History YMMV / PokemonStadium

*** Stadium 2's Little Cup similarly has no banlist beyond the requirement that a Pokémon has to be unevolved and have an evolution to be legal. While this wasn't such a major issue here as this was before Gen 4 introduced a lot of evolutions for previously single-stage pokemon, Scyther and Chansey (as this was before Gen 4 introduced Happiny as a pre-evolution) still fulfilled the criteria and are legal to be used, despite their stats being way beyond the other legal Pokémon, making the former a near-unstoppable sweeper even with its lack of good STAB moves and the latter is near-unkillable by anything but Scyther.

** Much of the animations in general are really silly, exaggerated, or over-dramatic, but that is why so many players liked them. This is most prevalent with the Gen 1 pokemon, as the series went on the animations were generally dialed back with the newer pokemon, though not to the degree that the mainline 3D games did.

* ScrappyMechanic: In Battle Revolution, each Colosseum has a rank and you go up in rank each time you beat it, where as the rank increases the opponents gradually get stronger pokemon with better moves, eventually culminating in the final 8th rank where even the basic trainers have teams full of Ubers. However except with the Stargazer Colosseum, once you clear a rank on a file the game will never let you replay an earlier rank, so eventually you'll only be able to play on the 8th rank of each Colosseum with rampant Ubers. Want to try out a team with weaker pokemon and don't want to just fight Ubers? Sorry you'll have to start a new file, programming a simple rank select was too hard for the developers apparently.
** Both Stadium 1 and 2 having no autolevel mechanic for the pokemon you use from the handheld games, so to use them in the various Cups you have to have them at very specific levels (both games' Poke Cup only allows level 50-55 pokemon, Stadium 2's Little Cup only allows level 5 pokemon, Stadium 1's Petit Cup only allows level 25-30 pokemon, and Stadium 1's Pika Cup only allows level 15-20 pokemon). Then while their Gym Leader Castles technically allow pokemon at any level, if you use any pokemon over level 50 the levels of all your opponents' pokemon will be scaled to that of your highest level pokemon, so to not be at any disadvantage here every pokemon on your team essentially has to be at the same exact level and if you're using pokemon over level 50 then you can forget about potentially using any Rental pokemon to plug in holes, as they'll remain level 50. Then the Prime Cup in both Stadiums also technically allow pokemon of any level to be used, but all of your opponents' pokemon will be at level 100 regardless of what your levels are at, so you're essentially required to level up all your pokemon to level 100 before using them there, which grinding six pokemon up to level 100 took a very long time in the Gen 1 and Gen 2 games. And since there's no auto-levelling and each Cup has such specific level requirements, you'll have to tailor make and build seperate teams for each Cup, which in the Gen 1 games can be especially painful without glitching or just cheating as it had very few [=TMs=] you could obtain more than one of, no breeding, and no Pokerus to speed up EV training. Battle Revolution was drastically more user friendly in this regard, as it would just autolevel all your pokemon over level 50 down to 50 for every Colosseum besides its own version of Little Cup, making it much simpler to build and just use your preexisting teams there.
** It can't be stated enough how awful the Rental pokemon in Stadium 2 are, the first Stadium's Rentals still left a lot to be desired to encourage using your own pokemon from the mainline games but remained usable enough to enjoy the game with them and have fun playing PVP with friends using the Rentals, this aspect of the first Stadium didn't need to be gutted to get people to play with their own pokemon.
** Battle Revolution's Rental Pass system replacing the Rental Pokemon system of the Stadium games. Instead of being able to choose from a selection of Rental Pokemon whenever, you're given a preset six pokemon to use based on if you're a boy or a girl, and to get more pokemon, you must play the Gateway Colosseum, beat an opponent to then permanently swap one of your pokemon with theirs, and then beat the Colosseum to keep that team. You can additionally get a few more Rental passes from progressing through the game where you can then swap around the pokemon you have on each Rental Pass, but you'll still only have access to a minority of pokemon. This means Battle Revolution is pretty much unplayable without having a Gen 4 game with sufficient progress on it. However since very few people would have gotten this game without having already owned a Gen 4 game, and you don't need any additional accessories like the Transfer Pak to use your pokemon, while the game's autolevelling mechanic makes it much simpler to use your own pokemon, the lack of Rentals is less of an issue than it was in the N64 Stadiums, where even most people who had a completed Gen 1/2 Pokemon game still needed to use the Rentals as they didn't have complete trained teams that met the strict level requirements.

** These games' infamous difficulty, modern players with proper competitive knowledge (and how to most exploit Gen 1's and 2's balance issues) visiting the Stadiums today with properly built teams that have good [=DVs=] and maxed out Stat EXP will probably blow through much of these games with ease and wonder how they got such a reputation for difficulty. But for a long time after Stadium 1 and 2 came out the competitive Pokemon knowledge at the time pretty came down to "just click the super effective move, and Psychic broke", while about no one knew what a DV or stat experience was beyond a vague idea of what the Stadium manuals hinted about them, and there was no easy-to-access competitive database like Smogon to find out what was most optimal, so many a player found themselves hitting brick walls when the tried and true strategy of "just fill your team up with pokemon strong against the Gym Leader's type" ended up failing when they fought Gym Leaders using actual coverage moves and Pokémon outside their type theme to cover their weaknesses, and found their own teams slacking behind the opposition with inferior stats because they unknowingly used pokemon with bad [=DVs=] and insufficient stat experience (especially with those who used the Missingno glitch or a cheating device to get a mass of Rare Candies to level up their pokemon). Then with emulators that have speedup to make raising pokemon much faster and easy cheat code insertion to do things like get duplicates of one-time [=TMs=] much easier, it takes so much less work nowadays to build good teams for Gym Leader Castle and each of the Cups when playing on emulators, whereas back in the day players would need to spend tens to hundreds of hours grinding their pokemon's levels and Stat EXP up on the actual hardware, and if they wanted more of a one-time available TM they would have to abuse glitches, get a cheating device, or play through another Pokemon cartridge to get another copy of the desired [=TMs=]. Not to mention that difficulty romhacks for every Pokemon game are commonplace now, so people who played such are already acclimated to even more difficult Pokemon games. Those trying to beat the Stadiums with just the Rentals though will still have a rough time, especially in Stadium 2.

* SequelDifficultySpike: The first game can be beaten without too much issue by using only Rentals; while they were significantly weaker than what you could build up in the main games, they still had decent enough stats and usable movesets. Additionally, the Rentals would have different movesets for each Cup and Gym Leader Castle.[[note]]For instance, Slowbro knows Psychic/Surf/Withdraw/Disable for Poké Cup and Surf/Dig/Headbutt/Disable for Gym Leader Castle[[/note]] However, the second game makes many of the Rentals much worse, as fully evolved Pokémon have worse stats, and are intentionally given awful movesets with outright inferior moves to its preevolutions[[note]]for example, the rental Feraligatr has '''''Water Gun''''' as its STAB move[[/note]] or given one really strong but inaccurate move, and three useless ones[[note]]for example, the rental Zapdos has Thunder, followed by Detect, Rock Smash, and Flash). So if you're using Rentals in ''Stadium 2'', you have to pick between weak Pokémon with good moves, or strong pokemon with awful moves; either choice putting you at a massive disadvantage when fighting opponents using strong Pokémon with good movesets. Plus almost every Pokémon shares the same moveset among battle game modes, be it Stadium Cup or Gym Leader castle, with the only exceptions being in Prime Cup/Anything Goes, where 16 Rental Pokémon will have different movesets[[note]] (Golduck, Primeape, Hitmonlee, Tauros, Articuno, Dragonair, Dragonite, Croconaw, Quagsire, Girafarig, Gligar, Heracross, Sneasel, Miltank and Suicune, plus Rental Pikachu will know Surf if used in Prime Cup R-2, bringing the count to 17.)[[/note]]. The only other exceptions are Challenge Cup, where every team and moveset you get is random, and Little Cup.
** In addition to Rental Pokemon being a lot worse, opponents in Stadium 2 are also considerably harder right from the get-go, with more varied and better teams, having better moves with better type coverage, better strategies, held items that can screw you over by negating status effects you put on them, introducing more elements of strategy and more potential to be screwed over by luck with luck-based items, and the simply fact that Gen II is just a more balanced experience than the easily exploitable Gen I. Getting through this game with even trained teams that have good movesets and maxed out [=EVs=] can be hard, to say nothing about the even harder Round 2, where trying to do it with Rental Pokémon goes from challenging to near-impossible without some damn good (and cheesy) strategies and a fair bit of luck. The Prima guide for the game outright states that the rentals for the Round 2 Master Cup cannot match the power of the Pokémon in the cup; half the Rental Pokémon they were able to beat it with used Destiny Bond, Counter/Mirror Coat, or explosive moves to do so, which came to be the prominent strategy for Rental-only speedruns; use a decent Rental Pokémon or two that snuck through with good moves (like Fearow) and then fill the rest of your team up with Mons that have one of the aforementioned moves.

* SurpriseDifficulty: The Pokemon series is infamous for having really easy games and having boss trainers suffering from blatant PoorPredictableRock and ArtificialStupidity, with the Gym Leaders and Elite Four being easily beaten by sweeping them with a pokemon that has a type advantage over their predominantly mono-typed teams or just going in with an overlevelled pokemon and stomping them regardless of typing, or failing that they could abuse items in battle to win nearly any match they would have lost normally. So players were in a world of shock when they had to fight on equal levels, fight trainers subverting their themes, fight trainers with actual coverage moves to handle their weaknesses, deal with actual strategies, deal with only being able to play on the Set battle mode so they couldn't get free switches to an advantageous mon after [=KOing=] the opponent, not have items to fall back on in losing battles, and deal with AI that actually switched their pokemon out when against bad matchups. Everyone remembers the first time they went into Lt. Surge's gym with a team of Ground pokemon and then got annihilated by his Raichu and Pikachu with Surf. It's probably part of why the Stadiums have such a daunting reputation; most Pokemon players just weren't prepared for such a big spike in difficulty from the mainline games they're used to.

*** Even in ''Pokemon Stadium 2'', the Male Cooltrainer will use a Mew too, but in both rounds 1 & 2, he is hard as hell to defeat. If you use a Dragon type Pokemon, Mew will more than likely use Blizzard that will almost always strike, despite the 80% accuracy and OneHitKill it no matter what and even trying to counter it with a Wobbuffet is all but fruitless, as he'll just switch it out for his Tyranitar that'll use Crunch to take it out quickly. Along with whatever else he'll chose, which can range from a Starmie and a Umbreon, he's the vein of all trainers in the Prime Cup.

*** Speaking of the Pika Cup, the semi-final opponent Lass, can grind you on your nerve as she has Tentacruel, Arcanine, and Gyarados; all of them which are hard to out-speed, and in addition that Tentacruel has Wrap that will prevent you the chance to attack. But it got worse in R2, as the two of them know Dragon Rage, a move that precisely takes 40-HP which every rental Pokemon can be taken two times by that. Pray that your Starmie can one-KO them, or you are doomed with the worst lucks imaginable.

** The Little Cup in round 2 is an absolute nightmare, especially when compared to round 1. Rex aside, who has a team that consists of Pokemon that have move combinations that are impossible to obtain, the 3rd and 6th trainers love to make sure that you can't attack them period. The 3rd trainer will constantly use Swagger to increase your attack by 100% with each use and confuse you so you'll take much more damage than normal if you attack yourself, which essentially turns the battle into a LuckBasedMission. The 6th trainer, Swimmer Cora, takes this UpToEleven as all of her Pokemon know the move Attract to keep any Pokemon of the opposite sex from attacking half the time, but that's just the start of the hell. Half of her team also knows Thunder Wave to paralyze you, keeping you from attacking first and from attacking at all a quarter of the time. Then on top of the 50% chance of not attacking with Attract and 25% chance of not attacking with Paralysis, each of her Pokemon knows a move that have a chance of making your Pokemon flinch, adding another 20% chance into the mix that you won't be able to act if you're slower, which means if you're inflicted by all three of those effects you'll only have a 30% chance to make a move at all each turn. If you don't avoid the status and luck isn't on your side you'll lose at least one continue on her, and if your luck goes really bad, you may end up using all of them on her.
* VindicatedByHistory: When it first came out, ''Pokemon Battle Revolution'' was criticized for its lack of content compared to the other Stadium games. However, as of recently, the game has become slightly more beloved for having some of the most expressive animations out of any Pokemon game, especially compared to the 3DS titles. It's frequently favorably compared to ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' in terms of animation quality, with people lamenting that a full-fledged home console Pokemon game has worse animations than a spinoff game from multiple generations ago did. This is especially ironic because ''Battle Revolution'' was originally criticized for being a case of NeverTrustATrailer, as the end result was a significant downgrade (the producers even promised destructible environments, the initial trailers for instance showcased Groudon launching a hyperbeam which left a huge molten trail along the ground while also blowing out the far side of the colosseum).

* BreatherBoss: In Stadium 1's Poke Cup, there's the Jugglers and Tamers in all ranks in both Rounds. The Juggler may use some scary pokemon but for most of his mons their only attacking move is the completely random Metronome, which most of the time is going to get him something subpar or nigh-useless, and if his pokemon have anything else it'll just be the easy-to-play around Counter (just don't attack him with Normal and Fighting moves), the [[UselessUsefulSpell horribly unreliable]] FixedDamageAttack Psywave, and the impractial Dream Eater that can't work if your pokemon isn't asleep. Then the Tamer's gimmick is that all his pokemon will hyperfixate on one strategy shared between them all and none of them will even have full movesets, and this strategy is often something easily countered (such as his whole team relying on trapping moves when simple switching will make them deal minimal damage until they miss) or outright impractical (such as his whole team relying on weak flinching moves when they'll only flinch 20-30% of the time). This is especially noticeable with the Tamers in Round 2 when they're the semi-final opponent. These two trainers should pretty much always be a source of free continues for the players, which is especially appreciated with the Tamers in Round 2 as their semi-final placement usually ensures the player will go into the final battle against the Psychic with at least one continue.
* CommonKnowledge: Whenever discussion about the Stadium games comes up, one can expect much of it to center around how much these games supposedly cheat and how the RNG gets rigged against the player. Some opponents do cheat, as in having some pokemon with certain moves or move combinations that are impossible for the pokemon to legitimately learn, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as the general fandom would have one believe, and there's nothing that gives the AI the ability to read the players moves. As for the RNG being in the AI's favor, there's nothing in the game's coding that alters the RNG for the player nor the AI, the stadium games are simply notoriously random game where you will inevitably run into bad luck at times.
* ContestedSequel: Battle Revolution. On one hand it has the much superior Gen 4 battle mechanics (which is where the Pokemon battling mechanics GrewTheBeard and became modern), so the actual battling itself is a lot better and you and your opponents got way more that you can do in terms of strategy, and more unique battle rules were introduced to play under, while you also got more rewards like valuable items and [=TMs=] to transfer to your DPP/HGSS files. Plus it's a lot easier to actually use your own pokemon, as besides not requiring a Transfer Pak, the game will auto-level all your pokemon over level 50 down to 50 for all its Colosseums besides the Little Cup, so you don't need to have your pokemon at very specific levels to use them nor have to level them up to level 100 like the Prime Cup required in the two Stadium games. However it's missing '''''a lot''''' of the content the original Stadiums had, such as no Gym Leader Castle nor any of the characters from the actual games, no Rental pokemon system, no Laboratory, no Academy to get in-depth information about each pokemon's capabilities and the battle mechanics, and most bemoaned of all, no minigames. Also while the game can still have some difficult battles, it's significant easier, as the AI is a lot worse and will never switch their pokemon out at all, while a big appeal of the original two Stadiums is their difficulty and having actually competent AI in a Pokemon game. Plus the inability to play on easier ranks you already beaten in Colosseums as covered in the ScrappyMechanic section is an asinine restriction that severely limits how you can play as you progress through the game. It's still an enjoyable game and you'll have more fun here than you will in the handheld games' Battle Tower, but it's definitely a step down as an overall package than the original two Stadiums.
* EvenBetterSequel: Stadium 2 brushed up on the presentation and rough edges, has quite a bit more content, it features a lot more interesting and varied battles, and of course being Gen 2 the battling itself is considerably more balanced and there's a lot more strategy to utilize. However this is if you have your own Gen 2 Pokemon game and built up your own competent teams to use, without such [=PS2=] can be near-unplayable at times with its severely gimped Rental pokemon without relying on very specific strategies, whereas the first Pokemon Stadium was still a very beatable and enjoyable game with its halfway-competent Rentals that had a decent variety of viable picks.

** In Stadium 1's Pika Cup, Dragon Rage is broken. Since the pokemon in this Cup are at level 15-20, everything but Chansey or a higher-levelled Lapras and Wigglytuff will get 2HKO'd by a move that always deals 40 damage no matter what, and with some weaker pokemon they might even get OHKO'd by it. The move essentially has no counterplay and nothing but Chansey with Soft-boiled can switch in to a Dragon Rage user, while it'll just let pokemon straightup ignore type disadvantages. Plus you get Dragon Rage as a TM in Gen 1, so you don't even need to exploit Gen 2 tradebacks to get a Dragon Rage user at such low levels.
*** In Stadium 1's Petit Cup even though the levels are substantially higher at 25-30, with it only being restricted to first stage pokemon and weak single-stage pokemon, there are very few pokemon that can have more HP than 80, meaning Dragon Rage is busted in this Cup too as a perfect coverage move that will guarantee 2HKO nearly every mon.
** The Pika Cup can additionally be absolutely snapped in half by using a GameBreaker Gen 1 pokemon like Alakazam or Tauros as your sole level 20 mon; at such low levels every additional level provides a significant advantage (a mon at level 20 is about 30ish% stronger than it is at level 15), so combine that amplification of power with the broken mons who lack real counters and you could feasibly solo the entire Cup with them as the vast majority of opposing pokemon you fight can't even survive a turn with them. To take it even farther you can exploit tradebacks from the Gen 2 games to get level up moves at legal levels for the Pika Cup that in Gen 1 a pokemon couldn't learn in time (such as Recover for Starmie) and to get broken pokemon who you normally wouldn't be able to get at legal levels in Gen 1 for the Pika Cup (such as Snorlax). Abusing this strat will be an easy way to get terrible or outright useless pokemon like the unevolved bugs and Magikarp into the Hall Of Fame, as you can fill your team up with mons you'll never use when you can rely on one pokemon to handle about everything and so won't actually need a real full team.
** In Stadium 1's Petit Cup, Abra is essentially a mini-Alakazam in a meta where all the broken Normal type pokemon are gone, there are no other strong Psychic types, Zapdos and Jolteon don't exist, and the strong Water types aren't around either, making it a terrifying force with no real competition. To explain, Abra is one of the only two Psychic types legal here (the other being Exeggcute who has much less impressive relative stats than its GameBreaker evolution Exeggutor has), while Abra possesses a base Special stat higher than most fully-evolved pokemon at 105, which is completely ludicrous compared to what the other first stage and weak single-stage pokemon legal in the Cup have and nothing but the type-disadvantaged Gastly of the legal mons have a base Special that comes remotely close. Then it's also tied with Meowth and Pikachu for being the second fastest pokemon in the Cup, with only the weak Voltorb outspeeding it. Its very powerful STAB Psychic is resisted by nothing in the Cup but itself and Exeggcute, and a strong Abra will OHKO and 2HKO everything but itself with Psychic. Then if you abuse tradebacks from the Gen 2 games, you can get it the elemental punches too to hit many mons super effectively and OHKO them when Psychic comes up short of doing so. And being Stadium you can give it Substitute too to protect it from all status moves against pokemon that might survive a hit like Exeggcute. The only things that can really stop Abra is a Voltorb out-speeding and paralyzing it with Thunder Wave or sacrificing itself with Explosion, or a Meowth with a better Speed DV and stat experience (or winning the speed tie if they're both maxed out) hitting it with its powerful critical STAB Slash to exploit Abra's near non-existent physical durability, but then an Abra user can easily cover that and pack a Geodude that Voltorb can't touch or a Gastly that is immune to Explosion and can't be touched by Meowth. The developers seemingly recognized this though and the Rental Abra has an awful moveset with no Special moves (having the terrible FixedDamageAttack Psywave and the completely random Metronome), so if you want to break Petit Cup with Abra you'll have to train up your own.
** In Battle Revolution's Sunny Park Colosseum where the Little Cup is ran, it allows only pokemon that can evolve and are at their lowest evolution stage, but it has no banlist beyond that. If you want to make it a complete cakewalk, you can use pokemon that were given evolutions in later Gens but were originally made as decently strong single-stage pokemon, so pokemon like Scyther, Sneasel, Misdreavus, and Tangela are fully legal to use here when with their stats they're essentially ubers compared to the vast majority of first stage unevolved pokemon. It also makes no restriction for the Berry Juice item, which when pokemon are at level 5, the 20 HP it heals is a full life recovery the instant any pokemon's health drops below half.
*** Stadium 2's Little Cup similarly has no banlist beyond the requirement that a pokemon has to be unevolved and have an evolution to be legal. While this wasn't such a major issue here as this was before Gen 4 introduced a lot of evolutions for previously single-stage pokemon, Scyther and Chansey (as this was before Gen 4 introduced Happiny as a pre-evolution) still fulfilled the criteria and are legal to be used, despite their stats being way beyond the other legal pokemon, making the former a near-unstoppable sweeper even with its lack of good STAB moves and the latter is near-unkillable by anything but Scyther.

* GodDamnedBoss: Any trainer whose strategy relies on boosting evasion with Double Team and Minimize, especially when combined with Toxic to slowly drain your mon's health and durability-boosting moves like Reflect and Light Screen. Usually their pokemon aren't very threatening and often you can just beat them down taking little to no damage before they get enough evasion boosts in, but have some bad luck early on and they can become long drawn out and boring battles that hinge on you [[LuckBasedMission getting lucky with RNG rolls enough times to win before they whittle you down or you run out of power points]]. And the intended counterplay to these moves is using the moves designed to [[AlwaysAccurateAttack never miss]] or the evasion-nullifying moves, which for the former all but Aura Sphere have no more than a mediocre 60 base power, and for the latter they're a [[UselessUsefulSpell waste of a moveslot]] 99% of the time, so you're just hurting yourself for the rest of the battles if you try to have counterplay to this strat on your team. It's at its absolute worst in Stadium 1, where the only evasion-nullifying move was Haze, which was limited in distribution to only Vaporeon and crappy Poison types, and the only never-miss move was the 60 power Normal-type Swift, so counterplay that isn't praying to the RNG is essentially nonexistent. To make matters worse, ''every pokemon'' that can learn [=TMs=] can be taught Double Team, so these evasion trainers can try this strat with any pokemon, including the very bulky ones and those with recovery moves to make things even more drawn out, and this means even if you do include a pokemon with anti-evasion moves on your team there's no guarantee it won't be at a type disadvantage that makes it incapable of beating the evasion user anyway.

* VindicatedByHistory: When it first came out, ''Pokemon Battle Revolution'' was criticized for its lack of content compared to the other Stadium games. However, as of recently, the game has become slightly more beloved for having some of the most expressive animations out of any Pokemon game, especially compared to the 3DS titles. It's frequently favorably compared to ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' in terms of animation quality, with people lamenting that a full-fledged home console Pokemon game has worse animations than a spinoff game from multiple generations ago did. This is especially ironic because ''Battle Revolution'' was originally criticized for being a case of NeverTrustATrailer, as the end result was a significant downgrade (the producers even promised destructible environments).

* VindicatedByHistory: When it first came out, ''Pokemon Battle Revolution'' was criticized for its lack of content compared to the other Stadium games. However, as of recently, the game has become slightly more beloved for having some of the most expressive animations out of any Pokemon game, especially compared to the 3DS titles. It's frequently favorably compared to ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' in terms of animation quality, with people lamenting that a full-fledged home console Pokemon game has worse animations than a spinoff game from multiple generations ago did.

* CommonKnowledge: Whenever discussion about the Stadium games comes up, you can expect much of it to center around how much these games supposedly cheat and how the RNG gets rigged against you. Now some opponents do cheat as in having some pokemon with certain moves or move combinations that are impossible for the pokemon to legitimately learn, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as the general fandom would have you believe, and there's nothing that gives the AI the ability to read your moves nor make their move after you already made yours, the AI just has some randomization with their move choices to try simulating a real player's prediction and sometimes that means the AI will get a really good "prediction". As for the RNG being in the AI's favor, there's nothing in the game's coding that alters the RNG for the player nor the AI, the stadium games are simply notoriously random game where you will inevitably run into bad luck at times.

* CommonKnowledge: Whenever discussion about the Stadium games comes up, you can expect much of it to center around how much these games supposedly cheat and how the RNG gets rigged against you. Now some opponents do cheat as in having some pokemon with certain moves or move combinations that are impossible for the pokemon to legitimately learn, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as the general fandom would have you believe, and there's nothing that gives the AI the ability to read your moves nor make their move after you already made yours, the AI just has some randomization with their move choices to try simulating a real player's prediction and sometimes that means the AI will get a really good "prediction". As for the RNG being in the AI's favor, there's nothing in the game's coding that alters the RNG for the player nor the AI, Pokemon is simply a notoriously random game where you will inevitably run into bad luck at times, and because of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias negativity bias]], people will tend to remember all the times the RNG screwed them and not the times the RNG screwed the AI, especially since often the player will not have needed good luck to win (e.g. you're not going to care about all the times you landed an unnecessary crit on a pokemon you were [=OHKOing=] anyway nor all the times the AI's Double Team did nothing to stop you, but '''''you will''''' remember the times the AI landed a crucial crit when you had the match won otherwise and that time you couldn't touch the AI at all after they used Double Team, especially if you had no continues left and that bad luck made you have to start a Cup all over).

** The Spanish announcer in the ''Stadium'' games is even worse/better. The Spanish translations use the English Pokémon names, and he [[NoPronunciationGuide manages to mispronounce every single one of them]]. It's more SoBadItsGood than anything. ''Battle Revolution'' gets a new announcer who is much better at pronunciation.

** These games' infamous difficulty, modern players with proper competitive knowledge (and how to most exploit Gen 1's and 2's balance issues) visiting the Stadiums today with properly built teams that have good [=DVs=] and maxed out Stat EXP will probably blow through much of these games with ease and wonder how they got such a reputation for difficulty. But for a long time after Stadium 1 and 2 came out the competitive Pokemon knowledge at the time pretty came down to "just click the super effective move, and Psychic broke", while about no one knew what a DV or stat experience was beyond a vague idea of what the Stadium manuals hinted about them, and there was no easy-to-access competitive database like Smogon to find out what was most optimal, so many a player found themselves hitting brick walls when the tried and true strategy of "just fill your team up with pokemon strong against the Gym Leader's type" ended up failing when they fought Gym Leaders using actual coverage moves and pokemon outside their type theme to cover their weaknesses, and found their own teams slacking behind the opposition with inferior stats because they unknowingly used pokemon with bad [=DVs=] and insufficient stat experience (especially with those who used the Missingno glitch or a cheating device to get a mass of Rare Candies to level up their pokemon). Then with emulators that have speedup to make raising pokemon much faster and easy cheat code insertion to do things like get duplicates of one-time [=TMs=] much easier, it takes so much less work nowadays to build good teams for Gym Leader Castle and each of the Cups when playing on emulators, whereas back in the day players would need to spend tens to hundreds of hours grinding their pokemon's levels and Stat EXP up on the actual hardware, and if they wanted more of a one-time available TM they would have to abuse glitches, get a cheating device, or play through another Pokemon cartridge to get another copy of the desired [=TMs=]. Not to mention that difficulty romhacks for every Pokemon game are commonplace now, so people who played such are already acclimated to even more difficult Pokemon games. Those trying to beat the Stadiums with just the Rentals though will still have a rough time, especially in Stadium 2.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: With the current main series of handheld games now featuring full 3D battles that exceed the quality of these games' graphics, it might be difficult for someone only familiar with the modern games to see the appeal of the Stadium-type games.

** The announcer is either the shining example of this, or he's TheScrappy. In ''Battle Revolution'', poisoning will cause him to say "___ is losing its health!" Mind that he says the last three words in a very dramatic way, as if he's about to break into tears.

* CommonKnowledge: Whenever discussion about the Stadium games comes up, you can expect much of it to center around how much these games supposedly cheat and how the RNG gets rigged against you. Now some opponents do cheat as in having some pokemon with certain moves or move combinations that are impossible for the pokemon to legitimately learn, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as the general fandom would have you believe, and there's nothing that gives the AI the ability to read your moves nor make their move after you already made yours, the AI just has some randomization with their move choices to try simulating a real player's prediction and sometimes that means the AI will get a really good "prediction". The AI's pokemon additionally do not have stats better than what the player can get, in fact the stats of most opponents' pokemon are quite lackluster even in Round 2, just the majority of players were either using the Rentals or had no idea about [=DVs=] and Stat EXP, so they didn't know their own pokemon had terrible stats (especially since most players back then tended to use a ton of glitched/cheated Rare Candies to level up their pokemon quickly and didn't bother using vitamins, which tended to leave their pokemon with a lackluster amount of Stat EXP). As for the RNG being in the AI's favor, there's nothing in the game's coding that alters the RNG for the player nor the AI, Pokemon is simply a notoriously random game where you will inevitably run into bad luck at times, and because of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias negativity bias]], people will tend to remember all the times the RNG screwed them and not the times the RNG screwed the AI, especially since often the player will not have needed good luck to win (e.g. you're not going to care about all the times you landed an unnecessary crit on a pokemon you were [=OHKOing=] anyway nor all the times the AI's Double Team did nothing to stop you, but '''''you will''''' remember the times the AI landed a crucial crit when you had the match won otherwise and that time you couldn't touch the AI at all after they used Double Team, especially if you had no continues left and that bad luck made you have to start a Cup all over).

* CommonKnowledge: Whenever discussion about the Stadium games comes up, you can expect much of it to center around how much these games supposedly cheat and how the RNG gets rigged against you. Now some opponents do cheat as in having some pokemon with certain moves or move combinations that are impossible for the pokemon to legitimately learn, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as the general fandom would have you believe, and there's nothing that gives the AI the ability to read your moves nor make their move after you already made yours, the AI just has some randomization with their move choices to try simulating a real player's prediction and sometimes that means the AI will get a really good "prediction". The AI's pokemon additionally do not have stats better than what the player can get, in fact the stats of most opponents' pokemon are quite lackluster even in Round 2, just the majority of players were either using the Rentals or had no idea about [=DVs=] and Stat EXP, so they didn't know their own pokemon had terrible stats (especially since most players back then tended to use a ton of glitched/cheated Rare Candies to level up their pokemon quickly and didn't bother using vitamins, which tended to leave their pokemon with a lackluster amount of Stat EXP). As for the RNG being in the AI's favor, there's nothing in the game's coding that alters the RNG for the player nor the AI, Pokemon is simply a notoriously random game where you will inevitably run into bad luck at times, and because of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias negativity bias]], people will tend to remember all the times the RNG screwed them and not the times the RNG screwed the AI, especially since often the player will not have needed good luck to win (e.g. you're not going to care about all the times you landed an unnecessary crit on a pokemon you were [=OHKOing=] anyway nor all the times the AI's Double Team did nothing to stop you, but '''''you will''''' remember the times the AI landed a crucial crit when you had the match won otherwise and that time you couldn't touch the AI at all after they used Double Team, especially if you had no continues left and that bad luck made you have to start a Cup all over).l
* ContestedSequel: Battle Revolution. On one hand it has the much superior Gen 4 battle mechanics (which is where the Pokemon battling mechanics GrowingTheBeard and became modern), so the actual battling itself is a lot better and you and your opponents got way more that you can do in terms of strategy, and more unique battle rules were introduced to play under, while you also got more rewards like valuable items and [=TMs=] to transfer to your DPP/HGSS files. Plus it's a lot easier to actually use your own pokemon, as besides not requiring a Transfer Pak, the game will auto-level all your pokemon over level 50 down to 50 for all its Colosseums besides the Little Cup, so you don't need to have your pokemon at very specific levels to use them nor have to level them up to level 100 like the Prime Cup required in the two Stadium games. However it's missing '''''a lot''''' of the content the original Stadiums had, such as no Gym Leader Castle nor any of the characters from the actual games, no Rental pokemon system, no Laboratory, no Academy to get in-depth information about each pokemon's capabilities and the battle mechanics, and most bemoaned of all, no minigames. Also while the game can still have some difficult battles, it's significant easier, as the AI is a lot worse and will never switch their pokemon out at all, while a big appeal of the original two Stadiums is their difficulty and having actually competent AI in a Pokemon game. Plus the inability to play on easier ranks you already beaten in Colosseums as covered in the ScrappyMechanic section is an asinine restriction that severely limits how you can play as you progress through the game. It's still an enjoyable game and you'll have more fun here than you will in the handheld games' Battle Tower, but it's definitely a step down as an overall package than the original two Stadiums.

* AccidentalInnuendo: One of the Team Rocket members in ''Stadium 2'' has a Wobbuffet nicknamed... Wobbu'''fap'''. It's ''even worse'' considering what Wobbuffet looks like.
** A Swimmer named Cora in Little Cup Round 1 has a Cleffa named Cleffap. Remember that it's a [[{{Squick}} baby Pokémon]].

* ContestedSequel: Battle Revolution. On one hand it has the much superior Gen 4 battle mechanics (which is where the Pokemon battling mechanics GrewTheBeard and became modern), so the actual battling itself is a lot better and you and your opponents got way more that you can do in terms of strategy, and more unique battle rules were introduced to play under, while you also got more rewards like valuable items and [=TMs=] to transfer to your DPP/HGSS files. Plus it's a lot easier to actually use your own pokemon, as besides not requiring a Transfer Pak, the game will auto-level all your pokemon over level 50 down to 50 for all its Colosseums besides the Little Cup, so you don't need to have your pokemon at very specific levels to use them nor have to level them up to level 100 like the Prime Cup required in the two Stadium games. However it's missing '''''a lot''''' of the content the original Stadiums had, such as no Gym Leader Castle nor any of the characters from the actual games, no Rental pokemon system, no Laboratory, no Academy to get in-depth information about each pokemon's capabilities and the battle mechanics, and most bemoaned of all, no minigames. Also while the game can still have some difficult battles, it's significant easier, as the AI is a lot worse and will never switch their pokemon out at all, while a big appeal of the original two Stadiums is their difficulty and having actually competent AI in a Pokemon game. Plus the inability to play on easier ranks you already beaten in Colosseums as covered in the ScrappyMechanic section is an asinine restriction that severely limits how you can play as you progress through the game. It's still an enjoyable game and you'll have more fun here than you will in the handheld games' Battle Tower, but it's definitely a step down as an overall package than the original two Stadiums.

* EvenBetterSequel: Stadium 2 brushed up on the presentation and rough edges, has quite a bit more content, it features a lot more interesting and varied battles, and of course being Gen 2 the battling itself is considerably more balanced and there's a lot more strategy to utilize. However this is if you have your own Gen 2 pokemon game and built up your own competent teams to use, without such [=PS2=] can be near-unplayable at times with its severely gimped Rental pokemon, whereas the first Pokemon Stadium was still a very beatable and enjoyable game with its halfway-competent Rentals.

* BreatherBoss: In Stadium 1's Poke Cup, there's the Jugglers and Tamers in all ranks in both Rounds. The Juggler may use some scary pokemon but for most of his mons their only attacking move is the completely random Metronome, which most of the time is going to get him something subpar or nigh-useless, and if his pokemon have anything else it'll just be the easy-to-play around Counter (just don't attack him with Normal and Fighting moves), the [[UselessUsefulSpell horribly unreliable]] FixedDamageAttack Psywave, and the impractial Dream Eater that can't work if your pokemon isn't asleep. Then the Tamer's gimmick is that all his pokemon will hyperfixate on one strategy shared between them all and none of them will even have full movesets, and this strategy is often something easily countered (his whole team relying on trapping moves when simple switching will make them deal minimal damage until they miss) or outright impractical (his team relying on weak flinching moves when they'll only flinch 20-30% of the time). This is especially noticeable with the Tamers in Round 2 when they're the semi-final opponent. These two trainers should pretty much always be a source of free continues for the players, which is especially appreciated with the Tamers in Round 2 as their semi-final placement strongly ensures the player will go into the final battle against the Psychic with at least one continue.

* BreatherBoss: Jasmine and the Kanto leaders in ''Pokémon Stadium 2'', due to being the only trainers in their gyms. They're not necessarily easy, but at least you don't have several other trainers to battle again if you lose to them.

** Battle Revolution's Rental Pass system instead of having the Rental Pokemon system of the Stadium games. Instead of being able to choose from a selection of Rental Pokemon whenever, you're instead giving a preset six pokemon to use based on if you're a boy or a girl, and to get more pokemon, you must play the Gateway Colosseum, beat an opponent to then permanently swap one of your pokemon with theirs, and then beat the Colosseum to keep that team. This means Battle Revolution is pretty much unplayable without having a Gen 4 game with sufficient progress on it. However since very few people would have gotten this game without having already owned a Gen 4 game, and you don't need any additional accessories like the Transfer Pak to use your pokemon, while the game's autolevelling mechanic makes it much simpler to use your own pokemon, the lack of Rentals is less of an issue than it was in the N64 Stadiums, where even most people who had a completed Gen 1/2 Pokemon game still needed to use the Rentals as they didn't have a complete trained team that met the strict level requirements.

** These games' infamous difficulty, modern players with proper competitive knowledge (and how to most exploit Gen 1's and 2's balance issues) visiting the Stadiums today with properly built teams will probably blow through much of these games with ease and wonder how they got such a reputation for difficulty. But back in the day when the vast majority of competitive Pokemon knowledge came down to "just click the super effective move, and Psychic broke" and there was no easy-to-access competitive database like Smogon to find out what was most optimal, many a player found themselves hitting brick walls when the tried and true strategy of "just fill your team up with pokemon strong against the Gym Leader's type" ended up failing when they fought Gym Leaders using actual coverage moves and pokemon outside their type theme to cover their weaknesses. Then with emulators that have speedup to make raising pokemon much faster and easy cheat code insertion to do things like get duplicates of one-time [=TMs=] much easier, it takes so much less work nowadays to build good teams for Gym Leader Castle and each of the Cups, whereas back in the day players would need to spend tens to hundreds of hours grinding their pokemon's levels and Stat EXP up, and if they wanted more of a one-time available TM they would have to abuse glitches, buy a cheating device, or play through another Pokemon cartridge to get another copy of the desired [=TMs=]. Not to mention that difficulty romhacks for every Pokemon game are commonplace, so people who played such are already acclimated to even more difficult Pokemon games. Those trying to beat the Stadiums with just the Rentals though will still have a rough time, especially in Stadium 2.

* GodDamnedBoss: Any trainer whose strategy relies on boosting evasion with Double Team and Minimize, especially when combined with Toxic to slowly drain your mon's health and durability-boosting moves like Reflect and Light Screen. Usually their pokemon aren't very threatening and often you can just beat them down taking little to no damage before they get enough evasion boosts in, but have some bad lucky early on and they can become long drawn out and boring battles that hinge on you [[LuckBasedMission getting lucky with RNG rolls enough times to win before they whittle you down or you run out of power points]]. And the intended counterplay to these moves is using the moves designed to [[AlwaysAccurateAttack never miss]] or the evasion-nullifying moves, which for the former all but Aura Sphere have no more than a mediocre 60 base power, and for the latter they're a [[UselessUsefulSpell waste of a moveslot]] 99% of the time, so you're just hurting yourself for the rest of the battles if you try to have counterplay to this strat on your team. It's at its absolute worst in Stadium 1, where the only evasion-nullifying move was Haze, which was limited in distribution to only Vaporeon and crappy Poison types, and the only never-miss move was the 60 power Normal-type Swift, so counterplay that isn't praying to the RNG is essentially nonexistent. To make matters worse, ''every pokemon'' that can learn [=TMs=] can be taught Double Team, so these evasion trainers can try this strat with any pokemon, including the very bulky ones and those with recovery moves to make things even more drawn out, and this means even if you do include a pokemon with anti-evasion moves on your team there's no guarantee it won't be at a type disadvantage that makes it incapable of beating the evasion user anyway.

*** In Stadium 1's Petit Cup even though the levels are substantially higher at 25-30, with it only being restricted to weak first stage pokemon there are very few pokemon that can have more HP than 80, meaning Dragon Rage is busted in this Cup too as a perfect coverage move that will guarantee 2HKO nearly every mon.

** In Stadium 1's Petit Cup, Abra is essentally a mini-Alakazam in a meta where all the broken Normal type pokemon are gone, there are no other strong Psychic types, Zapdos and Jolteon don't exist, and the strong Water types aren't around either, making it a terrifying force with no real competition. To explain, Abra is one of the only two Psychic types legal here (the other being Exeggcute who has much less impressive relative stats than its GameBreaker evolution Exeggutor has), while Abra possesses a base Special stat higher than most fully-evolved pokemon at 105, which is completely lucricrous compared to what the other first stage and weak single-stage pokemon legal in the Cup have and nothing but the type-disadvantaged Gastly of the legal mons have a base Special that comes remotely close. Then it's also tied with Meowth and Pikachu for being the second fastest pokemon in the Cup, with only the only Voltorb outspeeding it. Its very powerful STAB Psychic is resisted by nothing in the Cup but itself and Exeggcute, and a strong Abra will OHKO and 2HKO everything but itself with Psychic. Then if you abuse tradebacks from the Gen 2 games, you can get it the elemental punches too to hit many mons super effectively and OHKO them when Psychic comes up short of doing so. And being Stadium you can give it Substitute too to protect it from all status moves against pokemon that might survive a hit like Exeggcute. The only things that can really stop Abra is a Voltorb out-speeding and paralyzing it with Thunder Wave or sacrificing itself with Explosion, or a Meowth with a better Speed DV and stat experience (or winning the speed tie if they're both maxed out) hitting it with its powerful critical STAB Slash to exploit Abra's near non-existent physical durability, but then an Abra user can easily cover that and pack a Geodude that Voltorb can't touch or a Gastly that is immune to Explosion and can't be touched by Meowth. The developers seemingly recognized this though and the Rental Abra has an awful moveset with no Special moves (having the terrible FixedDamageAttack Psywave and the completely random Metronome), so if you want to break Petit Cup with Abra you'll have to train up your own.

** Both Stadium 1 and 2 having no autolevel mechanic for the pokemon you use from the handheld games, so to use them in the various Cups you have to have them at very specific levels (both games' Poke Cup only allows level 50-55 pokemon, Stadium 2's Little Cup only allows level 5 pokemon, Stadium 1's Petite Cup only allows level 25-30 pokemon, and Stadium 1's Pika Cup only allows level 15-20 pokemon). Then while their Gym Leader Castles technically allow pokemon at any level, if you use any pokemon over level 50 the levels of all your opponents' pokemon will be scaled to that of your highest level pokemon, so to not be at any disadvantage here every pokemon on your team essentially has to be at the same exact level and if you're using pokemon over level 50 then you can forget about potentially using any Rental pokemon to plug in holes, as they'll remain level 50. Then the Prime Cup in both Stadiums also technically allow pokemon of any level to be used, but all of your opponents' pokemon will be at level 100 regardless of what your levels are at, so you're essentially required to level up all your pokemon to level 100 before using them there, which grinding six pokemon up to level 100 took a very long time in the Gen 1 and Gen 2 games. And since there's no auto-levelling and each Cup has such specific level requirements, you'll have to tailor make and build seperate teams for each Cup, which in the Gen 1 games can be especially painful without glitching or just cheating as it had very few [=TMs=] you could obtain more than one of, no breeding, and no Pokerus to speed up EV training. Battle Revolution was drastically more user friendly in this regard, as it would just autolevel all your pokemon over level 50 down to 50 for every Colosseum besides its own version of Little Cup, making it much simpler to build and just use your preexisting teams there.

* GodDamnedBoss: Any trainer whose strategy relies on boosting evasion with Double Team and Minimize, especially when combined with Toxic to slowly drain your mon's health and durability-boosting moves like Reflect and Light Screen. Usually their pokemon aren't very threatening and often you can just beat them down taking little to no damage before they get enough evasion boosts in, but have some bad lucky early on and they can become long drawn out and boring battles that hinge on you [[LuckBasedMission getting lucky with RNG rolls enough times to win before they whittle you down or you run out of power points]]. And the intended counterplay to these moves is using the moves designed to [[AlwaysAccurateAttack never miss]] or the evasion-nullifying moves, which for the former all but Aura Sphere have no more than a mediocre 60 base power, and for the latter they're a [[UselessUsefulSpell waste of a moveslot]] 99% of the time, so you're just hurting yourself for the rest of the battles if you try to have counterplay to this strat on your team. It's at its absolute worst in Stadium 1, where the only evasion-nullifying move was Haze, which was limited in distribution to only Vaporeon and crappy Poison types, and the only never-miss move was the 60 power Normal-type Swift, so counterplay that isn't praying to the RNG is essentially nonexistent. To make matters worse, ''every pokemon'' that can learn [=TMs=] can be taught Double Team, so these evasion trainers can try this strat with any pokemon, including the very bulky ones and those with recovery moves to make things even more drawn out.