Route

A route, in terms of the Pokémon world, is a passage permitting trainers to travel from one location to the next with relative ease. Most routes have long grass in which wild Pokémon can be found, though some, mostly the water routes, only have Surfable water. In Generation I, the latter are called "sea routes." Although each region has its own set of numbered routes, there are numerous other passages throughout the Pokémon world, all of which are named, that can be considered routes as well.

However, there are trees surrounding routes acting as barriers, rocks acts as the barriers on water routes. The barriers are there to make it seem as there is only one possible path instead of a wide field going nowhere.

Numbered route

Main article: List of routes in the Pokémon world

Up to Generation IV, there are 112 numbered routes in the Pokémon world, all identified simply as Route followed by their number. Routes numbered 1 through 25 (and 26 through 28 as well in Generation II Generation IV) are in Kanto, routes numbered 29 through 48 are in Johto, routes numbered 101 through 134 are in Hoenn and routes numbered 201 through 230 are in Sinnoh.

Hoenn and Sinnoh's routes do not follow sequentially from the previous generation's focused-on region, likely due to the fact that the regions introduced in previous generations are not able to be visited in games focusing on Hoenn and Sinnoh. This is unlike what was the case with the games of Generation II, where Johto's routes picked up where Kanto's left off, and Kanto was able to be visited. As of yet there are no regions with routes numbered to fill in between Johto's and Hoenn's (which would number 47 to 100) or from Hoenn's to Sinnoh's (which would number 135 to 200).

The numbering of the routes in the Pokémon world may also be a reference to Japan's own national route system, which goes from 1 to 58, then skips directly to 101, and afterwards skips several numbers. Despite this, the routes do not run concurrent with their Pokémon counterparts, and indeed in Japan there exists a Route 135, a Route 231, and so on, up to Route 507. Strangely, the only numbers skipped are routes whose numbers are used in Hoenn and Sinnoh.

Named route

A named route can be described as a tunnel, a path, a simple cave (where simple implies that the main path of the cave is on a single floor) or a forest that links two different locations. Under this definition, named roads such as Diglett's Cave, Ilex Forest, and Union Cave classify as a route. Locations such as the Rock Tunnel, Viridian Forest, and Mt. Moon do not. Of course, the seventeen named paths and one small cave between the main cities and major landmarks of the Sevii Islands count as routes under this as well.

See also

• List of routes in the Pokémon world for a list of all numbered and named routes

This article is part of Project Routes, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on every route in the Pokémon world.