GamerRespawn
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Game Freak
Platform(s): Game Boy
Genre(s): RPG
D.O.R: (Red)October 5, 1999
(Blue)June 10, 1999
In 1996 a world populated by creatures called Pokemon was created. The TV show was shown in Japan for two years before it was taken to america. Then everything went mental! I remember just having started high school and literally everywhere you looked there were people swapping Pokemon cards or people playing Gameboys. Pokemon Red/Blue versions have become the most popular games ever released on the classic little black and white handheld because of this craze.
In Pokemon, you play as a young boy named Ash Ketchum(although you can choose your own name), who has decided to start his Pokemon journey. The basic aim of the game is to collect all 150 Pokemon that exist in the world, beat the eight gym leaders and the elite four and become a Pokemon master. The game plays like a traditional Japanese RPG, with random pokemon encounters and dungeons.
To catch a wild pokemon, you must first enter battle with it and then after attacking it with your pokemon to sufficiently weaken it, you can throw a Poke-ball to attempt to catch it. Some Pokemon are harder to catch than others so you may have to employ a variety of different status effects such as sleep or poison on it to secure it instead of just relying on pure health drain. You can carry six captured Pokemon with you at any one time, so collecting as many of the different types as you can will give you the ability to create a really balanced team able to take on any challenge thrown at you. Once you have six with you, the rest of the pokemon you catch will be transferred to a computer storage system which you can access from any Pokemon centre to swap your team around. As you travel further into the world you will meet different characters and different enemies. Some like Team Rocket pop up a lot and continuously cause a nuisance!
You level up your pokemon by beating random trainer battles or by beating Gym Leaders and they will grow stronger and stronger, gaining new moves and some may even evolve into even more powerful creatures.
To add even more to this they have certain pokemon that are limited to each game, for example you can only catch Vulpix in the blue version and Growlithe can only be caught in red. This means trading with a link cable becomes a necessary option if you want to collect all 150 Pokemon, as well as there being some Pokemon that you can only evolve to their highest stages through trade, such as Haunter => Gengar and Machoke =>Machamp.
The game has a reasonably long lifespan, (30-40 hours on average) you will be playing through the main story for quite a while. Not to even mention catching all the Pokemon etc. And as if all this wasn’t enough, you can even link your game with a copy of Pokemon Stadium on the N64 and use your current team in battles there. Although the games quest as a whole isn’t all that difficult, you will need to learn different strategies for battles depending on what you are fighting at the time.
So, to sum up, this is definitely one of games that is up there for the title of best GB game ever. If you don’t have a copy, go pick one up!!
