The 1st edition was very crude. It was more of a "pick and play" tournament kinda game, like Pokemon Stadium for the N64. You picked six Pokemon and battled with it until the end of the tournament. You only got to choose 3 Pokemon for a battle though, which was something I was inspired by the Battle Dome in Emerald, where you pick 3 Pokemon for the tournament and only 2 for a battle. Using your intuition to figure out what your opponent is going to choose is part of the game.
The battles were fairly straightforward too. Since damage had to be calculated manually, I used simple formulas like [DMG = 2 * ATK - DEF]. The Pokemon only had 2 stats, MHP and DEF. ATK belonged to the attack itself. There were no stat altering attacks or special attacks like Trick Room. As you can imagine, battles were very repetitive due to the lack of variety. But still, people came to play the game. Up until Edition 1.5, there weren't any huge changes. Mostly it was just new pokemon Pokemon that were added. Edition 1.3 marked the introduction held items and Pokepons, short for Poke Coupons, which acted as currency for held items. It also added the SPeeD stat. Until SPD, I used a coin toss to determine who gets to move first and the rest of the game was played with players taking turns alternatively.
Edition 1.5 was the next big update. Not only did it have lots more Pokemon, it also introduced a bunch of new concepts. The Champion feature allowed the winner of the previous tournament to remain as the champion, which meant he is automatically placed at the top of the tournament tree and only has to fight the last remaining player for the title. I also introduced two new stats- SP.ATK and RES. SP.ATK and RES was for special attacks which doesn't cause damage. This allowed the role of a support/debilitator to be viable. Until this, players simply took turns hitting each other for damage. 1.5 went on for a while and everyone was happy with it. After about 4 months, the final exams came around and they all went on hiatus. Everyone except me of course, I was wondering how I could make this more fun and streamlined. After the exams, we had 2 months of holiday, which let me work on it all the time.
It was during the holidays I came across D&D via Neverwinter Nights. Boy, was this the greatest thing that happened to Pokemon Legends. I didn't get too much into the system, but I learned the basics and translated it to benefit PokeLegends. Six sided dice were common from where I come from, so I designed the game around d6's. To make things easy, stats were rounded to smaller numbers and the maximum achievable level for a Pokemon is 10. Pokemon gain levels for every tournament they compete in whether they win or lose and on each level up, the player rolls dice to determine how much a stat is increased on level up. Pokemon could be bought using PokePons or traded between each other under my supervision. Evolution was simplified as well. Basically, level requirements were simply divided by 10 and rounded. For example: Charmander evolves to Charmeleon at level 2. Unlike previous editions, the Pokemon you get are yours to keep forever. Also, it wasn't called "Edition" until second edition. Until then it was simply "Version". "Edition" was of course, inspired by D&D.
Gameplay was changed quite a lot as well. The stats now were- MHP, POW, SPL and SPD. MHP was simply max hp. POWer was a fusion of ATK and DEF. It's used when attacking and defending physical attacks. SPeciaL is a combination of Sp.ATK and Sp.DEF. Used in both special attacks. Stat altering attacks were simply based on a attack roll now. To successfully land an attack, the player needs to roll an attack roll. An attack roll consists of rolling two six sided dice (ie 2d6). The sum of the two dice are added and if the number is above 2, it is a successful attack. Rolling two sixes (ie 6+6 = 12) lands a critical hit. Rolling two ones lands a critical miss, which grants the other player an extra attack.
The damage formula was now [DMG= (Attack Power * POW or SPL) / Enemy POW or SPL / 2]
Pokemon Legends 2nd Edition was so fucking popular, students from other classes joined in to play it. Heck, even younger kids came to play with us. We even got together at my house to play it. 2nd Edition was so damn perfect we played it for a whole damn year. A quarter year into Class 11, I updated it to Edition 2.1. Edition 2.1 featured a loan system (I was a commerce student, it was good practice :P) and a trainer level system. Finishing top 4 in any tournament granted you trainer rep. For every 1000 rep points, you gain a trainer level. Earning higher trainer levels allows you to purchase rarer Pokemon like Feebas and Kabuto.
Sadly, I dropped out of school a few months later and I don't really know what happened to the PokeLegends scene. I asked Jonez to implement the dice rolling system so that I could bring PokeLegends to Arpegi. Then I thought that would be pretty redundant because of how we can play Pokemon with each other on our handheld these days. I might make something different than Pokemon for use here in Arpegi if I really feel motivated for it.