Pokémon Stadium 2 is, once again, a great companion piece for the handheld games, this time for Pokémon Gold & Silver. All the Pokémon are lovingly rendered and animated in 3D, with some great tough challenges to take your ultimate squad through. Stadium 2 takes this one step further with the Pokémon Academy, which teaches you how to be better at the main games. For people who liked the handheld games, Stadium is a wonderful thing to dip into as you work your way through Gold & Silver.

There’s a bunch of new minigames, which are all decent. I quite like the Beyblade minigame, as well as the Furret minigame where you franticly use the D-pad to move balls into your goal. There’s also a quiz with a few difficulty levels. The easy is more about how fast you can be with simple questions, while hard goes in for technical details like asking you the weight of Doduo. All the organising features also return, making this a wonderful companion – it’s just a shame that it suffers the same rental Pokémon issue for those that just want a standalone game.

Fun

If you’re looking for something to give your pokémuscles a thorough workout, you need to look no further. There’s more than enough challenging scrappage in the game to while away those long winter nights. Battle long and hard enough throughout the various modes and minigames (and do a spot of trading) and you’ll be rewarded with a series of goodies to put onto your Game Boy game if you leave it plugged in.

Alan Maddrell, NCG Magazine #60. Review Score: 90%

Remake or remaster?

You don’t really need companion pieces to Pokémon games now that there’s no console separation. Although a repackage of the various Pokémon Stadium games with better compatibility with currently available, or just greater options for selecting Pokémon would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no way to buy a new copy of Pokémon Stadium 2, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak. It should also be noted that it has no Game Boy compatibility, so you’re stuck with the rental Pokémon.