[thaumasiotes]

> I would put the original Pokemon games in that as well.

> Super Mario World is fundamentally on rails. While there is a range of unique ways you can proceed through the world, there is a very calculable and finite number of these.

The Pokemon games are also fundamentally on rails. It's true that you can walk backward from wherever you are to wherever you've been in the past, which is very common in RPGs. But at almost all times, there's only one option if you want to go forward.

Then again, as the series progresses, more and more gameplay gets hidden behind "winning" the game by beating the elite 4 and rolling the credits, and things are pretty open at that point.