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Pokemon Diamond and Pearl dragged the series onto DS hardware and opened the door to online trading and battling.
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl launched in 2006 on Nintendo DS. It dragged the series onto DS hardware and opened the door to online trading and battling. It sits on the canon-defining RPG backbone that decides regions, monsters, battle systems, and the assumptions every other Pokemon project eventually reacts to.
Example
Its 2006 release on Nintendo DS immediately became part of the benchmark fans used to judge its whole generation.
Why it matters
Mainline Pokemon releases are the load-bearing beams of the franchise. If you want to understand why the rest of Pokemon looks the way it does, these are the games that set the rules.
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