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Rewatching the series again with my kids and I noticed that they persistently introduce Pokemon battles this way:

"This Pokemon battle will be between Ash and PersonChan. Each trainer will use 3 pokemon. There will be no time limit."

I've yet to see a battle that has a time limit. Does one ever happen?

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  • +1 just for Rewatching the series again with my kids. Anyways, I believe the only battles that use time limits are Contest Battles, but it's been too long since I've watched it to know when/if one occurred
    – Wondercricket
    Commented Jan 23, 2018 at 13:41
  • Do you mean battles only in the classical pokemon vs pokemon way ? There are so many different pokemon games/tournaments in the series. Like the Doduo race and I´m sure some of them had time limits.
    – Doomenik
    Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 5:44

1 Answer 1

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The main concept of Pokemon battle is to fight the opposition's Pokemon until his or her Pokemon is unable to battle (Which is usually determined by a referee). A time constraint is only seen in Contest Battles. In Contest Battles, there is a bar which decreases based on the appeal of the opponents attack more than the actual power. So in other words, it is no technically a HP bar. However, in regular Pokemon battles, a time constraint wouldn't technically be possible because:

  • There's not actual HP Bar to determine which Pokemon has more health.
  • Battles generally allow trainers to switch Pokemon and hence one Pokemon might start off with lesser health compared to the other and the time constraint wouldn't be fair while determining which Pokemon has more health left.
  • Finally, most anime battles(Ash's battles), involve Ash having trouble in the start and then overcoming the difficulty and beating his opponent. This concept wouldn't work again with a time constraint

However, in the games, a time limit exists because trainers could potentially keep stalling, keep spamming the same moves etc in a repetitive manner causing the battle to go on for hours.

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