The Nintendo 64 is back in the spotlight after Nintendo announced an Expansion Pack for its Switch Online (NSO) service. This pack will cost an unannounced amount more than the current NSO subscription, but it will include both N64 and Sega Genesis libraries to justify the cost. Pokemon Snap is one game confirmed to be coming to NSO sometime after the Expansion Pack launches, which opens up the possibility for other spin-offs such as Pokemon Stadium.
Having one or both of the Pokemon Stadium games available via NSO would be great as both nostalgic throwbacks and a source of party entertainment thanks to their multiplayer minigames. However, unlike Pokemon Snap - a subseries that received a sequel earlier this year, it's more difficult to imagine the return of Stadium games in the modern era. There are still ways it could be done, and in fact there's potential for a new Pokemon Stadium to be the franchise's ultimate multiplayer experience.
How Pokemon Stadium Could Innovate on New Generations
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Pokemon Stadium 2 released in 2000, and its selling point was the addition of Generation 2 Pokemon from the Johto region. The most recent releases, Pokemon Sword and Shield, are part of Generation 8. In the over two decades since Stadium 2, Pokemon's roster of creatures has grown from 251 to 898 and counting.
There was another Stadium-like game called Pokemon Battle Revolution in 2006, coinciding with Diamond and Pearl. It served largely the same purpose, allowing players to transfer their partners from the 2D sprite-based DS game into fully realized 3D environments on the Wii as Stadium brought Game Boy Pokemon to life on N64. It was far more limited by not including minigames to bide time with friends, and thus was made even more obsolete by Generation 6 games X and Y bringing everything into the third dimension on 3DS.
Despite mainline Pokemon games all being in 3D now, there are still issues with the formula. For years fans have complained about a seeming lack of innovation by Game Freak in terms of updating things like battle animations. Some may like the classic feel that Pokemon maintains, but it has felt stagnant compared to other Nintendo franchises like The Legend of Zelda. With Pokemon Legends: Arceus set to release next year and shake up what a single-player adventure looks like for the franchise, a new Stadium game could be its multiplayer counterpart - one with far more budget poured into environments, models, and animations to really appease fans.
More Pokemon Stadium Minigames
If a modern-day Pokemon Stadium centers around the idea of creating a sleek multiplayer hub for battling, it should also lean on its legacy and include minigames. For its charm, Pokemon Battle Revolution was a fairly empty game, especially if players had no Pokemon to transfer over and took on Poketopia's tournaments with rentals.
There are 21 minigames included between Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, but again all of these were based on monsters from the first two Generations. The franchise's proliferation over the decades means there is no shortage of Pokemon games for any given mood, and there are minigame-centric titles like the PokePark series. Even taking that into account, PokePark 2: Wonders Beyond released in 2012 during Generation 5, and a lot of spin-offs since then have been niche or focused around a particular gimmick.
Having a new Pokemon Stadium game that offers a bevy of minigames featuring fan-favorite Pokemon both new and old would surely sell, especially if online functionality is included as with Mario Party Superstars. The franchise's single-player experience will evolve dramatically with the open-world capturing and Noble Pokemon boss battles in Legends: Arceus, so returning to Pokemon Stadium this decade with Generations of new monsters seems like one way to enhance the multiplayer experience as well.