After naming yourself and your rival you are quickly introduced to a world where monsters known as Pokemon (short for Pocket Monsters) are a part of every day life. The story of Pokemon is always largely unchanged between releases, but works in a classic ‘you as the hero’ manner. Combat noises are simple but satisfying, though repeated several times across different moves in order to save space on the cart. The fact that these games give you the option to hear their individual sounds in the Pokedex is wishful thinking on the part of the game devs. Sound design is solid, although the battle cries of the various Pokemon are flat-out horrible. Still, the main Pokemon theme was well visualized on the Game Boy and churps away in a recognizable fashion that has been refined since into a series staple. Musically the game was less ambitious with tracks past the title screen being largely forgettable. Towns are named after colours so you can tell where you are based on the shades on-screen. Plugging the games into a Game Boy Colour added a basic palette to each town that accompanied its name, making each region a different shade. One that is quite unique in its presentation and where sprawling forests can share screen space with shops that feature sliding doors and escalators. ![]() The aesthetic of the Pokemon series is an interesting fusion of fantasy monsters, modern Japan and science fiction ideas. Indeed, some areas of the world were carefully constructed puzzles that could only be solved by utilizing the right skills at the right time in the game and encouraged exploration. ‘Final Fantasy Adventure III’ and ‘Link’s Awakening’ were the benchmark for Game Boy RPGs and the design of Pokemon’s world showed far more care and attention at times. ![]() Still the games original assets made it stand up extremely well beside other RPGs on the system at the time. From a design perspective the game was similar in its look to ‘Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest’ which had been out on the SNES for some time, with JRPG conventions firmly in place. NPCs didn’t fair as well being a handful of characters repeated endlessly, and every town used the same basic graphical set, but they were all crisp and well proportioned on the screen. Graphically the Pokemon series got the best out of the aging hardware of the Game Boy, which had begun to wain in popularity before re-surging with the Pokemon series. Character designs were chunky and lacked detail but transitioned into recognizable sprites at such a small scale very well because of this, and each of the 150 original Pokemon was individually designed in such a manner. A mix-up of Pokemon from both Red and Blue was included, carefully balanced so that you still had to find friends with either cart, and better Game Boy Colour compatibility was ensured. Team Rocket were more pronounced as characters and an optional mini-game where your Pikachu could surf was included. This was largely to bring the game more in-line with the then-popular anime of the same name and tweaks to the narrative enabled the player to start the game with Pikachu (who followed you around on-screen and had his own moods) before recruiting the original three starting Pokemon as the story progressed. The changes for Yellow were largely graphical, updating the somewhat ugly in-battle sprites for the Pokemon with new artwork, although the game changed some plot elements. It’s one of those charming childhood stories that make life interesting. They obviously had no idea what they’d got, but then neither did I until the adverts for the new game appeared a little while after I’d cleared it. A copy had accidentally made its way into a crate of the regular Red and Blue editions and I casually picked it up from the shelves when I eventually gave into the pressure to buy a copy for myself from my younger brother who had become quite addicted to it but wouldn’t let me play it for myself for fear I’d overwrite his save. ![]() In the case of the original Pokemon generation of titles (‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ respectively, with ‘Green’ included if your Japanese) this would be Pokemon Yellow.īy a random twist of fate I actually had a copy of this game a month or so before it was actually released in the United Kingdom. ![]() When considering how best to approach the multiple releases of the Pokemon franchise we made the decision to review each generation as a whole, with a focus on the ‘special’ version of the game usually released last with additional tweaks and features.
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