Recommend a Pokémon fansite to showcase!

Darren

It has always been my ambition to promote as many Pokémon fansites, both active and defunct, to highlight the culture and passion of the Pokémon fan community. Please only share websites that you think we should highlight here after browsing the Fansite Showcase, to confirm if we have done so already.

I am only prepared to promote traditional Pokémon fansites, and not things such as social media, streaming or influencers (to name some examples).

I will also take note of any active websites to compile a list of links for our website further down the line, so we can promote them!

Update: we now have a Links page! It can be located here: https://johtotimes.com/page/links

Regnum

I'm sure you have already prepared a decently sized list with websites that some of us know, so I'll go ahead and suggest one that has recently opened (this year!): Greenfield City. The site is focused on Pokémon but it also has some Sonic content. The webmaster is a big fan of Johto and the classic Pokémon fansites as well, and the recent surge of modern but classic-style websites seems to have been the motivation to make her own.
I'd like to highlight some of its content:

Pokémon, Individuality, and Sociality - an essay about self-expression and community.
Behind the Music - an analysis about some of the Pokémon's soundtracks.
Johto Mail Generator - an interactive tool to create Johto mail in seconds.

Darren

Regnum There is NO WAY they have made a Johto Mail Generator! I was LITERALLY thinking about this today, about how we could make one for the website. I am annoyed someone beat me to the idea, but THRILLED that someone made it happen.

BlueMoonFalls

I'd like to mention Altissimo's Pokemon Site. Altissimo works on this website quite literally everyday as you can see from their Daily Progress page. The sheer amount of effort and scope is really impressive to me. There is documentation on this website that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet for really niche features in the older Pokemon games. I am particularly a fan of their documentation on the generation 3 and 4 Battle Frontiers, which you can find here and here respectively. I aspire to be as in-depth and hard-working as the person who runs this site. I think it often gets overlooked and is not well known because the site is pretty bare-bones in terms of its appearance and its branding, but do not let that fool you, it is an absolute treasure trove and an incredible passion project!!

Darren

BlueMoonFalls I think we do a great job at Johto Times, but I simply can't compete with the level of commitment some communities have. It's quite impressive! Thanks for sharing!

Darren

notfun Hey there! Very sorry but i'm going to have to delete that message. Could I please recommend that you check out our rules page? Specifically rule 4, and "Using our platform with the sole intent of promoting their own works"

Thank you!

swiftyshq

in terms of defunct fansites, i have a whole page on my site dedicated to my favorites, but let me share a few stand-outs:

eevee's hq - an eevee-themed site from 2007. it was later moved to route 50, which is apparently still up today, but has a custom error displayed when you visit, so you can't access much. this is the website that inspired my own site name!

joey & jolty's home is a website i was quite frankly obsessed with as a puppy. the fact that it's still hosted and online is crazy! i remember telling the webmaster how much it meant to me within the last few years too. we both transitioned, it turns out, LOL!

tr's rockin is a no-brainer. people speak its named in awed whispers. haha. their [glitches list], glitchdex "truly bizarre glitch" list, mew trick page, fake pokemon list, fake games, and fake merch articles were all the rage back in the day! they later turned into more of a general con-and-cosplay business (their weapons prop guide was pretty cool!) haha, they even had a wii-compatible index for those using the wii to browse the internet! the article list is really extensive.

eonlight valley was a major inspiration to me when i was small, their noobs vs newbies rant is so legendary to me - i remember it regularly. i was extremely fixated on their eonquest mystery dungeon CYOA too - i still name my pmd partner pikachus "azula" to this day! this website is so full of stuff, i think anyone would have fun combing through it.

valley of nightmares was another one of my favorites.

and of course i'd be a fool not to mention lugia's island. i feel like some of its content mimics dragonfree's cave of dragonflies a bit, which is funny to me; i figure the culture of the community lended itself to that sort of habit. of course, i, being a tiny thing at the time, was just going 'TWO CAKES!!' the whole time, essentially.

Darren

swiftyshq I'm quite familiar with a few of those already! I've even done interviews with a couple of them (Joey & Jolty and TR's rockin). Thanks for the suggestions 🙂

ICanSnake

Virtuadopt - Have you ever played Neopets? Honestly, I haven't, but Virtuadopt is a Pokemon-themed website based on Neopets. It was started by two people I knew in 2009, stefanol and yankeesrule3526, who I knew through another forum they managed. The basis of the website is you adopt a Pokemon or an egg and in order to hatch the egg or level the Pokemon, you click it once a day. There are click exchanges that people promote their adoptable Pokemon where multiple people can click your Pokemon. After you click a Pokemon, there's a raffle system that has a low chance of obtaining a prize such as a legendary Pokemon or a special promotional holiday-themed Pokemon. There's also a low chance of hatching or obtaining shinies.

A few years ago they revamped the entire website so all previous adoptables are no longer available, but I was very addicted to this website in high school and would play it during study halls in school where I had access to a computer. I would go hardcore on this site, downloading a Chrome/Firefox addon that lets me right click and drag over a group of links and open them all at the same time, looking to see on each page if I won the raffle. And I would go to different click exchange websites and add a link to an adoptable I wanted to level or hatch where it would stay featured on that click exchange for a period of time, giving a lot of people a chance to click on the link.

Based on the people that were visiting this site, it was very popular in Europe, specifically Poland and Germany.

toucanon

*The Tohjo Falls* -

I found this site through some twitter reply a month or so ago and honestly had fun reading it. It's apparently a continuation/relaunch/archive(i'm not sure) of a old site from the 2000s, and i think its cool to see. It has some neat things like small mini games(if i can call them that) to play and such, and some of the content on the page is funny to read. Some of the content is new, but some other content is very, very old. Anything beyond Ruby and Sapphire seems to have been written by the new host and isn't the original content so some stuff is new and some stuff is very, very old.

Darren

toucanon Yes, I was made aware of it some time ago. Normally I prefer to speak to the people who worked on the original websites, but providing they had the blessing of the original creators, I think it's a great thing!

toucanon

Darren Ah, okay :D

Darren

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to say a huge thank you to all your suggestions! To be clear, I am looking for fansites that are currently operational, or online but in an archived state.

A page is now starting to come together, but needs a bit more work before I start to share it around 🙂

Darren

Our Links page is now live, with over 130 links. Thank you for all of your suggestions! I was eager to get this out due to the closure of Angelfire and Tripod recently, taking with it another chunk of the Pokémon fan community's past.

https://johtotimes.com/page/links

This thread will remain open to receive more recommendations in the future. Please also feel free to use this thread to confirm any broken links.

ICanSnake

Darren Hello! I would like to make a correction for the link "Shogakukan stamps".

The Pokemon Stamp projects in Japan have been a research project for me and a friend for the past few years and we looked at that website but it was so barebones and didn't include enough information. That was when my friend decided to make a comprehensive database explaining each Pokemon Stamp promotion:

https://pokemonhistorian.com/shogakukan-pokemon-stamps/

If you look through the rest of our site, we document past Pokemon event distributions with first hand testimonies, host full scans of old Japanese magazines like Pokemon Scoop, and document all of the old Pokemon newsletters that were sent by email.

Darren

ICanSnake Thank you for that, I have send an email to the website to discuss it further!

Darren

The Links page now contains 158 links!

If you think we've missed any, or you see any mistakes, please don't hesitate to let us know!

https://johtotimes.com/page/links

Leaf

I got a whole bunch of comp TCG sites to rec 🙂

justinbasil Is known as having the best introduction to getting into the game by far. It also features alternate formats for more experienced players, most notably the website's own creation of a fan format known as Eternal. Tragically, the webmaster suddenly passed away a year ago and it was a massive blow to the community

jklaczpokemon Introduction to the history + modern look at the formats from Base through XY era, by three-time world champion Jason Klaczynski

Dowsing Machine About the oft-forgotten Expanded format, by two-time international champion Stéphane Ivanoff

Gym Leader Challenge Home page for very popular fan-format GLC, created by Andrew Mahone AKA Tricky Gym. Just turned 5 and is played as an official side event at major tournaments

Cardboard Warriors Biggest GLC site

PTCG Legends, PTCG Archive, PTCG Retro Archive All focused on retro formats

Pokemon 1999 Very active group that focuses on the modern metagame of WOTC era formats

Cube Koga What it says on the tin. Cube format!

Training Court Logger for both PTCGL games and tournaments to track your own stats

Trainer Hill Whole bunch of tools to analyze metagame trends, etc

TCG Masters Probably the single most useful tool that allows for automated simulation to test against yourself. ~~I don't use it as much as I know I should, oops!~~

TCGOne Simulator for retro formats

pokemoncard.io ... I personally don't really get any value out of this as someone that only cares about comp play, but it sure is a website that lets anyone upload whatever decklist they want

SeagroveTCG Mostly used for the event locator, as the official pokemon.com one got changed to feel functionally unusable lol

pokedata.ovh Even more tools. Mostly used to see how tournament standings are looking as a major is currently happening

Pokerank Look up yourself or any player. Most useful for being able to set up push notifications so I can see how my friends are doing at majors every round immediately once their result is reported

Dillonzer Deck Utils Not sure how much this one counts but I find the prize checking tool to be by far the most effective way to prize check on the rare occasion I feel like bothering with it while laddering lol

Darren

Leaf Thank you for the suggestions! I shall go through them when I have a spare moment!