Beta Gen Summary

(if you don't know what this is, click here)

I suppose I shouldn't keep you waiting any longer. Let's look back on the dream of things that might have been.

The 69 Beta Pokemon I reviewed averaged out to 5.9/10. That's pretty good, even with the host of stupid babies dragging down the average!

Of those, 30 were rough drafts of existing Pokemon, and half of them turned out better than their final counterparts, for a net gain of 27 points. They shouldn't have second-guessed themselves!

Now, using the ratings I gave to the actual Gen 2 Pokemon, if Gold/Silver had shipped with the Beta Pokedex, it would have averaged out to 5.8/10. Which is... exactly what the actual Gen 2 got. How did that happen, when I just said the beta-versions were better overall? Well, keep in mind that because the Beta version had original Pokemon like Bellmitt and Twinz, it was missing actual Gen 2 Pokemon like Heracross and Chinchou. And it all ended up evening out.

So what's the moral, here? Apparently if the Beta had been final, it would've still been about as good. There's no need to wish for an alternate universe, here. But I do wish that we could get that top crop of Beta-mons in the real games, some day.

Now I want to see the discarded designs for all the generations...