This topic comes up a lot, we all groan about the Kanto Pokemon in recent dexes and I got curious enough about what the exact breakdown per generation per dex and trends over the years were. And wanted images on hand for references purposes.
Some notes:
Hoenn was the closest thing we've had to SWSH in the series history. 202 Pokemon out of 386 were available, with the rest spread so thinly over the rest of the generation. In retrospect, it is fairly impressive that this was a generation with 135 new pokemon in it. Gen 2 really gets the brunt of the transition, a mere 20 Pokemon compared with gen 1's nearly 50.
SINNOH
DP has a fairly infamously small regional dex, trying to be a throwback to gen 1's dex size I guess. I really don't get why they did this, especially in the generation where there were a ton of new evolutions & pre-evolutions. Many of them are excluded here, as are the post-game legendaries. While gen 3 is the loser here, it is kind of funny that gen 2 only got 2 more pokemon compared to last time. Gen 1 notably saw a decrease in Pokemon to accomodate gen 3 and the smaller dex size, this will be its lowest showing in the series.
Pt decided to address these issues with a massive +70 pokemon. This is all of the cross-gen additions, Rotom, Giratina and a smattering of (mostly gen 3) random Pokemon. Cresselia, Heatran, Regigigas and the mythics aside from Manaphy are still left out. They seemed to want to keep relative numbers here, gens 1-3 saw an increase of 12-14 pokemon each.
UNOVA
As mentioned before, I'm skipping BW1 to BW2's New Unova dex, which added 145 pokemon, the most added in a follow up version of any game! Surprisingly gen 3 is the winner over gen 1 here but really they're all fairly even! A couple reminders here, Victini is "000" so the dex has 301 in it, not 300; both the BW1 & BW2 dexes also had all the other mythics and legends in it too.
KALOS
Kalso has the biggest regional dex in the series at 457 (Mewtwo, the birds, the Kalos Mythics), which resulted in a fairly large representation of all the generations but jesus christ gen 1 has 111 Pokemon in it, almost a full fourth of all Pokemon in Kalos. Gen 3 & 5 at least did fairly well for themselves; Gen 5 in particular is a bit surprising since there was a trend of not having a lot of Pokemon from the gen prior (as we'll see next dex).
If there had been a "Z" version, I wonder if Kalos would have also seen a dex expansion? Those routes were full to begin with, who knows what an expansion would be like.
ALOLA
SM brought it back to 302 but it is wild to me that Gen 1 as 83 pokemon still. It's almost a third of the dex....Only gen 3 breaches 30 and gen 2 is the only one at 30. Gen 6 is really feeling the sting, it has a mere 14. The smallest showing of any generation in any regional dex, beating out DP's Gen 3 number.
USUM brought +101 Pokemon. They tried ot be a little more even keeled here, Gen 1 only got 11 and gen 4 got a mere 7 but the others got about 20 each. Still, Gen 1 still has almost a fourth of pokemon in Alola.
GALAR
Which brings us to SWSH's 400 pokedex on the dot. I think "dexit" and there being 7 other generations of Pokemon to represent helped a lot with the distribution here. Gen 1 went down to a still-a-lot but more reasonable 50 while Gen 5 surprisingly took the dex by storm with 85 pokemon while the other gens hover in the mid 30s.
It will be interesting to see how the counts are altered as Armor & Crown arrive. I expect a surge of gen 1 Pokemon across the 200 just because that will bolster gens 2 & 3
Some notes:
- I stuck to Regional Dex numbers only. A lot of games have a variety of pokemon outside of it, but regional dexes are what we usually talk about when it comes to availability and if we expanded scope like 6 of the games would have 90% of all Pokemon. This does have the funny situation of BW2 & Alola having Pokemon in their dex only available in the Post Game while DP languishes but is what it is
- I didn't do the RGBY or BW1 dexes because they are by necessity & design only gen 1/5 pokemon respectively.
- No GSC dex because the "New Pokedex" just includes all 251
- Did not do the FRLG or Let's Go dexes because the former locks you down to 151 until the post game quest and the latter only has 151 + Meltan & Melmetal, period.
- While HGSS & ORAS updated their regional Pokedexes it's very minor, just putting in (most of) the Gen 3 & 4 pre-evolutions where appropriate. Didn't seem worthwhile, especially when ORAS only added 9 gen 4 pokemon.
Hoenn was the closest thing we've had to SWSH in the series history. 202 Pokemon out of 386 were available, with the rest spread so thinly over the rest of the generation. In retrospect, it is fairly impressive that this was a generation with 135 new pokemon in it. Gen 2 really gets the brunt of the transition, a mere 20 Pokemon compared with gen 1's nearly 50.
SINNOH
DP has a fairly infamously small regional dex, trying to be a throwback to gen 1's dex size I guess. I really don't get why they did this, especially in the generation where there were a ton of new evolutions & pre-evolutions. Many of them are excluded here, as are the post-game legendaries. While gen 3 is the loser here, it is kind of funny that gen 2 only got 2 more pokemon compared to last time. Gen 1 notably saw a decrease in Pokemon to accomodate gen 3 and the smaller dex size, this will be its lowest showing in the series.
Pt decided to address these issues with a massive +70 pokemon. This is all of the cross-gen additions, Rotom, Giratina and a smattering of (mostly gen 3) random Pokemon. Cresselia, Heatran, Regigigas and the mythics aside from Manaphy are still left out. They seemed to want to keep relative numbers here, gens 1-3 saw an increase of 12-14 pokemon each.
UNOVA
As mentioned before, I'm skipping BW1 to BW2's New Unova dex, which added 145 pokemon, the most added in a follow up version of any game! Surprisingly gen 3 is the winner over gen 1 here but really they're all fairly even! A couple reminders here, Victini is "000" so the dex has 301 in it, not 300; both the BW1 & BW2 dexes also had all the other mythics and legends in it too.
KALOS
Kalso has the biggest regional dex in the series at 457 (Mewtwo, the birds, the Kalos Mythics), which resulted in a fairly large representation of all the generations but jesus christ gen 1 has 111 Pokemon in it, almost a full fourth of all Pokemon in Kalos. Gen 3 & 5 at least did fairly well for themselves; Gen 5 in particular is a bit surprising since there was a trend of not having a lot of Pokemon from the gen prior (as we'll see next dex).
If there had been a "Z" version, I wonder if Kalos would have also seen a dex expansion? Those routes were full to begin with, who knows what an expansion would be like.
ALOLA
SM brought it back to 302 but it is wild to me that Gen 1 as 83 pokemon still. It's almost a third of the dex....Only gen 3 breaches 30 and gen 2 is the only one at 30. Gen 6 is really feeling the sting, it has a mere 14. The smallest showing of any generation in any regional dex, beating out DP's Gen 3 number.
USUM brought +101 Pokemon. They tried ot be a little more even keeled here, Gen 1 only got 11 and gen 4 got a mere 7 but the others got about 20 each. Still, Gen 1 still has almost a fourth of pokemon in Alola.
GALAR
Which brings us to SWSH's 400 pokedex on the dot. I think "dexit" and there being 7 other generations of Pokemon to represent helped a lot with the distribution here. Gen 1 went down to a still-a-lot but more reasonable 50 while Gen 5 surprisingly took the dex by storm with 85 pokemon while the other gens hover in the mid 30s.
It will be interesting to see how the counts are altered as Armor & Crown arrive. I expect a surge of gen 1 Pokemon across the 200 just because that will bolster gens 2 & 3
