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Description

Well, with Black and White being released, one thing comes to mind: they said they'll be exploring new concepts, and a lot will be unlike previous games. Somewhere, that stands. You have variable Gym leaders, triple battles, awesome new combining moves, all that. You even have a freaking Subway (no, not the fastfood chain). TMs no longer break!!11
Yet there's something they stuck with from gen III. Or even gen II, on some points.
Legendary Pokemon.
First, remember the legendaries from the original Red/Green/all the gen I games? How many there were of them? Did I hear "five"? If I heard "four", that'd do, too, although with the Internet, everyone knows about Mew. Still, that's sure not many to keep track of. You had your stock (well, it became stock later) legendary trio, an uber, and an event-only cute bugger (but uber as well). However, the legendary trio was just scattered around the region, waiting to be caught, with no backstory besides "hey, why I am sitting here all day? come and catch me... if you can...". The uber was an optional (well, the trio was optional as well) endgame sidequest, and the only thing you, the player, had to do, was to navigate an elaborate dungeon. Mew... Well, you could just use the Mew trick. Or, heck, just GS it in. Didn't even matter. Oh, and there was NO COVER FREAKING LEGENDARY. You could very well play through the whole game without even knowing about legendaries. They were more like neat surprises to curious players. All the versions featured one of the starter Pokemon. The differences were purely graphics (US Red/Blue were based on Japanese Blue, which was an update of Japanese Red/Green, the very original games) and catchable regular Pokemon. Except for Yellow, which gave you a fancy Pikachu (which you couldn't even fucking evolve) which followed you around, and gave you the opportunity to get all the starters from the other games, so you could shove its Pika-ass into the nearest PC box, never to be seen again. Your rival started with an Eevee, which meant no stupid type disadvantage.

Then came Gold and Silver. Many say it was the *cringe* golden years of Pokemon. Maybe, maybe. After every generation, a pack of rabid fans starts crying about how Pokemon is RUINED FOREVER!!!1111, yet again. Well, the first thing the kid sees, memories of R/B/Y still in mind, is a giant rainbow turkey/flying robo-manta ray on the cover. They remember the cover Blastoise or Charizard from the original games, and think, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I'M GETTING THIS AS A STARTER?!". And don't look at me like that, a lot of kids aged seven and up could be uttering that exact phrase in their mind. And they also remember that it didn't matter which one they did get in a long run, as long as their friend got the other one. They could still choose any starter they wanted (except from Yellow, again).

So the kid runs home, pops the game into his or her GameBoy Color (or a regular GameBoy, G/S worked on that, too, in glorious monochrome. Crystal didn't, but fuck Crystal). They wait expectantly for the point where they should choose their starter. Many deducted there would be three starters, and many decided to pick the unknown third one. They were presented with three options, none like the birds they saw on the cover. Of course, they remembered that the picture is supposed to be the fully evolved form, but still, they were surprised. Long story short, they were left wondering, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT POKeMON, AND HOW THE FUCK DO I FUCKING GET IT?!". And not in the cheery "Who's that Pokemon?" way.
The good news being that the cover Pokemon was to be obtained after completing a plot segment about the time you beat the 6th-7th Gym, at level 40, and the other one (surprise!) could be caught after a good way into Kanto, at level 70. Fucking seventy. That required a lot of Ultra Balls, patience, and a couple of good staller Pokemon. Many heads had gone bald, hair ripped out because the Master Ball was used on something else. I, personally, used my very first Master Ball on an Arbok, of all things, because that was my first time in Kanto, and I almost shat my pants when I saw it. Oh, and more on that "something else"...

You could (probably accidentally, at least the few first times) also release three legendary beasts. And how! You came to a pedestal, not unlike the one with Mewtwo, and saw three figures on it. "YAY! THREE LEGENDARIES!! WAIT, WHAT-- WHAT THE FUCK?!". And then there was none, like they say. Shit. You shrugged and forgot about the whole deal. That is, until you ran into something NOT QUITE resembling a Pidgey on, say, route 29. Level 40. And it fled on the first turn, lost forever. I know about roaming Pokemon, that you're supposed to track them on the map and all that. However, personally I never got more than one, and that only if I used the Master Ball. If I encountered the fucker, and it managed to run away, then the show was over. For some reason, I almost always got Entei on my Silver, although I remember missing a Raikou once, and catching a Suicune on Gold once, too. Only when, years later, I read the article on Bulbapedia, I got to know that you could get all three, at the cost of your social life. Seriously, Game Freak, that game mechanic is *another cringe* freaking bullshit.

Aside from that, you could get an event Celebi (although only in Japan), or, you know, GS it in. Like everyone with a GS did. But meh, whatever. It was hacked in, played with and thrown out.

Oh, and the story? Mostly the same as Gen I: fuck up Team Rocket, catch some Pokemon, fuck Misty. You are made clearly aware of the legendaries this time, but they're still not shoved into your face like some shit on a shovel.

Then they made Crystal, which was probably meh, I never cared too much. Its cover featured Suicune, and it had a slightly flashier opening, slightly fancier graphics and the very first instance of actually taking a legendary and throwing it into your face like a lump of decomposed manure. I never bothered to play through Crystal, or even read a story summary somewhere, but I saw there's a certain man with clearly homosexual characteristics, following you around and obsessing over Suicune. I'm pretty sure that at one point in the game you're forced to shove Suicune up your ass. Or his ass, doesn't matter even. Although, given you can get to play as a girl for the first time in the series, so... Ew, I won't talk about it anymore. Too gross.

Well, what's the next big thing? Gen III. Oh, Gen III...
Where to start? Ruby and Sapphire.
You get your cover legendaries. And a villainous team running after yours to boot. The catch? You get ONLY the cover legendary. And it's delivered in a now classic "IN YOUR FACE, BITCH" manner. You have no choice but to go into a cave and either beat the crap out of it or catch it. Although you an get a third one afterwards, a first in main series. That one's an aptional endgame sidequest, though. Then there's another legendary trio, which requires extremely convoluted steps to get, a real mind-breaker, almost impossible to figure out without a startegy guide . Finally, we have another roaming Pokemon, which one ALSO depends on your game. As for the unobtainium-grade legendaries, we have Jirachi, which can be obtained from a disk for a GameCube Pokemon game. So not completely unobtainable.

Then we have our obligatory third version. There, you can get all three of the main legendaries (and two teams on the loose), as well as many new, exciting legendaries, like Deoxys (which is THE most awesome legendary Pokemon bar Genesect from V). Deoxys, though, requires an event. Or GS, and this guy is worth hacking in.
The old favourites return as well, and now you can actually catch Mew, alas by using another event.
Latis from R/S can be caught, and you decide which one you want to hunt endlessly through the whole Hoenn, and which one you want to get from an event. Or GS it in.
Mew and Deoxys are carried over from FireRed/LeafGreen, which came out before Emerald. These are the first remakes, so they added some new stuff. And... Well, apparently you can catch G/S cover legendaries without that much hassle now. At least they didn't make any of the legendaries jump out on you saying "FUCK YOU IN THE FACE" in the middle of the game. You have to actually go get them.

Then we have Gen IV.
This time, it's a single team, and they run for your cover legendary. This time, they run for another legendary trio, as well. One of the trio is a roaming encounter, what fun. Then you have your cute event-only legendary, a couple of Pokemon of which one's roaming, and the other's event-only as well, and finally, you have an event-only UBER. UBER, all caps. It's a freaking GOD after all. It has kick-ass 720 in base stat total. This tops even Mewtwo, who has like 680. 720, having 120 in each. The cap on individual stats is 255. Arceus has almost a HALF of that. They probably wanted to give it 200 in each, but then they realized that the thing would assrape everything with Tackle. Oh, and it changes types, and has a move which always has 1,5x its stated power. So they never made any events for him. AFAIK, all Arceus out there are hacked. Even the one in the anime. Finally, we have Manaphy, Phione, Heatran and Regigigas. Manaphy is to be obtained from another game. Phione, well, can be just bred off Manaphy. Heatran is another "meh" legendary - not hard to get, not useless, not uber either. Though GameFreak probably planned some kind of "FUCK YOU IN THE FACE" for the player involving him, as well, as evidenced by a dummied-out ingame item. Then we have Regigigas, which SUCKS. No, his stats are great, but his speed and attack are halved for the first five turns. Which makes him nothing else but a crappy staller. Oh, and to get him, you have to bring the three legendaries from R/S/E (the ones that required a guide to get). Or you could get a fresh new one from an event, have fun training it from level 1. Then you have Rotom, a weird little thing which you just catch and forget. It's not classified as a legendary, but it sure has the legendary battle theme. Even GF was like "WTF" on that.

Platinum (aka the updated third version) brings us Giratina with a new epic form, and now it's promoted from a sidequest to another "CATCH ME!!11". Rotom gets five new forms, one of which is THIS [WARNING] have eye bleach handy. The fun part? To get these forms you need a... you guessed right, an event-only item.

Then we get remakes of Gold and Silver. Nothing really new... oh wait. If you bring ARCEUS with you, you can visit a certain place not too far into the game and get either Dialga, Palkia or Giratina for free, at level 1, ready to be your bitches for the rest of the game. However, your hacked Arceus won't work. You'll have to hack the item which is required to get Arceus to obtain a "legit" one. There's also a new kind legendary, the Spiky-eared Pichu. It's useless, don't bother. Cannot evolve and AFAIR has a fixed moveset. Fuck that shit.

Finally, we have Black and White.
Cover legendaries? Check.
Can get only one? Check.
It gets shoved into your face? Check. (And you HAVE to catch it, beat the shit out of it - and Nurse Joy patches it up and shoves it right back where it stood, saying the usual "FUCK YOU IN THE FACE". Service with a smile indeed.)
A villain team going after it? Fucking check. (although the legendary being hunted to extinction is inverted this time)
Event-only cute? Check. (Victini)
Event-only uber? Check. (Genesect)
Third member for the cover legendaries? Check. (Kyurem, although there's a shitton of speculation, and then GameFreak won't do it like all other times just to troll us)
Another legendary trio? Check. (and this time, it's FOUR of them)
The new thing here is yet ANOTHER trio, which consist of two version-exclusives and one which only shows up if you get BOTH.
And ANOTHER "cute" legendary, Meloetta. Event-only.
And finally we have two regular (as in, non-legendary) event-only Pokemon. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!

So, nothing new. Only new ways to fuck us in the face with.

Description

Well, with Black and White being released, one thing comes to mind: they said they'll be exploring new concepts, and a lot will be unlike previous games. Somewhere, that stands. You have variable Gym leaders, triple battles, awesome new combining moves, all that. You even have a freaking Subway (no, not the fastfood chain). TMs no longer break!!11
Yet there's something they stuck with from gen III. Or even gen II, on some points.
Legendary Pokemon.
First, remember the legendaries from the original Red/Green/all the gen I games? How many there were of them? Did I hear "five"? If I heard "four", that'd do, too, although with the Internet, everyone knows about Mew. Still, that's sure not many to keep track of. You had your stock (well, it became stock later) legendary trio, an uber, and an event-only cute bugger (but uber as well). However, the legendary trio was just scattered around the region, waiting to be caught, with no backstory besides "hey, why I am sitting here all day? come and catch me... if you can...". The uber was an optional (well, the trio was optional as well) endgame sidequest, and the only thing you, the player, had to do, was to navigate an elaborate dungeon. Mew... Well, you could just use the Mew trick. Or, heck, just GS it in. Didn't even matter. Oh, and there was NO COVER FREAKING LEGENDARY. You could very well play through the whole game without even knowing about legendaries. They were more like neat surprises to curious players. All the versions featured one of the starter Pokemon. The differences were purely graphics (US Red/Blue were based on Japanese Blue, which was an update of Japanese Red/Green, the very original games) and catchable regular Pokemon. Except for Yellow, which gave you a fancy Pikachu (which you couldn't even fucking evolve) which followed you around, and gave you the opportunity to get all the starters from the other games, so you could shove its Pika-ass into the nearest PC box, never to be seen again. Your rival started with an Eevee, which meant no stupid type disadvantage.

Then came Gold and Silver. Many say it was the *cringe* golden years of Pokemon. Maybe, maybe. After every generation, a pack of rabid fans starts crying about how Pokemon is RUINED FOREVER!!!1111, yet again. Well, the first thing the kid sees, memories of R/B/Y still in mind, is a giant rainbow turkey/flying robo-manta ray on the cover. They remember the cover Blastoise or Charizard from the original games, and think, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I'M GETTING THIS AS A STARTER?!". And don't look at me like that, a lot of kids aged seven and up could be uttering that exact phrase in their mind. And they also remember that it didn't matter which one they did get in a long run, as long as their friend got the other one. They could still choose any starter they wanted (except from Yellow, again).

So the kid runs home, pops the game into his or her GameBoy Color (or a regular GameBoy, G/S worked on that, too, in glorious monochrome. Crystal didn't, but fuck Crystal). They wait expectantly for the point where they should choose their starter. Many deducted there would be three starters, and many decided to pick the unknown third one. They were presented with three options, none like the birds they saw on the cover. Of course, they remembered that the picture is supposed to be the fully evolved form, but still, they were surprised. Long story short, they were left wondering, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT POKeMON, AND HOW THE FUCK DO I FUCKING GET IT?!". And not in the cheery "Who's that Pokemon?" way.
The good news being that the cover Pokemon was to be obtained after completing a plot segment about the time you beat the 6th-7th Gym, at level 40, and the other one (surprise!) could be caught after a good way into Kanto, at level 70. Fucking seventy. That required a lot of Ultra Balls, patience, and a couple of good staller Pokemon. Many heads had gone bald, hair ripped out because the Master Ball was used on something else. I, personally, used my very first Master Ball on an Arbok, of all things, because that was my first time in Kanto, and I almost shat my pants when I saw it. Oh, and more on that "something else"...

You could (probably accidentally, at least the few first times) also release three legendary beasts. And how! You came to a pedestal, not unlike the one with Mewtwo, and saw three figures on it. "YAY! THREE LEGENDARIES!! WAIT, WHAT-- WHAT THE FUCK?!". And then there was none, like they say. Shit. You shrugged and forgot about the whole deal. That is, until you ran into something NOT QUITE resembling a Pidgey on, say, route 29. Level 40. And it fled on the first turn, lost forever. I know about roaming Pokemon, that you're supposed to track them on the map and all that. However, personally I never got more than one, and that only if I used the Master Ball. If I encountered the fucker, and it managed to run away, then the show was over. For some reason, I almost always got Entei on my Silver, although I remember missing a Raikou once, and catching a Suicune on Gold once, too. Only when, years later, I read the article on Bulbapedia, I got to know that you could get all three, at the cost of your social life. Seriously, Game Freak, that game mechanic is *another cringe* freaking bullshit.

Aside from that, you could get an event Celebi (although only in Japan), or, you know, GS it in. Like everyone with a GS did. But meh, whatever. It was hacked in, played with and thrown out.

Oh, and the story? Mostly the same as Gen I: fuck up Team Rocket, catch some Pokemon, fuck Misty. You are made clearly aware of the legendaries this time, but they're still not shoved into your face like some shit on a shovel.

Then they made Crystal, which was probably meh, I never cared too much. Its cover featured Suicune, and it had a slightly flashier opening, slightly fancier graphics and the very first instance of actually taking a legendary and throwing it into your face like a lump of decomposed manure. I never bothered to play through Crystal, or even read a story summary somewhere, but I saw there's a certain man with clearly homosexual characteristics, following you around and obsessing over Suicune. I'm pretty sure that at one point in the game you're forced to shove Suicune up your ass. Or his ass, doesn't matter even. Although, given you can get to play as a girl for the first time in the series, so... Ew, I won't talk about it anymore. Too gross.

Well, what's the next big thing? Gen III. Oh, Gen III...
Where to start? Ruby and Sapphire.
You get your cover legendaries. And a villainous team running after yours to boot. The catch? You get ONLY the cover legendary. And it's delivered in a now classic "IN YOUR FACE, BITCH" manner. You have no choice but to go into a cave and either beat the crap out of it or catch it. Although you an get a third one afterwards, a first in main series. That one's an aptional endgame sidequest, though. Then there's another legendary trio, which requires extremely convoluted steps to get, a real mind-breaker, almost impossible to figure out without a startegy guide . Finally, we have another roaming Pokemon, which one ALSO depends on your game. As for the unobtainium-grade legendaries, we have Jirachi, which can be obtained from a disk for a GameCube Pokemon game. So not completely unobtainable.

Then we have our obligatory third version. There, you can get all three of the main legendaries (and two teams on the loose), as well as many new, exciting legendaries, like Deoxys (which is THE most awesome legendary Pokemon bar Genesect from V). Deoxys, though, requires an event. Or GS, and this guy is worth hacking in.
The old favourites return as well, and now you can actually catch Mew, alas by using another event.
Latis from R/S can be caught, and you decide which one you want to hunt endlessly through the whole Hoenn, and which one you want to get from an event. Or GS it in.
Mew and Deoxys are carried over from FireRed/LeafGreen, which came out before Emerald. These are the first remakes, so they added some new stuff. And... Well, apparently you can catch G/S cover legendaries without that much hassle now. At least they didn't make any of the legendaries jump out on you saying "FUCK YOU IN THE FACE" in the middle of the game. You have to actually go get them.

Then we have Gen IV.
This time, it's a single team, and they run for your cover legendary. This time, they run for another legendary trio, as well. One of the trio is a roaming encounter, what fun. Then you have your cute event-only legendary, a couple of Pokemon of which one's roaming, and the other's event-only as well, and finally, you have an event-only UBER. UBER, all caps. It's a freaking GOD after all. It has kick-ass 720 in base stat total. This tops even Mewtwo, who has like 680. 720, having 120 in each. The cap on individual stats is 255. Arceus has almost a HALF of that. They probably wanted to give it 200 in each, but then they realized that the thing would assrape everything with Tackle. Oh, and it changes types, and has a move which always has 1,5x its stated power. So they never made any events for him. AFAIK, all Arceus out there are hacked. Even the one in the anime. Finally, we have Manaphy, Phione, Heatran and Regigigas. Manaphy is to be obtained from another game. Phione, well, can be just bred off Manaphy. Heatran is another "meh" legendary - not hard to get, not useless, not uber either. Though GameFreak probably planned some kind of "FUCK YOU IN THE FACE" for the player involving him, as well, as evidenced by a dummied-out ingame item. Then we have Regigigas, which SUCKS. No, his stats are great, but his speed and attack are halved for the first five turns. Which makes him nothing else but a crappy staller. Oh, and to get him, you have to bring the three legendaries from R/S/E (the ones that required a guide to get). Or you could get a fresh new one from an event, have fun training it from level 1. Then you have Rotom, a weird little thing which you just catch and forget. It's not classified as a legendary, but it sure has the legendary battle theme. Even GF was like "WTF" on that.

Platinum (aka the updated third version) brings us Giratina with a new epic form, and now it's promoted from a sidequest to another "CATCH ME!!11". Rotom gets five new forms, one of which is THIS [WARNING] have eye bleach handy. The fun part? To get these forms you need a... you guessed right, an event-only item.

Then we get remakes of Gold and Silver. Nothing really new... oh wait. If you bring ARCEUS with you, you can visit a certain place not too far into the game and get either Dialga, Palkia or Giratina for free, at level 1, ready to be your bitches for the rest of the game. However, your hacked Arceus won't work. You'll have to hack the item which is required to get Arceus to obtain a "legit" one. There's also a new kind legendary, the Spiky-eared Pichu. It's useless, don't bother. Cannot evolve and AFAIR has a fixed moveset. Fuck that shit.

Finally, we have Black and White.
Cover legendaries? Check.
Can get only one? Check.
It gets shoved into your face? Check. (And you HAVE to catch it, beat the shit out of it - and Nurse Joy patches it up and shoves it right back where it stood, saying the usual "FUCK YOU IN THE FACE". Service with a smile indeed.)
A villain team going after it? Fucking check. (although the legendary being hunted to extinction is inverted this time)
Event-only cute? Check. (Victini)
Event-only uber? Check. (Genesect)
Third member for the cover legendaries? Check. (Kyurem, although there's a shitton of speculation, and then GameFreak won't do it like all other times just to troll us)
Another legendary trio? Check. (and this time, it's FOUR of them)
The new thing here is yet ANOTHER trio, which consist of two version-exclusives and one which only shows up if you get BOTH.
And ANOTHER "cute" legendary, Meloetta. Event-only.
And finally we have two regular (as in, non-legendary) event-only Pokemon. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!

So, nothing new. Only new ways to fuck us in the face with.