4 Pokémon Spin-Off Games Worth Playing (And 4 To AVOID)

The Pokemon series had a fairly torrid time on the original Wii. Two Pokepark games got a critical mauling for their repetitiveness, tasking players solely with a handful of fetch quests and overly basic minigames. They are masterpieces compared to My Pokemon Ranch, however, which is perhaps the most blatant cash grab that the series has ever churned out.

Costing 1000 Wii points ($10), the game offered no functionality other than to store up to 1000 Pokemon from Diamond & Pearl, which (perhaps deliberately) only had an in-game storage capacity of 540.

This seems like a plentiful amount, but was actually quite restricting for players wanting to catch all 493 of the available monsters and amass a collection of competitive battlers, shinies and/or event Pokemon, which became more prolific with the addition of global trading to the series for the first time.

The ‘game’ was marketed on providing the opportunity for players to see and interact with their Pokemon in full 3D, but the models utilised were hideously blocky and unappealing, contrasting horribly with player Mii models that have looked out of place in every game they’ve been featured in (such as Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros.).

It was a concept that Nintendo had explored before (with Pokemon Box on the GameCube), but thankfully one they haven’t repeated again from Black & White onwards.