Summary
- Team Rocket is the ultimate evil team in Pokemon, no other team comes close to their iconic outfits, dastardly deeds, and unique charm.
- Team Galactic is the closest rival to Team Rocket, presenting an interesting ethical quandary but lacking in charisma compared to them.
- A Team Rocket spin-off game with Meowth as the protagonist could bring back the soul and campiness that Pokemon has lost over the years.
Team Rocket is synonymous with Pokemon. Whether it’s Jessie, James, and Meowth in the anime, ousting Giovanni from Viridian City gym in game name Pokemon Red & Blue, or battling Sierra in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Go, Team Rocket is always there. No other evil team has come close to their iconic outfits, no other evil team has c🦩ome across quite as dastardly, no other team has the same character or charm.
The only team that comes close is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Team Galactic. The outfits are dull, the theme even worse, but at least their teꦉam mantra presents an interesting ethical quandary that forces you to reframe everything you thought you knew about collecting monsters. Team Rocket just wants money (and a talking Pikachu), but that’s relatable to modern society, where all corporations seem to have the same aims, less the Pikachu.
But we haven’t seen Team Rocket in a long time. They made a cameo as Team Rainbow Rocket in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon and keep pestering you for battles in Pokemon Go, but other than that we’ve only seen them in Gen 1 & 2 remakes. With 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Legends: Z-A sure to feature an🎃 early iteration of Team Flare, we’ll be waiting a long time before Team Rocket rears their ugly 🗹faces again.
In that case, I proffer an alternative: a Team Rocket spin-off game. I’m not thinking a Legends game, which is basically the same as the main series with a few fun twists. I’m thinking a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Detecti♊ve Pikachu-style genre explor♔ation with Meowth at the helm. Maybe it could take influence from Pokemon Ranger where you perform some strange motion to capture ot𒐪her trainers&rsquoꦚ; Pokemon?
I’ve long thought that Pokemon needs to go back to its roots (or should that be routes? Get it?) The open world experiment isn’t working with the series’ constricted development times, so 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:why not try for an HD-2D atte🤡mpt next time around? Why not 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:look to fan games for inspiration? Why not make Meowth the protagonist for once?
Team Rocket are the perfect protagonists for a Pokemon game. I don’t want one of those ‘give Pikachu a gun’ games that just trades on grittiness and violence. I want a tired Meowth training up new Team Rocket recruits who can’t help but fall into every Gruntish pitfall that trainers set for them. We don&r🎶squo;t want to save the world and beat the Elite 4, we want to stand at the end of Nugget Bridge and call Bug Catchers chumps.
Team Rocket has the perfect composition for an evil team, but they work well as protagonists, too. I’d take 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the campiness and Jessie and James fr𒈔om the anime, add in the sass of Meowth, and mix it all up with the awkward Grunt behaviour from the games. You know, loitering in caves and convening underneath casinos, that sort of thi𓆉ng. Bake well for 40 minutes, et voila. Or should that be ecco qua?
I’d go as far as to set it in a casino. Nintendo can do crime syndicates despite its family friendly approach to gaming – playing Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door for the first time this year taught me that much. We could have light management mechanics as you try to get punters through the door, offering up rare Dratini and hot TMs as prizes. But if yo🔯ur business venture hits the red, as I imagine it will in the prologue, you’ll be sent on an adventure to make up the shortfall for Giovanni.
I didn’t know until researching this article that, in the Pokemon Adventures manga, Lt. Surge🅷, Koga, and Sabrina are a part of Giovanni’s crime syndicate and even k🤡idnap Professor Oak to force him to work on the Mewtwo experiment. More fuel for the Team Rocket spinoff.
As you capture more trainers’ Pokemon, we can mix in mechanics from various other Pokemon games. Catching monsters could take the form of Pokemon Ranger weirdness or take inspiration from Gale of Darkness. Sending them back to Giovanni could gain you experience like in Pokemon Go and Let’s Go. Quests to capture a certain number of a certain Pokemon could be taken from Legends: Arceus’ Pokede♛x challenges.
It 🍸would be too dull to restrict your party to Zubat and Ekans, so I think we’d need꧋ to expand the Team Rocket team compositions a little.
You could go even further into non-mainline Pokemon games (performing reconnaissance with a Snap-esque camera or foiling do-🍬gooder attempts to shut down your operations like Detective Pikachu, anyone?), but I don’t think you need to. I think you need more traditional RPG mechanics where your Grunt levels up alongside their Pokemon, rising through the ranks to become an Officer, Elite Officer, and Executive, before finally challenging Giovanni himself for control of the organisation. Think of it like The Godfather but with a talking cat.
I’ve written a ton of silly ideas in this article, 🧜and I genuinely believe that most of them would be fun. But I think the most important takeaway is that Pokemon has lost some of its soul since becoming the global phenomenon it is today. It lacks the heart and character of the early games, before you even come to the gameplay. We need that campiness back, that satirical take on organised crime, and that feeling that a ten year old kid can take on the don. I don’t even care if there’s no winning to a Team Rocket spinoff, I don’t care if Red waltzes in and trounces you the moment you take Giovanni’s seat for your own. I just want to play as Team Rocket.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: The 24 Best Non-Leg♛endary Pokemon, R🌠anked
Legendary🏅 Pokemon are legendary for a reason, but there are plenty of non-legendary Pokemon that are just as amazing.