Pokemon Stadium is joining Nintendo Switch Online’s Expansion Pass this April 12, 2023, but there’s some good news and bad news here.
This is Pokemon Stadium for the Nintendo 64, released in the West in 2000, but actually called Pokemon Stadium 2 in Japan.
That original Japanese only Pokemon Stadium never made it to the West for good reason. This version of the game was originally intended to be a Nintendo 64DD launch title, but was belatedly made a regular N64 32 MB cartridge release. As the victim of some last minute changes, this game could only let you play 40 of the 151 Pokemon from the Game Boy games. It was only way too hard.
The Western release of Pokemon Stadium represented many firsts for the franchise. As all the prior Pokemon games were on the Game Boy, this was actually the first fully 3D Pokemon game. This time, all 151 Pokemon were in the game and fully playable.
It was also the first Pokemon game that isn’t an RPG. The game focuses solely on the Pokemon Battles that you have in a stadium. You choose six ‘rental’ Pokemon for your team, and play with three Pokemon at a time. There are four stadium cups and a Gym Leader Castle Mode, that lets you fight the eight Kanto gym leaders as well as the Elite Four. The biggest diversion this game made to the series, however, is that the Pokemon never level up! It isn’t necessary as they all stay at the same level, even when you’re fighting your last bosses.
Pokemon Stadium is also memorable for its special Nintendo peripheral, the Transfer Pak. The Transfer Pak allowed you to take your Pokemon from your Game Boy cartridge and play them in Pokemon Stadium. You could then take those Pokemon back in after the stadium battles and they will level up in their respective Game Boy Pokemon games.
And here’s where I have to bring up the bad news. Unfortunately, this version of Pokemon Stadium does not allow you to transfer Pokemon over. For what it’s worth, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Red, and Pokemon Yellow are not available in Nintendo Switch Online anyway, so there was no preexisting and compatible Pokemon game save data to draw Pokemon from anyway. Whether that is something that Nintendo can add for the future is up in the air.
On the plus side, Pokemon Stadium will have online multiplayer, making it match up with modern day Pokemon games. One might ask why Nintendo hasn’t made new Pokemon Stadium like games lately. The thing is, stadium style battles, and especially online multiplayer battles, are already a thing in the current crop of mainline Pokemon games. This means there should be no need for a Pokemon Stadium style game.
Maybe a case can be made for a modern day version of Pokemon Stadium, maybe something made for Pokemon esports, for example. In the meantime, you can relive those old Pokemon Stadium memories in Nintendo Switch Online’s Expansion Pass a little over a week from now.
You can watch the official announcement trailer below.
