Postby Nate » Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:42 pm
The answer is pretty much always "The latest one that came out" as it has the most mechanical improvements and most support. GTS/online support for the DS games, for example, has ended, meaning it's going to be pretty much impossible to get anything going on in Join Avenue in Black/White 2.
There are no main Pokemon games on the eShop aside from X and Y. The Pokemon games available are Pokemon Battle Trozei (DS game, puzzle game like Yoshi's Cookie), Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (3DS roguelike with randomly generated dungeons), and Pokemon Rumble Blast (3DS game, action style game centered around toys).
I'm going to go ahead and say it even though other people would disagree with me (they are wrong though), playing the older games is a bad idea if you've played the newer ones. Since the newer games have introduced new mechanics, playing the older games would mostly be an exercise in frustration. The first two generations, while nostalgic for many, also were EXTREMELY slow and horribly paced and balanced...for example, Psychics have no real counters in Gen I and thus are basically an unstoppable force, whereas in Gen II there is a massive level curve that's really terrible right before the last gym.
If you really must play the older games for whatever reason, then the least painful way to do it would be Fire Red/Leaf Green, the Gen I remakes for GBA, and Heart Gold/Soul Silver, the Gen II remakes for DS. HG/SS still have the bad level curve that the originals had though. Emerald might be alright to play too, but the Ruby/Sapphire remakes coming out basically make the originals not worth it at this point. Besides at least for me, trying to go back to a game before the Physical/Special split of Gen IV is just unbelievably painful (hmm yes let's go back to the days when Azumarill sucked). Gen IV was also horribly slow in comparison to R/S/E/FR/LG and while I love it, Diamond and Pearl are pretty bad from an objective standpoint (Platinum is okay though).
Ezekiel 23:20