I'd never really though of Nintendo as innovating with hardware in order to avoid innovating on their cornerstone series. I always thought of them as just conservatives, but you're absolutely right- they keep their brands alive by adapting to their hardware innovations, not by trying to make fresh versions of old things (like Ninja Gaiden). And I didn't mean to say that I'd only like gritty reboots (although, you know, I really really would love one)- anything which shook up the formula in a meaningful way and wasn't a gimmick (Snap and Pinball come to mind...) would be great! A story, characters, just something that said "This wasn't made to be next year's garage sale, and it's not Crystal v. 3.05."
While the other games can have interesting ramifications or quirks when trying them with new hardware, Pokemon is just... not different. It doesn't make any mechanical difference whether you pick "attack" or "hyper beam" with a d-pad or a pointer or a stylus. It's the same.
This is a great point, and not something I would have thought about. As fun as it was at the time, Pokemon Stadium could never stand up on its own legs, which Nintendo seems to have realized.
I feel that Nintendo is too conservative in their staple series by regressing in the design. As time goes on, I think they aren't even keeping up to the same standards of yesteryear. I don't even want to buy a Wii U because I think I am going to be disappointed, because of my experience with Other M, Skyward Sword, and little desire to play 2D Mario games. I think it's a cop-out to dumb down the games so far because the general audience might be unable to cope with mechanics of yesteryear. Give the public a little credit? As for Pokemon, I'm really hoping that they will expand Pokemon X&Y to support competitive and persistence better with player-driven community. That's kind of my holy grail for Pokemon modern day technology. They always seem to flirt with MMO aspects and persistence with the Global Link, but then are too conservative to go the full nine. (Then again, I didn't play B&W2, so I don't know how much improvement there was on the Global Link front.) I want to have that feeling of your handpicked Pokemon team growing and sticking with you over time, but in a persistent world. That's my favorite part of playing a Pokemon game is the pride that I take in my team. While they may not be optimal in a competitive sense, it's hard not to get attached to them, at least for me. Actually, on a side tangent, that is one of the things that I think is missing in modern-day theme-park MMOs, that are item progression-based. The sense of accomplishment and history in the building of your character gets lost due to the item churn. In a persistent Pokemon MMO, I would like to see someway to progressively keep your team up to date, without swapping them on every expansion.
I'd be curious about the kinds of themes that Pokemon tries to go for - specifically the addictive, 'catch 'em all' thing - applied in a new way. Collecting and trading is a key mechanic of the series, and there's surely unique ways to go about that. Maybe instead of a rote checklist of things to catch, what about a game where they have a mix of pokemon - old, new, and freshly-created - and just don't tell you what they are, where to find them, or what they can do. It could be like you said, a primitive person in the pokeworld, or a kid who doesn't have a "professor oak" to get them on track. Either way, it would embrace more of a "thrill of discovery" kind of thing more than a simple, rote "fill out the list". Imagine just travelling around in a big, Skyrim-esque overworld brimming with hidden caves, deep lakes, and secluded forests, and you have no idea whats around the next bend in this savage, uncivilized world, like a pokemon madagascar or galapagos. You could catalogue all the new and thrilling species, and have to do more to learn about them than just catch it once - maybe engage it in combat, or stalk it to watch its habits, so you can really earn that 100% pokedex.
That would be really cool if there was also a procedural world generation so every experience is slightly different. Pokemon aren't in the same place for everyone, checklists might be different, certain Pokemon might be a little different, etc. I'm thinking of a cross of roguelike elements with Pokemon: like expanding the premise of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games.
Well, if you really wanted every experience to be different, you could use my absolute favorite algorithm ever. When the game starts you seed the environment with Pokemon, and have a loop running in the background which periodically makes a huge amount of quick battles happen, and then those (non-user) pokemon which beat other (non-user) pokemon get an appropriately large amount of the space they inhabit. In this way, you would actually see an automatic progression to more powerful pokemon, real evolution, and make it impossible for anyone to spoil the location or types for anyone else. I love the Genetic Algorithm so freaking much.
There could be all sorts of neat ways to implement the procedural content. While it might be harder with a GA, I was thinking that it might be neat to be able to share the seed. That way that people could, if they wanted to, play the same instance and share secrets for that instance. Kind of like the "password" system in the fictional .hack where 3 words seed the content so you can share the same zone between players and the WonderMail system in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.
Great idea! Having a user-accessible seed for a GA seems like a great way to create a potentially "unique" but sharable experience! Man, I needa get this 2d physics engine finished.