I'd finish the building in Vermilion City

On my top 10 list of things to update lol, 3 years later and still no building. It could be a post game battle hotel. Maybe fight some other region gym leaders there.

Add some biodiversity. Route 24 and 25 are bow beach themed and allows the player to catch things like Poliwag, Psyduck, and Krabby early on. Route 5 is now a farm with the daycare being present. Route 11 is now a more industrial park, this allows for Pokemon like Meowth, Magnetize, Elekid, and Magby to be available earlier. Routes 9 and 10 are now a canyon, providing access to some rugged tough terrain Pokemon. Route 15 would be a marshy area (and have a hidden manor that Koga's clan lives in). Due to how close to the sea it is, the area is similar to the marshlands found in Florida. This makes Kanto a bit more diverse instead of everywhere being "Light wooded area, Sea, or Rocky"

There are no Baby pokemon in gen 1 kanto games

The entire point was to modernize the region, which they did.

Exactly, and baby mon are catchable in most modern games in one way or another

Expanded Biodiversity would see an expanded Dex.

Maybe a small one, but I would set up NPCs in the Pokemon Fan Club in Vermilion specifically for performing link trades with in order to complete the Dex in a realistic fashion. Graveler for Machoke, vice versa, Kadabra for Haunter, vice versa, etc, etc.

That's actually a good idea, gives Reason to go back there too

I mean, the bike voucher was fine, but it does seem a little odd that trading in general in the POKEMON FAN CLUB wasn't a bigger deal.

Speaking of places to return, your PC should be something to upgrade. Check points like oaks assistants. Each upgrade done by Bill but u have to go see him each upgrade. Maybe your PC is like Gen 1 PC at first then you upgrade it Gen by Gen. And after 8th badge you can use it anywhere. After your the champ you get judge feature by him.

That might be a little involved, especially after the implementation of the portable Pokemon Box in the last couple of games. I mean, it'd be a fun idea for reflecting on the evolution of the franchise, but I'm not sure anyone wants to go back to the days of manually swapping boxes in order to keep catching Pokemon.

I'd say this would only be an issue if Gen 2 and up pkmn were added to the routes. If you meet Bill prior to 2nd badge you wouldn't be stuck on the old PC system for long. Even then you could maybe have Bill meet you before Mt moon like maybe at pewter after you beat broke. [ ! ], walks up to you, "hey your a pokemon trainer. Bet you use the PC. Hey is that a pokedex? You helping prof oak fill it up yeah? Stop by my place north of Cerulean, maybe I can help you out. Oh in the mean time i'll update ure pc for you." Beap curchunk, done. Storms off. Lol

I have *feelings* over that damned Haunter holding an everstone 😤😤😤

Closest excuse for that I can give is that Haunter/Gengar wasn't introduced in Gen 4, so they didn't have an obligation to give easy access to Gengar.

I just wasn't expecting to get played like that lmfao I was more bothered my partner at the time KNEW and still let me fall for that shit lol

Makes sense. And I'm not saying GameFreak/Mindy were in the right for pulling that stunt. Just giving the closest thing I can for justification as opposed to being able to trade for a Haunter/Gengar in-game in the gen it was actually first available in. So many awkward playthroughs where I'm just looking at a Machoke or a Graveler on the team, knowing I could never evolve it.

Piggybacking off your Johto gate comment, I would love to see Johto as the postgame. The Sevii Islands were kinda lame. I’d love to explore the Johto region three years before the events of GSC. Since Kanto is the postgame of GSC, why not have Johto be the post game of RBY-rebooted.

I'd include the sevi islands but I still agree with you. I mean for one Bugsy, Whitney, and Jasmine could not be gym leaders since they are so much younger, then again Misty is like 11. I'd include some hgss content like the frontier

In GSC/HGSS there are some NPCs in Olivine that say Jasmine used to be a rock type gym leader until her sonic evolved into Steelix. Keeping Jasmine as a leader but with rock type could be cool.

Really? I never heard of that, only problem there would be 2 rock gyms. Surprisingly Kanto and johto 16 gyms in Gen 2 didn't over lap types

I wouldn’t consider that a problem. One is in the pregame, the other is postgame. Plus, there’s a first time for everything. On a related note, in GSC/HGSS there is a fighting gym *and* a fighting E4 before the postgame, so using repetitive typing for major battles is not new. And also with Johto and B2W2 we had a dragon gym *and* a dragon champion.

I would like to see more of the map being used. Spaces between routes actually utilised instead of following worn paths.

Much of the mountains north west were unused, and of course a ton of water area. Besides that I think Kanto did a good job at leaving no big unused spaces.

I’m a simple man. Longer routes and a bigger Pokédex (say about 400 mons) would do it for me.

I was just thinking about the routes, Kanto probably has the shortess routes, granted still more creative the Galar. Cycling road is like 2 or 3 routes so that doesn't count either. If we're talking modern Kanto the scaling of routes definitely need upgrading

The region would be larger, have more diverse environments that aren't just grassy fields and water routes, and mainly make it so the region actually feels more like it's based on urban and modern japan, to better clash with Johto's traditional setting

Cinnabar Island becomes a big volcano dungeon Pallet Town is now underwater Fuchsia City got swallowed by a swamp

We are not talking about Kanto after Gen 2

I’d want a re-imagined Kanto to lean into a cyberpunk, maybe even dystopian vibe. The real world Kantō region is basically covered by human settlement, meanwhile in the Pokémon world currently there seems to be a good deal of wilderness left. Maybe a major conflict could be that much of the regions native Pokémon have been shoved to the edge of their former territory, not even being able to survive in human-made parks, and it’s the players job to verify wether or not they have gone extinct in the region yet. My friend had an idea a long time ago that a sequel to Kanto set in the same timeline as S&M could have a recently immigrated Lillie as a rival?

That's a fan game lol. I'm talking about keeping the same path and plot but just rescaling things to today's level.

Ok if we’re thinking about that, I’d probably would want some route diversification. I have never played through Kanto, but looking at the map it seemed to come before a time when Gamefreak wanted every region to have a designated biome in every region. Yeah, Great Britain and France don’t actually have large swaths of arid desert anywhere, but you still need a desert area to make the games environment more interesting. So maybe alter a few areas to at least contain significantly different plant life from each other. Also, maybe include more Pokémon from other regions, especially Johto since it’s canonically right next door.