 Pokémon Sword and Shield will not feature all previous 800 plus Pokémon, and this news has proven controversial. The decision is not without precedent. The history of the Pokémon series is replete with instances of Game Freak deliberately leaving some pocket monsters out of their games. Restricting the Pokémon that can be caught goes back all the way to the birth of the series, as we covered in our very first video. The idea for Pokémon came when series creator Satoshi Tajiri saw two friends playing with a Game Boy Link cable, and he imagined players trading bugs across the wire. In order to encourage trading, two versions of the game, red and green, were initially released in Japan. Each of these games contained an incomplete experience. As not all Pokémon were available in each game, players needed to work together in order to complete their entire Pokédex. There was a certain amount of disappointment when the sequel games, Gold and Silver, first released. Players realised that these new games didn't include any legitimate way to catch many popular first-generation Pokémon, including the starters Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle, as well as the Legendary Birds, and several ancient fossil Pokémon. The games were designed around trading with the older Pokémon games, red, green, blue and yellow. If a player of Pokémon Gold didn't have access to one of these games, there was no way to complete the Pokédex. Then, there came the biggest upset to the series at the time. While Gold, Silver and Crystal were built around the expectation of players bringing previous Pokémon into a new game, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire was built around the opposite idea. The first main series Game Boy Advance Pokémon games didn't feature backwards compatibility, meaning that players could no longer trade back and forth with their older games. Only 200 Pokémon were available in the game's standard Pokédex, not including event Pokémon, which meant that 185 previous Pokémon were left out of the game. This situation is slightly different from the ongoing Sword and Shield debate in that the missing Pokémon were actually coded into the game. They were simply entirely inaccessible. It wasn't until over a year later that Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green were released, finally allowing players to complete their Pokédex. Even so, catching Pokémon from the second generation of games was difficult without also trading across from the GameCube game Pokémon Colosseum. Speaking of the GameCube role-playing games, this era also saw the release of Pokémon XD, Gale of Darkness, which features a plot thread that centres around the at-the-time, brand new Pokémon, Bonsley. Bonsley appeared in the game, but could not be captured, and wouldn't be available for players to use until the release of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. Much like Gold and Silver, Diamond and Pearl featured the option to let players import their Pokémon from older games. Yet again, these games didn't allow players to obtain previous generation starters and legendary Pokémon without importing them from GBA titles. Then there came Pokémon Black and White. These games again featured backwards compatibility, but the decision was made that the main story itself would not feature any familiar Pokémon from previous games. Only after beating the Elite Four and completing the game's main campaign could players catch older Pokémon, or even import Pokémon from previous games. There was also another wrinkle. Pokémon who had learnt an HM such as Cut or Fly could not be brought into the game. This is significant because Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver allowed players to catch flying or surfing Pikachu, and these could not be brought into Black or White without stripping away their special powers. With the sixth generation of Pokémon titles, Game Freak seemed to loosen up a little bit. For the first time since the Game Boy Advance era, it was possible to catch every Pokémon in the Pokédex without needing to import some monsters from previous games. The seventh generation games again required trading or uploading for some Pokémon, but things were made a little easier with the eShop 3DS re-release of the Game Boy Pokémon games. These were compatible with the Pokémon bank storage system, giving players an additional way to catch them all. Or catch most of them, at least. There have always been limitations placed on the Pokémon that can be caught in any given game. Sometimes these limitations are entirely arbitrary, designed solely to make collecting Pokémon more difficult, and in some cases tedious. If this history lesson has shown anything, it's that missing Pokémon are eventually restored as part of the release of subsequent games. No Pokémon is ever left out of the fun for long. Except, of course, for missing no. But that probably doesn't really count.