
Perhaps not coincidentally, it was during this generation that Nintendo stopped using " Gotta Catch 'Em All" as the franchise's slogan. The Red and Blue remakes provided all 150 Kanto Pokémon and a small pool of Johto's, with Colosseum and XD having several from all three regions together, they had all but the event-only Pokémon. note The Game Boy Advance had backwards-compatibility for the Game Boy Color, but its link cables were unable to connect the two systems coupled with the aforementioned data structure redesign, there was no method for importing or trading Pokémon from Gold, Silver or Crystal to Ruby, Sapphire or Emerald. These games may be the biggest case of One Game for the Price of Two in the franchise, as there is literally no way to legitimately collect all 386 Pokémon without aid from FireRed, LeafGreen, Colosseum, and XD (and oddly, only Ruby or Sapphire, because Emerald has whatever Pokémon the other version lacks). Emerald put them both in the antagonist role, with Rayquaza being summoned to stop the chaos. Sapphire players will become allied with Team Magma to stop Aqua summoning Kyogre, while Ruby Trainers help Aqua stop Magma summoning Groudon. On their quest to be the best, players will encounter two villainous groups: Teams Aqua and Magma, who want to flood and dry out the planet, respectively. note Your rival is whichever player character you didn't pick at the beginning if playing as May, Brendan is your rival, and vice versa. As thanks, he gives the player their own Pokémon, encouraging him/her to travel around the region and collect as much data on Hoenn's Pokémon as they can, much like Birch's child (and your rival) Brendan/May is doing. The game begins with the player moving to their new home in Littleroot Town, and later saving the local Pokémon Professor, Birch, from a wild Pokémon. The games took place in Hoenn, which is based on the Kyushu region of Japan rotated ninety degrees note Of course, since the world is round and we never see Hoenn on a map along with any other regions, this rotation doesn't matter much. Along with massive graphical improvements over its predecessors, these games also had an entirely new data structure as a result, Generation III games were incompatible with the previous two generations. In addition to introducing a new story and region to explore and over 100 new Pokémon to catch, Ruby and Sapphire brought with it many new gameplay features such as individual natures and Abilities for each Pokémon, double battles, and Pokémon contests.


Along with FireRed and LeafGreen, Colosseum and XD, they are known collectively as Generation III of the Pokémon video game series. The third set of games in the Pokémon series, Ruby and Sapphire were released for the Game Boy Advance, with Emerald arriving a few years after.
