Pokémon Red Version

The Good
Later entries in the Pokemon franchise would add an insane number of Pokemon to the series which might seem like a logical step to make, but making steps of 150 pokemon at a time is a bit insane, isn't it? I believe this was the first Pokemon game and it keeps things nice and tidy with a maximum of 150 pocket monsters that are gradually introduced as you play the game.

The original cast was also much more interesting than some of their later kin, having both an interesting and charming design while also having a little secret. Every Pokemon has something special you see and while it is given away in the Pokedex tool, it's still a good way to flesh out the characters a little more (seeing as how there is no dialog with your pets).

The actual fights are pretty well done and require a certain degree of tactics while not going so far as to alienate younger players. As you fight you level up your monsters which increases their statistics and damage output, but you'll also need to keep an eye on your item stockpile and the elements of the enemies you are fighting. To summarize it: an expansion on the classic turn-based combat-system.

The game really comes alive for me during the Lavender Town sequence because damn does it explode there. Lavender Town is perhaps a perfect example of a child-friendly game reaching out to an older audience by putting in subtle elements kids will likely overlook. It's creepy, but not to the point it will make children cry. The second the music starts playing you simply know you have entered somewhere special and you may also notice the low population and that this is the only town with a f*cking graveyard in it. It's food for though too: How often do trainers realize that their lifestyle is pushing their Pokemon too far?

I'll get back at the world design later, but for now it will suffice to say that it's at least glitch free. I played Zelda: The Fallen Sage and it was rich with programming errors that allowed me to dick around places I wasn't supposed to go and shatter the immersion completely, but here that doesn't happen as much. I know for a fact there are some glitches that you can trigger, but I didn't run into any without specifically trying to, which to me means everything is okay.

The Bad
The further back you go in hardware history the more you notice that video games had to abide to limitations. While there were always game rising above their limitations, it doesn't always work out that well and Pokemon is another example of the latter. Quite often signs would say something along the line of "Well, we don't have color in this game, but if we had this town would look more blue", of course more IC, but it comes over that way nonetheless. A total of 150 creatures is also staggering of course, but some of the sprites when fighting look horrendous and when a Pokemon appears outside of a battle they don't look the way they do on the picture (heck, multiple Pokemon share the same sprite outside of combat).

The biggest problem to most people however will likely be the grinding: The act where a player is forced to sit down and spend a long time repeating the same action in order to advance through the story. You can hold six monsters at a time and every time you go to a new gym the game will send tougher enemies in your direction, this means that you need to make sure that all six of your fighters are on par with whatever the game send at you. Nothing is more frustrating than been faced by a ground-type monster and realizing your only water Pokemon is twelve levels behind. This meant large chunks of the game were spend in a patch of grass, running back and forth and healing up at the Pokemon Center between every three fights.

Because of this boring cycle of Gym>train>travel>Gym I quickly grew bored of Pokemon after the third gym. I went to Lavender Town of course, but once there I realized at the top of the tower that I actually needed an item from a nearby town with another gym in it and that is where I just shrugged the whole business. There are some moments where you do something else, quite a lot in fact, but it always boils down to the same thing. Because of this Pokemon can't remain interesting to anybody above the age of eight.

My first Pokemon game was also a huge disappointment, it must have been eleven years ago, but I haven't forgotten about it. Everybody in the 90's was a big fan the anime and when a game arrived in town everybody started dreaming about becoming a legendary Pokemon trainer. The problem is that the game never reaches the quality of the show, not even the newer episodes that I think are absolute sh*t. While you meet some of the iconic characters they never travel with you or even go on adventure with you, Brock and Misty both just kinda disappear from the story after you found them. Things looked up when I had to go on a boat because in the series this was a big Titanic reference, but all you do is get an ability you need and the boat just sails off. Nothing epic, no storylines, just go back to your grinding.

Those are my biggest points of criticism, but I have some smaller complaints: First of all, the bag has this downright awful system. I suppose it's kinda like in Resident Evil 4 where your bag actually has a bottom and you can't just stuff everything in it, but there is no info on how much you can put in your bag. It also doesn't say when it's full, so if you find an item in the wild, but it turns out your bags are full than too bad for you. It also doesn't help that abilities aren't named nor do you know which ones are useful, so you got a whole bag full of TM's hoping that one day an NPC will say you need that specific ability.

You also run into other trainers in the wilderness and of course they don't hesitate to challenge you for a little fight. The good thing about these fights is that owned Pokemon give more experience than their wild relatives, so you are of course going to want to fight them instead of random enemies. However, once a fight is won you can't challenge them again and they just kinda stand there, clogging up the map with needless sprites.

The game design is so simple that it's almost insulting, you don't even need to be a game-design student to notice this. Anybody who has spend three days with RPG Maker can describe how almost this entire game is constructed. There is also a limit on how you can blame on "Well, it's an old game after all". Sometimes the design is even odd or inconsistent, like when very long houses pop up with no doors or other entry/exit points. The game also has some very contrived ways to make the game linear, such as an old man very early on that won't let you explore the world any further because he hasn't had his coffee yet (which he will drink when you beat the local gymleader).

The Bottom Line
Pokemon as a game is only really interesting for children who follow the series and anybody else is just going to be a bit weirded out when they see this mess. One of the reasons that this game simply can't be good is because its entire foundation is based on the gameplay mechanic of grinding. If you pick that mechanic as a start of your game you're already heading completely in the wrong direction and if you add even more repetition to the game, as well as world design that a twelve year old could handle, then I simply don't have a lot of nice things to say.

I know for a fact that kids can forgive this game for its fault and maybe if you are a very nostalgic person you can still play this too, but anybody else will just end up with a cartridge somewhere in the back of their closet. The kind of game your mother finds twelve years later. If you want to play good games on your gameboy than there are a lot of good side-scrollers out there as well as Link's Awakening and other, less horrible games.