Hi, I'm Palipilino!
Nintendo 64
10/16/2025
You've probably, in the recent past, found yourself lamenting the state of the modern video game industry and the drastic over-commercialization and monetization of everything. It's worth lamenting over. You may even have a favorite series that, perhaps, you feel has fallen from grace; once a shining beacon of ingenuity and quality games, it is now delivering nothing more than a series of rushed, poorly optimized games, with the perceived motivation of maximizing profit while minimizing effort. If you thought of Pokemon for this demonstration, then you must have forgotten about Pokemon Stadium.
In an effort to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of the Pokemania craze that was sweeping the globe in the late 90s, Nintendo and Game Freak set out to make every single possible video game spin-off they could think of. Panel de Pon? Sure, slap a Pokemon skin on it. On-rails shooter? Say hello to Pokemon Snap! Trading card game? Pinball simulator? Sure, why not! The surprise is not the quantity and randomness of these spin-offs, but more so that they were generally well-made, decent-quality titles.
The one that should have been the easiest win was, indeed, Pokemon Stadium, an N64 game that allowed you to experience Pokemon battles in 3D for the first time ever. For those who had only seen their favorite monsters on the monochromatic 8-bit screen of a Game Boy, it certainly was an exciting prospect. Exciting enough to hide that the actual game is a gaping pit of monotony and frustration.
| Played For | 4h 12m |
|---|---|
| Completion Type | Gyms, Elite 4 Challenge, Most Cups |
| Favorite Minigame | Sushi-Go-Round |
| Fun Fact | This is yet another disappointment to childhood Pali :c |
Now, to be completely fair, seeing these Pokemon battle in 3D...it can't quite be understated how exciting that must have been for a lot of fans. And to give Pokemon Stadium the credit it deserves, every single Pokemon here is brimming with personality, each with their own unique animations and behaviors that, quite frankly, make modern Pokemon animations look amateurish. The level of detail (as much as can be expected from an N64 game) is important in making them feel alive, and it's something Pokemon Stadium does just about perfectly.
It's also fun to watch for exactly 2 battles before you realize there's a reason why the series tagline used to be "Gotta catch 'em all!" and not "Gotta battle 'em all!" The fights take a long time and will rarely have you strategizing beyond spamming the same (probably Psychic-type) attack over and over. Battle simulators can be compelling, but this is the bizarre and unbalanced world of Pokemon's first generation, where even the slightest amount of knowledge of the meta makes you terror incarnate to all computer opponents. And that goes even further when you consider the game is designed around you using Pokemon from your own Blue/Red/Yellow cartridge, lest you wish to be subject to rental Pokemon.
To be fair to Pokemon Stadium's rental Pokemon, while many of them are poorly optimized and don't have the moves you'd want or expect, they are at least usable and are sufficient for your needs in most of this game's cup modes. The problem with them is that, without the ability to create teams with their own move sets in-game, Pokemon Stadium completely loses any potential it has of being a battle simulator.
And since you're probably not going to be varying your imported Pokemon's moves too much, the game becomes incredibly monotonous. Just set the same team every time, do the same moves, and you'll win eventually. And if you want to battle a friend, you'll either need to resign yourself to rental Pokemon or be in the unlikely situation of both having a Nintendo 64 controller, a transfer pak, a Gen 1 Pokemon game with a working save battery (and the means of playing it), and a properly balanced team. This option probably didn't even get used that often when this game was new.
The best part of Pokemon Stadium is, of course, the part of the game that gets as far away from the battle simulation aspect as possible. It's neat that you can play your Game Boy Pokemon games on the TV through it, and if you beat some of the game's tournaments, you even unlock a turbo mode that allows you to play the Game Boy games at two or three times speed. But best of all is the mini-game collection, which is probably the reason anyone still boots this game up now. A lot of these games are pretty simple, but there are definitely a couple of memorable titles here—Rock Harden and Sushi-Go-Round are perennial favorites.
This suite of mini-games, other than being the mode that keeps Pokemon Stadium from being a complete waste of time, also provokes a pretty obvious question: with all these spin-offs, why was there never a Pokemon Party? Surely Mario and his pals could have stepped out of the spotlight for once, and it's hard to imagine it wouldn't have been a success. Oh well. If Pokemon Stadium is good for anything, it's proving that the Pokemon series and questionable decision-making have always gone hand in hand. Oh, would you look at that? They made Pokemon Stadium 2 just a year later.