Why did Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire remove day and night?

Ruby and Sapphire, released in Japan on November 21, 2002, still carry a real-time clock; the player's name for the system sits quietly in a bedroom in Littleroot Town. What they dropped is the visible cycle. Hoenn has no morning, day and night, no darkened evenings with lit windows, of the kind Gold and Silver had made a signature three years earlier.

The clock's work moved indoors and underground. It drives the tides in Shoal Cave, which flood and drain on a schedule, grows the berries players plant, runs the daily lottery and turns the random daily appearance of Mirage Island. Time passes in Hoenn; the sky simply declines to report it.

Game Freak never published a reason, and this Library does not invent one. The visible cycle returned in the next generation, on the Nintendo DS, which suggests a design choice of the moment rather than a rejection of the idea, and Crystal's online experiments had likewise shown this studio trying features before their hardware was ready to make them permanent.

For collectors the distinction is practical: a Ruby or Sapphire cartridge still depends on its battery for every timed event, even though the save itself no longer does, and a dry battery announces itself in a message the games display at boot.