Pocket Monsters Stadium

The Good
For the most part, the graphics are truly impressive. 3D models of Pokémon viewed at multiple angles, especially with the cinematic camera movement. Here and there you see special effects for the moves that make those Pokémon look mighty powerful with awesome dramatic poses.

The stadiums look spacious and have a good amount of props to make them look interesting. The atmosphere is greatly enhanced by the action-styled music tracks which seem to change with the mood of the battle and tingling your senses as if you were an actual Pokémon trainer.

The menus are easy to navigate with screens showing every essential bit of information about the Pokémon and the opportunities there are to battle. The controls are pretty tight, so you can execute moves with just the press of the D-pad. A big plus in this game is that you don't need to grind experience for your Pokémon and you have all four moves for each Pokémon at your disposal.

You have the option of playing and doing battle with a partner if you're so inclined. Even better, you can import your Game Boy Pokémon from the first set of games right into stadiums. And at the very end of the game, you have the opportunity to prove your worth by defeating Mewtwo.

The Bad
Good graphics aren't everything when variety plays a big role. There are plenty of battle stadiums, but no real variety in Pokemon battles. For one, you are limited to 42 Pokemon out of the 151 you would find in the Pokedex.

There aren't any outdoor places to fight, like the beach among other locations. This would've also added challenge by matching the atmosphere of the location to a Pokemon's element.

The character portraits are terrible. They don't even look like proper anime portraits. Those jagged outlines like more look they were traced and penciled with quick splash of colour and over the top matte shine. And speaking of portraits, there is a lack of customisation for your character's face, attire and name. You must play some generic trainer that pops out of the blue to become top of the ranks.

Presentation throughout the game is no better than the graphics. The game just opens up, but not backstory to catch your interest and no ending cutscenes to reward you for your victory. You don't even get a high score after the credits. And don't expect anything special to happen in between gameplay, you're just winning, losing and playing away with only progression to look forward to. In between turns and battles, there's the annoying jagged screen fade out and in, which acts more as a distraction. And the commentator's voice is rather robotic and toneless, getting samey after a while. If they only had more than one voice actor for multiple referees.

The Bottom Line
If you wanted to find out what it was like to be a Pokémon trainer at a stadium event, this game simulates it perfectly. This game could've paved way for a 3D Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green remake, but it only acted as the framework providing you with lodes of battles, but no actual adventure to go with it. What we have here is a battle simulator, but not a whole lot else. RPG elements, Pokédollars and other neat features would have given this game a sort of Career mode akin to Need for Speed Underground.

I do have to give credit for how superb those matches are and fun to play too. How could a game with such epic battles never make it outside Japan? It doesn't matter too much since the speech and text is in English. This was pretty much the precursor to the portable Pokémon GO that we all know and love. This game deserves a fair chance, though a refined remake would have been desirable a few years after its release, or at least expansion packs.