What is Pokémon?
What is Pokémon? Besides annoying to type because of the é thing? Pokémon is a game for Nintendo's Game Boy. There are two versions of the game in America; Red and Blue, and three in Japan; Red, Blue, and Green. The only difference in the games are the Pokémon that can be captured.
You play a new Pokémon trainer from the town of Pallet. You are competing against your rival, Professor Oak's grandson. You can choose the names of both characters but for the purpose of this area, I will refer to "you" as Ash, and Oak's grandson as Gary. These are the names from the show and the names I used in my game.
At the beginning of the game you choose one of three Pokémon from Professor Oak. At the same time Gary chooses a Pokémon as well. There are several objectives in the game. One that can be completed with one game pack is to join the Pokémon League and become the greatest Pokémon trainer in the world. To do this you must travel from town to town defeating gym trainers and collecting their badges. Once you have all eight badges you may enter the Pokémon League area. After traveling through Victory Road, a difficult cave area with many puzzles (be sure to have a Pokémon with strength with you) and tough trainers. After the cave you enter the Pokémon League headquarters you must face the Elite Four, the four top Pokémon trainers. After them you must face Gary for one final match. After that it the end of the game.
The other objective is an interesting new feature of any game, you must collect all 150 Pokémon. This in itself isn't too interesting but in each version of the game, Red and Blue, you can only catch around 136 of the available Pokémon. You have to connect to a friend (or enemy's? stranger's?) Game Boy and trade your Pokémon. the only way to collect all 150 is to trade. In addition you can battle a friend's Pokémon with your own vie game link.
Pokémon is a huge hit in Japan and has been for while. Oh for all of you who think all these great games are American made, sorry, most of the best are originally Japanese, and most of all the games are from Japan. Anyway, the game just recently landed here on American shores along with it's Anime counterpart, dubbed in English (Yeah the shows Japanese too). Anyway, the show follows the same general plot as the game but ads much more story to Ash's adventures. The show stars Ash Ketchem as he and his friends, Brock and Misty (Both gym leaders in the show and game), travel the world catching Pokémon, gaining trainer badges, and foiling the evil team Rocket. The story is always continuous, witch is nice, and it's not always the same. Team Rocket always appears and does their saying, but it's hardly the monster of the week type formula because many times Team Rocket shows up for a few minutes or don't do and evil things during the episode.
Personally the game would be better if it had been based on the show with the show's story than the the way it is with the show based on the game. I prefer more story to my RPGs thank you. Here's one thing though that would have made the game better, Jesse James, and Meowth (Team Rocket on the show) should have been in the game and shown up more often. Plus it would have been more interesting had Misty and Brock joined your party. It's just lonely you, traveling by yourself. There just should have been more major characters. It could have been better.
I also read in that if Pokémon is successful there is going to be a Nintendo 64 title called Pokémon arena where you can insert your Game Boy cartridge (ala Super Game Boy?) and fight your opponent's Pokémon in a 3D environment. This could be good but there would have to be more because the Pokémon battles aren't that exciting.