While they've been largely replaced by map apps, Town Maps are still a handy item to keep around. Supplying detailed info on the layout of a region, as well as the Routes and towns within them, without having to worry about bloatware or extensive power consumption.
However, did you know that the designs and even functionalities of Town Maps vary by region?
That's what I'm here to talk about today. A breakdown of the Town Maps of various regions.
Kanto's Town Map takes the form of a digital scroll, which can be opened or closed by pulling the two sides. The display itself has changed a lot over the years, from just being monochrome lines and squares that tell you little about the locations, to a more colorful version that also included the nearby Sevii Islands, to the current version, which gives a brief synopsis of each location, as well as a list of major buildings for towns. The latest version even has compatibility with Pokedexes. If you connect your Town Map to a pokedex, you can see where the habitats of various species of Pokemon are. Quite handy!
Johto, being a closely related region to Kanto, used to have a very similar Town Map to Kanto's original, to the point where many Johto Town Maps include Kanto in them. However, if I may state my opinion, Johto's Town Maps have a key feature that even modern Kanto ones lack: The ability to put down marks. If you find something interesting while out and about, you can mark it down on your Town Map with one of 8 different symbols. The main downside to Johto's Town Maps, though, is that they're primarily made for Pokegears. You'll have to get a Pokegear and a Map Card in order to use Johto's Town Map.
Hoenn's Town Map, similarly to Johto's, is locked to a separate device, the Pokenav and Pokenav Plus. Interestingly, the former actually has a feature that the latter lacks: namely, showing the layouts of towns. Admittedly, though, the town layout part was even more barebones than Sinnoh's, and the Plus version has far more features than its predecessor, such as linking with the VS Recorder to detect on which routes you have trainers seeking rematches with you, among other things. Still, it's interesting to see a feature having been removed entirely.
Orre doesn't actually have an official Town Map. There is no normalized map of Orre that exists in the region. However, there are alternatives. There's cartographers that brave the harsh desert and chart out their own maps. While these maps can vary quite a bit from each other, they're homemade, and have been painstakingly created by the efforts of very determined people. If you ever find yourself in Orre, I recommend rewarding these cartographer's efforts with a Town Map purchase.
Sinnoh's Town Map is a flip-open device that has a display rather similar to Johto's most recent Town Map, though with an added feature of being able to zoom into towns to look at their layout. It's rather rough, and only really shows you the locations of Pokemon Centers and Pokemarts in each town, but it's still quite handy, especially if you need to find a Pokemon Center in a hurry.
Unova's Town Map, while its lines-and-circles design hasn't been updated much over the years, has had its layout modified more than perhaps any other region's Town Map has. After the incident with Team Plasma, and the subsequent collapse of the old Victory Road, the map was redesigned, and several locations not included in the original Town Map were added, such as the recently-built Undersea Tunnel.
Kalos' Town Map is similar to Unova's, having a lines-and-circles design as well, though the main sticking point is that Lumiose City has a much larger circle than the other towns, and has a pokeball symbol in the circle. Lumiose City actually has a Town Map of its own, designed by Quasartico Inc, though it's delegated to a Rotom Phone app. Even so, Lumiose's Town Map is packed with features, such as displaying the locations of Wild Zones, and if you're part of the Z-A Royale, Battle Zones.
Alola has its Town Map and Pokedex together in one device, and has a few neat features, particularly being able to see the details of Routes. It's static images, so it won't update if something big happens, but these images are special: They're hand-drawn. Every detail on these maps was drawn out by cartographers surveying the Routes of Alola. That's pretty nifty, huh?
Galar, like Orre, doesn't have an official Town Map item. While Orre had homemade Town Maps, though, Galar has a surprisingly robust app for phones. It can discern the weather at various locations, even in the Wild Area, and can link up to flying taxi services to show destinations. Each sector in the Wild Area is given its own name on the map, too, for ease of reference. It's even free of bloatware, for the most part. The diorama of Galar in the background may look pretty, but it takes up quite a bit of storage.
Paldea's official Town Map is also relegated to an app, though it's a bit different to Galar's, or perhaps any other region. Instead of showing distinct Routes, Paldea uses a satellite to take a gander at the whole region at once. Every area in each province, all loaded at once. This fascinating technology allows you to even seamlessly zoom in and out on the map, and even detect Tera Dens in the area. Though given how much it displays at once, Paldea's Town Map can be prone to lag.
I hope this has proved informative!
