Pokémon Gold and Silver Review

The compression story is genuinely astonishing. Fitting Johto, and then the whole of Kanto again with its own gyms and a final fight against your predecessor, onto a Game Boy cartridge required engineering that Iwata is credited with personally solving, and no sequel has attempted anything at that scale since. The additions were the ones the series kept forever. Steel and Dark types fixed the psychic dominance that broke the first generation, held items introduced real team building, breeding created a competitive scene, and the internal clock meant certain creatures only appeared at certain hours, which made the world feel like it continued without you.

The music and the sprite work are a clear leap from the original. The flaws are all balance. The level curve in Kanto is far too low, so the second region is a victory lap rather than a challenge, and the new creature designs are thin on the ground because most encounters are still first generation stock. Ambitious in a way the series never repeated.