulations at certain points including the beginning of the game to get specific Pokemon with specific stats and also set their trainer ID so they win a free master ball from the lottery.
@@dustux Right, I must have been merging the two runs in my head. Both gens do seem to use a similar tile system but they figured out a way to patch it in later games (or maybe accidentally patched it while fixing other bugs).
Love the video, but damn RUclips is spinning out of control with ads. When I start the video 2 full ads, a sponsor a few minutes in, two more ads with comment overlay at 10 minutes, and when the video ends another. And they wonder why people block them, it's ludicrous. In 13 minutes I got to see 5 ads and a sponsored ad..
I recently saw a video that showed N being off-screen during the Chargestone Cave 'cutscene' in BW2 I think, so I wonder how many more there are. I'd be curious to see if larger Pokemon (eg wailord or legendaries) make the battle background scale more.
We really need to get this guy to do Spider-Man 2 I really want to see what things look like during the black cat portal mission or what the lizard looks like under water where would that Arctic section in the black cat mission looks in the area around the zoo
Back when developers still had to try to make games artistic. Fitting in optimization, creating charming sprite work. This game has soul, unlike whatever we are getting in current year.
@@JeskidoYT Time is a big one. Gamers have come to expect new Triple A titles with more content than ever before and better graphics than ever before for a similar price to what many of us paid as kids. Even with modern advances in development tools a lot of those things require more time than before while development teams often have less time in part because if they don't release the next game they'll run out of funds because they aren't charging that much. This is a big part of the reason why we see so much DLC content that cost way more than it's really worth, they have to keep money flowing in so they can develop actual content (hopefully, some studios really do put out the same stuff year after year). Of course many publishers are also publicly traded companies which means they are legally required to do everything in their power to make their share holders more money year over year (which is responsible for a lot of the enshitification we see in the broader tech industry, companies reach a point where the only way to make more money is to screw over their customers). Another unfortunate truth is that there are enough whales (people who spend ridiculous amounts of money of things like cosmetics) that crappy free to play games (admittedly some are surprisingly good) are both more profitable and more sustainable than core games. One of the reasons I own a Switch is because as much as I sometimes hate giving Nintendo my money (due to their anti-consumer practices) they are one of the few still pushing core games with excellent single player experiences and occasionally great couch co-op experiences.
Black 2 and White 2 will be more interesting. I found a secret myself in Black 2. In Driftveil Bridge, there are some Pokemon Centers in the background
Thanks for the video!! My favorite Pokémon generation! I’d love to see more, like N’s Castle, the Elite 4, Victory Road and much more! And if we’re talking about B2W2, I’d love to see Humilau and the Marine Tube!! And the Abyssal Ruins! Man, there’s so many interesting places to see out of bounds!
Low-poly-pixel art is quite underrated. When you take off the DS's interpolation pixels, this game really shines. Too bad that level of care was thrown out the window after Gen 6. Console prep really tore the series apart.
Bro, playing Unwavering Emotion when referencing BW is the equivalent of using I Really Want to Stay at Your House when referencing Cyberpunk. Not cool dude. Ive been crying fOR HOURS NOW
Pokémon White was the first game in the series that I originally bought on physical media, to this day it is my favorite region and in my opinion one of the games that puts the DS to the limit in both sound and visual quality. I really hope that the Pokémon Company doesn't screw up with the remakes like they did with BDSP, Unova deserves a complete and well-made remake with new additions like it was with FRLG/HGSS/ORAS.
Would it move and pan relative to the environment or relative to the camera? The Pokemon don't stay in place in the spotlights during the pan out, so I think it's more likely the effects would look the same regardless of where the camera is in the environment or at least that they would fill roughly the same amount of the screen.
@@BonaparteBardithion oh, that’s a good idea! i was thinking maybe the battle arena was that big so effects like that could fill a space with more depth or something, but that makes sense :))
probably one of the more fascinating things to me is seeing that gamefreak was doing the forced perspective leaning thing with the overworld sprites long before a link between worlds came out, when the latter was praised a ton for that
I used to make animated stamps over on Deviant Art using the Black and White Pokemon sprite... for the longest of times I didn't realize they were not 100% one solid sprite but multiple sprites layered... Now that makes me wonder a few things about sprites are ripped from games and how that layering thing may affect sprite sheets.
I wish the main series or maybe a spin-off pokemon game continued using this graphic style, a 2D/3D mix. Cassette Beast is the demonstration that it can work
The world of Unova is so interesting to me in so many ways and game development wise is always a big one! I’d love to see a lot more from the areas past Nuevema and Castelia, all of the game’s other massive bridges and the big towers around the world would be super interesting to see a pan out of, and most definitely the Pokemon League and N’s Castle. There are a few cutscenes in the game that always seemed to be done in-engine with models of stuff like Zekrom and Reshiram and it would be amazing to see pan arounds of those scenes if possible.
They were so close to reaching the style that Octopath Traveler uses! Even though I don't prefer a faithful remake, I'd make an exception if they used Octopath's style.
5:10 Interesstingly, you are not even boundry breaking here and this is not out of bounds, this is literally just the other map you walked into. For some reason, the developers really liked to make these Pokemon Regions(Since Gen 1, mind you) almost entirely continuous(In their overworld, dungeonareas like caves and houses are seperate), even tho they ended up applying artificial loading screens and transitionhallsways anyways. It's really bizzare, especially considering they had to use some tricks to even make it like this. Honestly, I wonder if someone would be up for modding in all the missing triggerlines for graphics loads, just for the lolz. Because having fewer explicit loading transitions makes a game feel more impressive, even if it really ain't.
4:11 Theory on why those are still there: They’re about the same shape, and are spaced out perfectly to where the wheel probably starts it’s animation, thus making it the perfect spot to know when to loop. They’re probably there for visual reference of which cars can be seen and which can’t by the camera so they knew when to load and de-load the actual carts when testing, and further more WHEN to load and de-load them! They might also have been left there for usage in case other animations need to be made later on. Basically, they’re just reference points! I’d wager, if you wore to leave only one of the animated carts, that cart would never make it all the way from the right to the left! Instead, you’d see it go the distance roughly between one cart to another needed for the animation before resetting, giving the illusion of full movement since all carts look the same! It’d be a much less taxing process than, say, loading and reloading carts constantly, and those beta carts would be perfect reference for animators to know just how much to move each cart. I wonder if it was a full wheel of static beta carts before even, and they just removed the ones normally on screen!
Watching takes me way back when I began playing Pearl and then Black they day of its releases, it always had a charm to me that made me fall in love with the franchise all over again, there they are beautifully designed and the latest games are missing that creative charm in my personal opinion. Seeing how they were pulled off just makes me admire the developers' work even more, I want to see more of these games
ok i know this may sound dumb but the background audio of the video made me tear up it reminded me of simpler times, times that were without hardships a past life that i have no control over
Take advantage of the amazing sale and get you or a loved one an Arc System Works game today!: bit.ly/3SMXHSW
😅😅😅
First
Awesome video
I took advantage of Sponsor Block skipping the whole segment.
honestly thats a really cool sponsor
Good finds! I didn't think it felt rushed at all contrary to what you said. Maybe Part 2 could include the areas new to the sequel?
ole Conroy
Omg chuggaconroy! Great to see you. I’ve been watching you way back when you started uploading Luigi’s mansion, super Mario sunshine and pikmin. You’re literally my inspiration
Hi chuga :)
^^
We need to see the beginning of BW2 where Bianca presents the starter Pokémon to you, because a 3D model of her is used there
Their use of perspective tricks is so impressive. I had no idea the sprites were layers, makes me wonder how they’re able to spin around in the musical minigame
From my making GB games I would say that's simply sprite/actor swapping. Here it seems you can overlay multiple actors to get whatever bits in front you need?
@@Roadent1241100% agree it a actor/layer swap to show the turn
😊
😊
Pasage?
I love the limited 3D in this game it's so charming.
It only took 14 minutes. Amazing.
SaltyDKDan fans just show up out of nowhere.
you can see they were thinking of how to make x&y
God I love the chungus the limited 3D chungus they used in this chungus its so chungus
If you could only see the frown on my face when I read this comment
Man, I miss Pokémon sprite work. Gen 5 was definitely the peak when it came to sprites.
Yeah the problem with the switch to 3d is that a lot of the pokemon became desaturated and more lifeless, they're slowly fixing that though
@@mr.punisher5100It only took an entire decade for them to start....
Though they were pretty much cardboard cutouts.
dude has the best jojo as their pfp. huge respect
@@Tripp-y9b That was kind of the point. It encouraged you to use your imagination for battles like most RPGs do.
Gen V was truly the peak of the pokemon game design. the team had enough time and experience to make games that were truly well thought out and cared for. the focus on story, the immersion of the world, and the engaging music were all so well done. seeing this video really opened my eyes to see the remarkable programming that sits underneath.
I really hate how the community didn't understand how good these games were when they were released, but I'm glad people are finally starting to come around to seeing it.
Nah, the games suck ass.
@@olivercharles2930who hurt you bro 💀
I had a rough idea of how the sprites worked in Black/White, I knew from sprite sheets I found online that they were divided up into different parts, but I could never fully imagine how they put them together to animate them! Really clever!
If you've seen gameplay of any of the Paper Mario games, that one uses that technique too.
The amount of effort they put into the Pokémon REALLY contrasts with the work they put into the -3DS- I mean Nintendo Switch models.
please come back to pokemon black! I'm so interested in what they did in the game ever since I started playing this game!
The constant running static/ snow layer is pretty interesting! I'm sure it's not resource demanding in the slightest, which is why it's no problem to make it work that way, but it's still unexpected.
It could be 3 frames or so..! If 5fps it's not too demanding probably..!
I don't think the old pokemon games will ever really die out, the old games just have so much charm, and thought put into them that they just keep coming back.
Shesez people are gonna murder you for that pronunciation of Pansage 😂😂😂
Gen V is gorgeous. Easily the best looking Pokemon games. It makes sense when I think about it that it's really a 3D environment given how much the camera likes to show off. That bit about the ferris wheel in Nimbasa City was wild. Very curious if it stayed the same in the sequels.
Must feel nice being wrong.
I want to see more, I love how this game mixes 2D and 3D into a coherent whole
2.5D
@@heromedley Isn't 2.5D sidescrolling games in a 3D environment (like Sonic Superstars for example) ?
@@ThibautMahringer Kinda, from what I understand. It's more about the camera being locked in place like in 2D, but enviroment being 3D. F.e. original The Sims apparently is a 2.5D game (despite that the only 3D stuff in it are Sims, rest is images). Probably gen 4 is also a 2.5D. Gen 5 is weird, because some stuff is definietly 2.5D, but others are 3D with 2D sprites (like bridges or main part of Castelia City).
I think Heroes of Might and Magic 4 also is one, but I'm not sure, they used a weird technique where they took a screenshot of a 3D model for each frame, then animated stuff using those. So basically game lacks 3D models in the files, but it theoretically uses them, but they're just flat images of 3D stuff (it's weird, and I don't think I ever encountered that in a different game, but it's definietly a decent space saving technique).
Outside of than that I can't recall examples of other 2.5D games that aren't platformers.
@@dozzy9984 There's no official definition of what it truly is.
But to me, 2.5D define a character that only move left or right, but in a 3D environment, even with camera effects.
All my examples are from Sonic, but if you look at games like Sonic Unleashed, Generations and Colors, the 2D parts can have camera effects to emphasize the action / speed, yet Sonic is still moving from left to right, to me it's still 2.5D, even with the camera shifts (though the camera shifts are scripted).
I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong though, it also makes sense.
Though, 3D models turned into sprites was also used in the Donkey Country games on SNES amongst others, and they are very much 2D games as everything is sprites, there's no 3D anywhere in those games.
Anyway, I agree, 2.5D is inherently tied to platformers, you could also say that fighting games are 2.5D, at least with my interpretation but that pretty much ends there.
This is an advert for you people to play octopath traveller
As someone who did happen to use an Action Replay after beating the games, seeing those rocks from buildings is all too common for me.
And the quadrants being loaded in out of view is also something they have done since Diamond and Pearl.
In those games, you could easily speed past load-zones (but only if you intended on doing so) and corrupt a quadrant, causing very interesting effects with how the zones load in.
I always loved that they used this 2D/3D mix in these games. They look absolutely great if you properly scale them up in Emulation.
A bit sad GF seemingly would'nt go such route, even as a toggle in settings.
I think, since all the Pokémon need to be viewed from the back when used by the player, a lot of them have, let's say "economical" layering so that when flipped, there's less sprite models to fully swap and replace, which would be why so many almost work just when flipping the pov
6:35
That's not an eye. Woobats eyes are the small things on the sides, covered by tufts of hair. The big pink thing in the center is his nose.
the phrasing was confusing, but he is referring to there being only one eye/ tuft of hair being visible on the back of the sprite
Pokémon Black was the first game I ever raised a Pokémon to level 100 in. Thanks so much for doing this!!
watching this video had the same mental impact on me as when i was first told santa claus wasn't real
Really satisfying to see that whole Dragonite skeleton. Also super cool to see how the Pokemon sprites were put together, I think that's my favorite part. The B/W sprites are by far my favorite sprites of the franchise. Anyway, thanks for covering one of my favorite Pokemon games, I'd love to see you delve into it more when you have the time.
I'd love to see some of these areas (eg. the Castelia City skyline) at different times of day to see if there are any differences (eg. Brightened light sources, potential additions to the skyboxes like stars etc.)
Me too! And during different times and seasons too!
Man watching this makes me really impressed with how the PokeMMO devs took this and made it support any resolution and many zoom values, because they had to probably just have everything loaded at once but keep all the effects in the same manner
not showing late game places like black city, victory road, or even the cut scene when the plasma castle come out of the ground in the elite four is a crime lmao
Several years back, I found out an oddity with Pokeballs when using a sprite ripping tool that works on gameplay. If you look at ripped sprite on a sheet, apparently every ball that can be used to catch pokemon has two angled sprites that's usually unseen by the player due to the flashy effects while catching a pokemon. The oddity is, The Pokeball has a 3rd frame to this while all the others do not. I dunno if this'll work but maybe your free camera can show it off from a back perspective. It's strange how only one of them have this but none of the others do but it could be a sudden decision by the devs to just leave it as 2 as no one would see. This 3rd sprite would easily line up a smooth animation to the open ball sprite (I still have these sprites as proof). I mentioned it in Chuggaaconroy's Black and White Video but it was left out.
him calling pansage "pasaj" was all I needed for me to believe that he really hasn't in fact played BW lol. Great video though, thanks!
I'd like to see that underwater aquarium in Black and White 2.
Marine tube
10:05 The textures are actually ok, is just that the layer behind the facade (the one that gives the glass effect), and the facade itself are z-fighting because of the very low vertex accuracy.
I'd love to see a part two to this! It's fascinating how a lot of this stuff is pulled off (especially for the DS)!
Pokémon Black and White were two damn masterpieces and really ambitious projects (no old pokemon but all new, mature plot etc.)... but... it sold so poorly that I feel like it had a part in the franchise's slow degradation 😢
It didn't sell all that poorly; around 15 million copies while other new generations around this time sold around 16-18 million. But they were unfairly hated for both being "too similar" with "not enough changes", while others said it felt "too different" with many not wanting to read the plot details.
@@Dad_Shoes black and white and black and white 2 some of the best pokemon games
@@colinlohden9359 I agree, but many didn't think this until recently.
@@Dad_Shoesthis is actually so true. I remember a few years back i interacted with the online pokemon community for the first time and got clowned on for liking Gen 5. Now basically everyone came around and says they're (some of) the best and that they love them. I wonder how exactly they all changed their minds so quickly, honestly
@BlueSodaPop_ You wanna talk about being made fun of, Garbodor is unironically one of my favorite Pokémon of all time. I don't care that people think it's "just a living pile of trash", it's just as valid as any other Pokémon. People say Gen 5 Pokémon were "running out of ideas", I say they've always been out of ideas. A seal literally just named Seel. A psychic duck named Psyduck. Gen 1 was no more creative than Gen 5.
It's almost like Gamefreak were masters of small-scale, 2D graphics, and the decision to go full 3D with such a tiny and inexperienced team has hamstrung the series for over a decade now!
You can tell Derek hasn't really played Pokemon calling Pansage 'Passahje' 😂😂😂😂
im fairly certain that everyone knew it was a 3D game with 2D sprites, its kind of obvious
The arena is massive because it's designed for triple battles where all the Pokémon are Wailords. Yes, that means 6 Wailords on screen at the same time and it's as ridiculous as you think it is so that setup does require a lot of arena space.
My favorite (and first!) Pokémon game get's it's own episode.
I'm very happy about it.
Now I’m never gonna be able to unsee all the sprites doing the Smooth Criminal in this game.
Aaaa a part 2 would be amazing
yes please! It's so bizarre to see my fave pokémon game being made and modelled like this, give such a different perspective. I'm stoked to see more of it!
6:01 pansage????? u said pa-sa-ge
It's been 41 seconds and this is already in my recommended that's crazy
If memory serves there's a glitch used in speedruns to get out of bounds in this game that has something to do with the way the tiles are loaded. I think they literally just find a spot where 4 tiles meet and use a bike to go really fast over the transition point which confuses the engine and causes things not to load correctly. It might have been a different Pokemon game and I might be confusing 2 runs but I remember the blinking eye thing being a sore spot for runners because every time the characters blink it advances RNG which ruins RNG manipulation strats. Runners can set up manipulations at certain points including the beginning of the game to get specific Pokemon with specific stats and also set their trainer ID so they win a free master ball from the lottery.
It's only in Gen 4
@@dustux Right, I must have been merging the two runs in my head. Both gens do seem to use a similar tile system but they figured out a way to patch it in later games (or maybe accidentally patched it while fixing other bugs).
i knew the game was 3D the entire time. again, you can tell the difference between 2D sprites and 3D models+textures.
In Gen 5 you can clearly see whats 3D and whats 2D, in Gen 4 its a little bit harder to see the differance.
Pah-sauge vs. Pansage lol
My first Pokémon game… what memories.
This was great, I'd love to see some comparisons with Black/White 2 as well to see if they'd done any changes in culling or formatting anywhere.
Love the video, but damn RUclips is spinning out of control with ads. When I start the video 2 full ads, a sponsor a few minutes in, two more ads with comment overlay at 10 minutes, and when the video ends another. And they wonder why people block them, it's ludicrous. In 13 minutes I got to see 5 ads and a sponsored ad..
I recently saw a video that showed N being off-screen during the Chargestone Cave 'cutscene' in BW2 I think, so I wonder how many more there are. I'd be curious to see if larger Pokemon (eg wailord or legendaries) make the battle background scale more.
We really need to get this guy to do Spider-Man 2 I really want to see what things look like during the black cat portal mission or what the lizard looks like under water where would that Arctic section in the black cat mission looks in the area around the zoo
video starts at 2:30
6:01 "For Pasage"
It's Pansage
Back when developers still had to try to make games artistic. Fitting in optimization, creating charming sprite work. This game has soul, unlike whatever we are getting in current year.
games had TIME. TIME IN DEVELOPMENT. Adequate hardware! Limitations to the cartridges!
@@JeskidoYT Time is a big one. Gamers have come to expect new Triple A titles with more content than ever before and better graphics than ever before for a similar price to what many of us paid as kids. Even with modern advances in development tools a lot of those things require more time than before while development teams often have less time in part because if they don't release the next game they'll run out of funds because they aren't charging that much. This is a big part of the reason why we see so much DLC content that cost way more than it's really worth, they have to keep money flowing in so they can develop actual content (hopefully, some studios really do put out the same stuff year after year). Of course many publishers are also publicly traded companies which means they are legally required to do everything in their power to make their share holders more money year over year (which is responsible for a lot of the enshitification we see in the broader tech industry, companies reach a point where the only way to make more money is to screw over their customers). Another unfortunate truth is that there are enough whales (people who spend ridiculous amounts of money of things like cosmetics) that crappy free to play games (admittedly some are surprisingly good) are both more profitable and more sustainable than core games. One of the reasons I own a Switch is because as much as I sometimes hate giving Nintendo my money (due to their anti-consumer practices) they are one of the few still pushing core games with excellent single player experiences and occasionally great couch co-op experiences.
Black 2 and White 2 will be more interesting. I found a secret myself in Black 2. In Driftveil Bridge, there are some Pokemon Centers in the background
Lets all ban together to buy this man a rocketship so he can do an out of bounds of life.
In Black 2 and White2 theres a ton of 3d moments in the story - such as SPOILERS... freezing of a town from some kind of airship
Pokemon Black was peak
that sponsorship comes out of nowhere lmao, it's like a jumpscare
Thanks for the video!! My favorite Pokémon generation! I’d love to see more, like N’s Castle, the Elite 4, Victory Road and much more! And if we’re talking about B2W2, I’d love to see Humilau and the Marine Tube!! And the Abyssal Ruins!
Man, there’s so many interesting places to see out of bounds!
You should have shown us the battle environment during rotation battles.
Low-poly-pixel art is quite underrated. When you take off the DS's interpolation pixels, this game really shines. Too bad that level of care was thrown out the window after Gen 6. Console prep really tore the series apart.
God I love the limited 3D they use in this game, it's so charming
Dude Pokemon Black is my favorite game! I loved this video so much!
That's so lovely that you allow requests in your Discord channel. That's so lovely to be so interactive and open to your audience. 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰💛
I definitely would love to see more of this. I learned so much about these games and I want to learn more.
Given how restrictive the camera is in this game it's a REAL treat to see how the 3D and 2D blend.
Bro, playing Unwavering Emotion when referencing BW is the equivalent of using I Really Want to Stay at Your House when referencing Cyberpunk. Not cool dude. Ive been crying fOR HOURS NOW
finally one of the 2 last good Pokemon games
6:02 puhzaazh 💀
Why did you put Unwavering Emotions as the background music? don't you know it's hard watching a video with tears in your eyes? (amazing video)
I’m sorry, can we just talk about that pronunciation for a second?? 6:01
Pa-sahge????
Arkham lost the poll to THIS?? 💀💀💀
He better make an origins video considering it was second place and lost to a Pokémon game each time. Nintendo fans are another breed
@@Bugplanet8840 for real dude
Idk what it says about me, but I had NO idea these were 3D games...
This is SO interesting! PLEASE do a part 2!!
This is super neat! I would have never thought it would look like this
We need a part 2 please
Part 2 featuring Black 2 would be great! Also sections a bit later in the game that are more complex.
Pokémon White was the first game in the series that I originally bought on physical media, to this day it is my favorite region and in my opinion one of the games that puts the DS to the limit in both sound and visual quality.
I really hope that the Pokémon Company doesn't screw up with the remakes like they did with BDSP, Unova deserves a complete and well-made remake with new additions like it was with FRLG/HGSS/ORAS.
i would love to see battle effects in the battle arena - does the whole space fill when you use surf, for example?
Would it move and pan relative to the environment or relative to the camera? The Pokemon don't stay in place in the spotlights during the pan out, so I think it's more likely the effects would look the same regardless of where the camera is in the environment or at least that they would fill roughly the same amount of the screen.
@@BonaparteBardithion oh, that’s a good idea! i was thinking maybe the battle arena was that big so effects like that could fill a space with more depth or something, but that makes sense :))
My favorite pokemon gen ever. I've been waiting for this for YEARS
Running out of time? You're the one making the video so it can be as long as you want
BYE HOW YOU PRONOUNCED PANSAGE
Love the merging of 2D and 3D - I had no idea! Very cool
Yes, the limited 3D is so charming
probably one of the more fascinating things to me is seeing that gamefreak was doing the forced perspective leaning thing with the overworld sprites long before a link between worlds came out, when the latter was praised a ton for that
I used to make animated stamps over on Deviant Art using the Black and White Pokemon sprite... for the longest of times I didn't realize they were not 100% one solid sprite but multiple sprites layered... Now that makes me wonder a few things about sprites are ripped from games and how that layering thing may affect sprite sheets.
I love/hate the way he says pansage. Best pronunciation of pansage ever🤣
The battle sprites were always something I was curious about.
That's seriously impressive stuff, multiple parts for so many Pokémon
I wish the main series or maybe a spin-off pokemon game continued using this graphic style, a 2D/3D mix. Cassette Beast is the demonstration that it can work
Octopath Traveler
This had way more to show than I would've expected, and it's actually kinda mindblowing!
I know this vid didnt get that many views...but please, PLEASE do a part 2. pokemon BW is amazing and this vid was amazing
The world of Unova is so interesting to me in so many ways and game development wise is always a big one! I’d love to see a lot more from the areas past Nuevema and Castelia, all of the game’s other massive bridges and the big towers around the world would be super interesting to see a pan out of, and most definitely the Pokemon League and N’s Castle. There are a few cutscenes in the game that always seemed to be done in-engine with models of stuff like Zekrom and Reshiram and it would be amazing to see pan arounds of those scenes if possible.
Loved this! And would 100% love to see an episode on Outer Wilds!
Now these are Pokémon games. You can see even if you haven't played them how much heart was put into making them.
i had no idea the amount of work and artistry that went into achieving the illusions of these environments and such... so cool omg
wait you haven't done Gen 5??? UNTIL NOW??
They were so close to reaching the style that Octopath Traveler uses! Even though I don't prefer a faithful remake, I'd make an exception if they used Octopath's style.
Seeing the Pokémon Center from the second floor feels surreal
5:10 Interesstingly, you are not even boundry breaking here and this is not out of bounds, this is literally just the other map you walked into. For some reason, the developers really liked to make these Pokemon Regions(Since Gen 1, mind you) almost entirely continuous(In their overworld, dungeonareas like caves and houses are seperate), even tho they ended up applying artificial loading screens and transitionhallsways anyways. It's really bizzare, especially considering they had to use some tricks to even make it like this.
Honestly, I wonder if someone would be up for modding in all the missing triggerlines for graphics loads, just for the lolz. Because having fewer explicit loading transitions makes a game feel more impressive, even if it really ain't.
4:11 Theory on why those are still there:
They’re about the same shape, and are spaced out perfectly to where the wheel probably starts it’s animation, thus making it the perfect spot to know when to loop.
They’re probably there for visual reference of which cars can be seen and which can’t by the camera so they knew when to load and de-load the actual carts when testing, and further more WHEN to load and de-load them! They might also have been left there for usage in case other animations need to be made later on. Basically, they’re just reference points! I’d wager, if you wore to leave only one of the animated carts, that cart would never make it all the way from the right to the left! Instead, you’d see it go the distance roughly between one cart to another needed for the animation before resetting, giving the illusion of full movement since all carts look the same! It’d be a much less taxing process than, say, loading and reloading carts constantly, and those beta carts would be perfect reference for animators to know just how much to move each cart. I wonder if it was a full wheel of static beta carts before even, and they just removed the ones normally on screen!
Now I kind of want to see the entire overworld map put together to see if anything overlaps.
these are my favorite games of all time. seeing this was really awesome. would love to see more from black and white as well as black and white 2
Watching takes me way back when I began playing Pearl and then Black they day of its releases, it always had a charm to me that made me fall in love with the franchise all over again, there they are beautifully designed and the latest games are missing that creative charm in my personal opinion.
Seeing how they were pulled off just makes me admire the developers' work even more, I want to see more of these games
ok i know this may sound dumb but the background audio of the video made me tear up it reminded me of simpler times, times that were without hardships a past life that i have no control over
Great observations, gotta love to see all the little dev tricks in action.