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Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow

Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow

Written by Russell Archey on 3/29/2016 for
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“Hello there!  Welcome to the world of Pokemon.”  Twenty years ago in Japan and eighteen years ago in the US, players were greeted with that statement for the very first time.  We met with Professor Oak and received our first Pokemon.  We then set out on our Pokemon journey in which our goal was to capture all one-hundred fifty Pokemon (before we found out about Mew).  Little did we know that two decades later we’d have explored six regions and found, captured, and battled with over seven-hundred twenty Pokemon.  Pokemon Red was one of my favorite games on the original Game Boy and now all these years later, today’s generation of Pokemon trainers can check out where it all started via the 3DS Virtual Console.  Today I’m heading back to Pallet Town where it all began to check out Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow.

The goal of Pokemon is simple: travel throughout the Kanto region and gain enough gym badges to enter the Pokemon League.  To do this you must capture and train many different types of Pokemon by battling other wild Pokemon and trainers.  Most of the towns you come across will have a Pokemon gym that’s ran by a Gym Leader that usually focuses on a specific type of Pokemon such as rock, water, and psychic.  Once you gain all eight gym badges you’ll make your way to the Indigo Plateau to battle the Elite Four for a chance to become the Pokemon League Champion.  All of this is done along with a secondary goal of filling your Pokedex with as many entries as possible.

Along your journey you’ll occasionally run into the crime syndicate Team Rocket whose goal is to steal Pokemon to further their goal of world domination.  Throughout the game you’ll occasionally run into members of Team Rocket and battle them, and their boss Giovonni also shows up a few times to battle you.  This actually serves as a subplot in the game as typically when you come across a member of Team Rocket you’ll have interrupted whatever they’re doing to further their plans and once you defeat them in battle they’ll run off.  This isn’t just some randomly thrown in subplot either as players will see much later in the game.

When it comes to how the game plays, it’s very much like a traditional JRPG. Wandering around in grass or in caves and some buildings will net you the occasional random battle against a wild Pokemon, while you’ll also come across many other trainers to do battle with.  The battles are menu driven and turn based.  Each turn you can choose to attack, use an item, attempt to escape from the battle, or switch out to another Pokemon.  Defeating a Pokemon in battle will give experience to any Pokemon who participated in battle (the experience is split evenly amongst them).  After so much experience the Pokemon will level up.  Some Pokemon can even evolve, some by leveling up to a certain level, others via other means…though in the first generation it was either by leveling or using an elemental stone.

  

There is some strategy to battling as each Pokemon will have at least one type, if not two, and each move a Pokemon can learn is a specific type as well.  After leveling up a Pokemon may learn a new move (and if it already has four moves, you can choose to forget a move to learn the new one).  Some moves are very effective against certain types of Pokemon, such as a fire-type move being super effective against a water-type Pokemon.  Others are completely ineffective, such as a normal-type move not even touching a ghost-type Pokemon.  A lot of the strategy in Pokemon is teaching your Pokemon moves of a variety of types to be able to handle different situations or defend itself.

Pokemon Red and Blue play the exact same way with the exact same story.  The only difference is that some Pokemon are more rare in one game than the other, while others are only obtainable in one game over the other.  This encourages players with different games to link up and trade Pokemon in order to complete their Pokedexes.  A little over a year after Red and Blue came out Nintendo released Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition.  Pokemon Yellow basically had the same story as Red and Blue, but changed things a bit to make it more in line with the anime.  For example, Brock and Misty were altered to more resemble their anime counterparts while the Team Rocket duo of Jessie and James would replace a few grunt battles and would typically battle with Meowth, Koffing/Wheezing, and Ekans/Arbok.  The biggest changes to Pokemon Yellow were the Pokemon available.  You always started out with Pikachu and had the opportunity to obtain the three original starters along the way, just like in the anime.  Thankfully Charizard isn’t a complete disobedient jerk in the game, but I digress.

So now that I’ve just gone over basic Pokemon 101, let’s flip things around and talk about how the game has held up all of these years.  While I’ve not heard a ton of complaints about the series over the years, one I do see pop up from time to time is that the series is getting a bit stale because it’s the same formula over and over again.  Well, this is where that all started so I can’t really complain about it, but sometimes the simple methods are the best.  Since it’s a lot less complex than the later games (not that they got all that complex mind you) it’s easier for newer players to transition into.  On the other hand, younger players with a couple of generations of experience might find the games a little tougher as a lot changed over the generations that made things easier over time such as the Experience All item.  In Red, Blue, and Yellow the Experience All gave half of the experience gained in battle to each Pokemon who participated, and then the other half was split amongst all Pokemon in your party.  This is drastically different than the Experience Share in X and Y where all Pokemon gained the full amount of experience regardless of who participated.

 

Graphically…it’s an old-school Game Boy game so it’s not like it’s in HD or anything, but the graphics still hold up rather well.  While not as detailed as today’s games, the sprites representing the individual Pokemon are still nicely detailed, as well as the major character such as the gym leaders and your rival.  The music in the game is some of my favorite in the series and on the Game Boy in general.  Even with the more advanced sound in the 3DS era, I’ll still always prefer the battle music from the classic games.  The original Pokemon games had some of the best music on the original Game Boy which could be due to the fact that the games were released rather late in the Game Boy’s lifetime.

It’s worth noting that just about nothing has been changed from the game in terms of how it plays.  Anything you remember from the original releases are still here including any glitches and tricks.  Granted I didn’t try the MissingNo glitch as I didn’t want to fully test it out to see if it would corrupt my save file…and consequentially my 3DS, but I have read reports that it is still in the game.  The Virtual Console versions don’t utilize save states which makes sense as you can save whenever you want outside of a battle  Sadly you can’t battle and trade with other people over the internet, but local battling and trading can still be done via local wireless communication.  This has changed slightly as once you go to the Cable Club in a Pokemon Center, a menu will come up on the Virtual Console where you’ll choose to invite someone to play with you or join someone who’s sent you an invitation.  This simulates using the Game Boy link cable.  Personally I don’t mind this as it preserves the game as it originally was, way back before online multiplayer was even possible.  Besides, it’s not like other Virtual Console games can do online multiplayer…though that would be nice.

  

The final thing of major note is that Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow are compatible with the Pokemon Bank.  The Pokemon Bank is an app that can be used on the 3DS for a five dollar a year fee that is basically a much bigger version of the in-game Pokemon storage.  The Pokemon Bank can hold 3000 Pokemon and will be the only way you can transfer generation one Pokemon over to generation seven games (Pokemon Sun and Moon), but sadly can’t be transferred over to generation six (X and Y) from what I’ve researched.  I personally haven’t used the Pokemon Bank, mainly as I don’t have nearly enough Pokemon to fill the game’s PCs in any generation, so my experience and knowledge with the Pokemon Bank is severely limited beyond that.

So does the first generation of Pokemon games still hold up today?  Your experience may vary depending on where you came into the series at but for me, the answer is a resounding yes.  I picked up Pokemon Red not too long after it was first released and had a blast playing it, getting Pokemon Yellow around its release.  A couple of years ago I added Pokemon Blue to my Game Boy collection and enjoyed my third trek through the Kanto region (Pokemon Leaf Green notwithstanding).  Playing through the games again for this review was just as fun as it was all those years ago, but I can also see how newer players who started a couple of generations ago might find it a bit tough, but a nice step up in difficulty all the same, using Pokemon they might have never had the chance to see in the previous couple of generations.  Still, it’s a fun way to show the younger generation how it all started nearly twenty years ago.

It’s been eighteen years since the original Pokemon games were released in North America and they’re still as fun today as they were then, but some younger trainers might find it a bit more difficult than more recent games such as X and Y.  Even still, they’re a great way to introduce the younger generation to how it all started.

Rating: 9.5 Exquisite

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.

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About Author

I began my lifelong love of gaming at an early age with my parent's Atari 2600.  Living in the small town that I did, arcades were pretty much non-existent so I had to settle for the less than stellar ports on the Atari 2600.  For a young kid my age it was the perfect past time and gave me something to do before Boy Scout meetings, after school, whenever I had the time and my parents weren't watching anything on TV.  I recall seeing Super Mario Bros. played on the NES at that young age and it was something I really wanted.  Come Christmas of 1988 (if I recall) Santa brought the family an NES with Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt and I've been hooked ever since.

Over 35 years from the first time I picked up an Atari joystick and I'm more hooked on gaming than I ever have been.  If you name a system, classics to moderns, there's a good chance I've not only played it, but own it.  My collection of systems spans multiple decades, from the Odyssey 2, Atari 2600, and Colecovision, to the NES, Sega Genesis, and Panasonic 3DO, to more modern systems such as the Xbox One and PS4, and multiple systems in between as well as multiple handhelds.  As much as I consider myself a gamer I'm also a game collector.  I love collecting the older systems not only to collect but to play (I even own and still play a Virtual Boy from time to time).  I hope to bring those multiple decades of gaming experience to my time here at Gaming Nexus in some fashion.
These days when I'm not working my day job in the fun filled world of retail, I'm typically working on my backlog of games collecting dust on my bookshelf or trying to teach myself C# programming, as well as working on some projects over on YouTube and streaming on Twitch.  I've been playing games from multiple generations for over 35 years and I don't see that slowing down any time soon.
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