10 Pokémon Games You've (Probably) Never Played

Many people wouldn’t think of your friendly neighbourhood arcade as a place to experience the magic of Pokémon, but that’s exactly where you’ll find Pokémon Battrio.

Like most of these elusive escapades, Pokémon Battrio only graced Japan, and the game breaks away from many of the traditional and established Pokémon axioms, the medium of the arcade more than likely facilitating this. A notable change is that all Pokémon used to do battle share of pool of health rather than their own individual hit points, and the game also features cel-shaded visuals.

Now it wasn’t easy to decipher from the Japanese material I was able to find, but from what I can gather, the Player must purchase chips that contain Pokémon and place a maximum of three of them in a 4x4 grid in order to do battle, with their positions on the grid represented on screen. Pokémon that you wish to attack with are moved into the front line, and then the usual turn-based Pokémon battling commences.

Battrio was iterated on by the games Pokémon Tretta and Pokémon Ga-Olé, the latter of which borrows (at least visually) from Pokémon GO.