Favorite Battle Background

[Wukong]

Topic is in the title. Too lazy to find screenshots but I'll nominate three:

1. Platinum Cyrus Distortion World - Just a gorgeous deep blue against the cracked red ground of the platforms. Perfectly fits the atmosphere along with his foreboding theme and menacing team. Aesthetically perfect.

2. HGSS Lance Champion - The gold coloring gives the fight such a royal and prestigious feel. And I love the red and blue markings of the Pokeball below each Pokemon, just to add a bit more variety against the backdrop of the gold.

3. Black 2 Black Tower - Generally not a fan of the Gen 5 aesthetic but the background of these battles is great. Perfectly nails the modern, high-tech feel of the facility and the variety of colors, culminating in the intense red for your final set of battles leading up to Benga is very cool. The choice of colors to represent progression of difficulty as you rise through the levels was nailed really well.

 

[ninth]

I have a soft spot for B2W2 Iris' background. From the approach with the starry background to being the first battle with a full-size VS sprite, it's a visually jubilant battle and a perfect way to finish the DS era.

 

[Ashenlock]

I enjoyed the scene in BDSP's tower, the one before the town with the Day-Care. Although I am somewhat skeptical that that much plant matter would grow inside that place.

 

[R_N]

In Alola there's a classroom background that, near as I can tell plays in exactly one fight in the entire game and it's an optional post game fight you can do in the school. You'd think anywhere in the school would trigger this but somehow no. Just that one fight; presumably plans changed at some point.

It's a nice little background but the goofy specificity of it elevates it for me.

SWSH's fight against Rose is pretty cool, the whole broken eternatus containment in the background gives some nice colors and general aesthetic for the fight.

BDSP's Arceus background is top notch. It really elevates the already cool event one step further, with the setting/rising sun lined up roughly with Arceus. Gorgeous colors and vibes.

 

[Esserise]

Definitely seconding B2W2 Iris and BDSP Arceus; those were the first two to come to my mind.

Speaking of BDSP, I actually think a lot of its battle backgrounds look really nice. Volkner’s is very lively with all the moving gears and jolts of electricity. Dialga and Palkia’s respective backgrounds are a cool way to express the abstract nature of their time and space powers, and I like that the colors used for Dialga’s allude to Primal Dialga.

Alola has some great ones too, but my absolute favorite from those games is the background used for Poni Meadow. The colorful striations of the canyon wall combined with the deep green grass and beautiful purple wisterias is just aces:

One more shout-out to the battle stadiums from SwSh. Not only is the cheering crowd great for a sense of spectacle and hype, but I also like the cute little Ball Guy animations on the jumbotrons that play in response to various events like fainting or Dynamaxing.

 

[R_N]

BDSP also has a lot of battle backgrounds in general, including variants. For example, There's several "regular battle" backgrounds out on the water, mountains or grass but they'll tweak how close Mt Coronet is depending on the exact area. All the Galactic battles ostensibly take place in the same Space background, but will put in the associated planets and such for the commanders. There is a unique (?) background for the Clown you battle in the poketch company (? or whatever it is) in Jubilife lobby, of all things.
It's nice, I was taking photos of them for a while but I wound up deleting most of them.

Oh but speaking of Alola again, I really love the Water Totem battle background. The crashing waves against the rocks, the giant lake you're fighting on, I think there's a waterfall going on. Laggy, but really cool.



it's a shame battle backgrounds aren't really, like...cataloged anywhere. As this thread points out, even the DS era, where things were more abstract, they had quite the variety to them. And the SM to BDSP era has a lot of them too.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

I am a big fan of the Gym Leader battle backgrounds in Gen 6. In both X/Y and OR/AS, they are unique backgrounds that actually display the insides of the Gym.

Another one I like a lot is Cynthia's battle background in Platinum. I have been playing Platinum a lot lately and Cynthia's background is just really cool.

 

[bdt2002]

I don’t necessarily have a favorite or even a group of favorites, but I do have some points I wanted to bring up about existing backgrounds that other posts have already mentioned:

• Lance’s HGSS background is just Cynthia’s Platinum background but recolored to fit Lance. I can’t decide if I think this is surprisingly lazy or surprisingly clever- on one hand, I feel like the two-tone aesthetic of this background fits Cynthia better, but I also like the colors they chose because it pairs nicely with Dragonite’s HGSS sprite and the animation for Outrage.
• I remember I saw a comment once on YouTube from someone saying that Iris’s cinematic background from Black & White 2 reminded them of Rainbow Road from Mario Kart, and ever since then I can’t unsee it. The “battle platforms”, as I call them- the part where the Pokémon stand on or float above, I feel like those contrast a bit too much, though.
• Am I alone in thinking that BDSP might have better backgrounds than the Sinnoh remake we could have gotten? Modern Pokémon games use the environment more than actual backgrounds most of the time, and the one time when an environment is used in BDSP at Spear Pillar, it looks great.
• Conversely, many of the spin-off games, specifically the GameCube games, make excellent use of the environments for their backgrounds almost every single time. My personal favorite out of those would probably be the final battle with Greevil on Citadark Isle, but Colloseum and Battle Revolution both have great picks too, and even the Ranger games with their unique capture system have a few good ones sprinkled in across the trilogy.