Danny
23-01-2015, 09:12 PM
http://habbox.com/assets/images//2015/01/19/3e7013b9de0a0ef019c6d8350ee13f30.png
Welcome to my Game Corner, where I will be reviewing games and games series, the first one that I have chosen is:Pokemon!
Because there are so many games, I am actually going to break this down and start with generation one.
This was by no means one of the first games that I played but this is one of the most popular series, so why not?
The concept of Pokemon was first thought of around 1989, created in 1996, being released in Japan first, which makes sense because it was made in Japan. The versions in Japan were known as Pocket Monsters Aka and Midori, translating to Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green. Pokemon Blue was released in Japan, this version had many bugs and glitches fixed. The game proved to be a huge success in Japan and was eventually translated and ported out to the US on 30th September 1998, becoming available in all regions on October 5, 1999, under the names of Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue. Two different versions of the same game, how could they possibly both be successful? Just worth pointing out, both the versions were based off of the Pokemon Blue Japanese version.
Well, the idea of having two different versions was thought out, because Nintendo wanted to make use of the link cable (known by many as the trading cable back in the day) that links two Game Boys together.
The concept of Pokemon was to "Catch'em all" and depending on which version of the game you had, you could only catch certain Pokemon. For example, on Pokemon Red, you could catch Growlithe, but you couldn't catch Vulpix whom you caught in Pokemon Blue and vice versa. Another example was Oddish and Bellsprout, you could catch Oddish in Pokemon Red but not in Pokemon Blue, and Bellsprout was Blue's exclusive Pokemon.
Since Pokemon was so popular in Japan, by the time the games came out for us, we had the anime where the protoganist was called Ash Ketchum and the rival was Gary Oak. I was highly convinced back then that was what the characters in games were called, so upon entering the world of Pokemon Blue which became my version, I called my guy Ash (sorry Red) and the rival, because come on, he did look a lot like him, Gary. But for some reason, the main character was called Red as I hinted at above and the rival was actually called Blue. Funny names but hey, who am I to judge!
Upon starting up the game, Professor Oak appears asking you for your name and also asks for the name of your rival. Once all that has been completed, you find yourself in your bedroom in Pallet Town. You go downstairs and you get your mother talking rubbish etc. then you get full control of the game. You can explore the town if you wish, visiting Blue's house or Prof. Oak's lab but nothing much is really going to happen until you attempt to leave the area to the north of the map. Once you step on a patch of grass Prof. Oak comes running telling you to stop and that it's not safe to leave the town without a Pokemon (huh, so you're stuck in this small town if you don't have a Pokemon? Okay then).
He takes you to his lab and you are able to pick one of three Pokemon, Charmander according to sources I have looked at appears to be the most popular but Charmander is weak against the first two Gym Leaders you will have to face, so if there are any kind of game settings at all in this game, I would go as far to say choosing Charmander is the hard setting. The next choice is Squirtle, which would be medium setting, as Squirtle is very effective against the first Gym Leader but isn't so effective in the second Gym and in the third Gym you are definitely at a disadvantage, but by this point you should have a strong enough team to not have to choose Squirtle to fight.
Last but not least is Bulbasaur who would be the easy choice as he is super effective against the first two Gym Leaders and stands a fair chance against the third Gym Leader.
(Just stating, at the time of playing these games, this information never occurred to me. I chose who I liked the look of more in all honesty.)
Before you get to choose your Pokemon though, your rival, also Prof. Oak's grandson comes in asking for a Pokemon too! You get first pick out of the Pokemon, but your rival will always choose the Pokemon stronger than your own, no matter who you choose, so if you choose Charmander, he will pick Squirtle for example. Once you both have your Pokemon, your rival will challenge you to a battle. It doesn't really matter if you win or lose here but I like to win if I am honest because it makes me feel better in myself to beat Blue from the start, his attitude tends to grate on me!
You are almost all set to go on your adventure but you have a task to complete where you need to go to Viridian City to collect something for Oak. This seems utterly pointless to me but I can only assume it's to get you used to the battling concept and talking to people along the way. If you speak to a guy a little way above Pallet Town, he will give you a free potion which usually is a pretty useful thing, you never know when you may need to use a potion. Once you collect the item and return to Oak, he will give you some PokeBalls to capture Pokemon, so now you're all set, you have your Pokemon, your Pokedex to record data of Pokemon you see and capture and now you have PokeBalls to capture along the way.
On your way back up to Viridian you come across Pokemon such as Pidgey and Rattata, Pokemon I generally try and keep for as long as I can, I find them both very useful, Pidgey more so as I feel he is a strong flying type.
Once you get back to Viridian, you will find that you can't actually enter the Gym there yet... I wonder why? Not very much you can do here, other than heal your Pokemon in the Poke Centre or visit the Poke Mart for supplies but you do have little cash to spend here, so I would recommend giving this a miss.
You can head up to Viridian Forest straight away if you want or if you're the kind who wants to battle more Pokemon, perhaps capture or level up a bit more then explore Viridian City properly, you will see a large gap (you will head here much later on in the game). This is actually the route towards the Elite Four, but more on that soon. The Pokemon here are low level and also you get the chance to catch a Nidoran here, who can be an early strong fighting type Pokemon who can help you in the third Gym at least.
I won't go too in depth, so I will now just give a summary of the rest of the game.
As you continue along your journey, you will encounter many different people, trainers to battle, people willing to trade with you, annoying guards who won't let you past certain areas because they are thirsty (not surprising here really, when you see the price of drinks in this world!) and Team Rocket, a group of criminals who want to use Pokemon as tools for their crimes. They have given the local authority problems so it is down to you, a ten year old boy, to scupper their plans! You come up against these a couple of times as far as I remember.
Now there's one place in Pokemon I always found oddly disturbing and that is Lavender Town. The Pokemon you are raising, you never see them die, they only faint and once you take them to a Pokemon Centre, they will return to you fully healed, no problem. If you were like me you would get a little attatched to your team, so arriving at Lavender Town and finding this is a place where you can find graves of dead Pokemon is quite distressing as a child! The Tower is even worse, when you first enter it, you encounter 'ghosts' which terrify your Pokemon and you can't attack them yet.
Now among all this, you will battle Gym Leaders as I have mentioned before. Each Gym Leader will give you a badge upon beating them in battle. You require eight Gym Badges, which you use to gain the right to battle the Elite Four. Each Gym Leader favour one type of Pokemon, so having a varied team and not all, water type Pokemon for instance is the way to go. Having beaten all the Gym Leaders (just quickly noting that the final Gym Leader, the Gym you couldn't enter in Viridian City at the start, is in actual fact Giovanni, the leader or soon to be ex leader of Team Rocket!) it's not time to face the challenge of the Elite Four.
As can be guessed, you face Four Elite trainers who have very strong Pokemon, all of which have specific Pokemon types like the Gym Leaders. You've now beaten the Elite Four, but wait, surely you could see this coming?
You have faced off against your rival numerous times throughout the game, he's always been one step ahead of you, the smarmy little git and there's no difference here. There can only be one Pokemon Champion, Blue has beaten the Elite Four, he even claims he weakened the Elite Four and that's how you beat them. There's only one way to decide who is the Pokemon Master (this was your main goal, to become the number one trainer in the (Pokemon) World!) One last Pokemon Battle! Now, like you (hopefully) your rival will have a varied team and the team changes depending which Pokemon he chose at the start of the game.
Be smart, and you will eventually beat Blue once and for all, gaining the respect of everyone. Prof. Oak comes along and congratulates you, also telling Blue off for not caring enough about his Pokemon.
You get every Pokemon in your party put into the Hall of Fame, giving you a great sense of achievement.
Ah, but you are not done just yet, aswell as completing the Pokedex Oak gave you, you now can head off to Victory Road. Here, you come across THE ultimate Pokemon (of this Generation), Mewtwo. Who is actually a clone of the legdendary Pokemon, Mew. In Pokemon Red and Blue, you can get a total of 151 Pokemon, but you can only get #151, Mew, from official Nintendo events.
I will be honest, my brother had bought a Pokemon strategy guide which was produced by the Official Nintendo magazine, so I did use this to look at Pokemon moves, which ones I would think best for whichever Pokemon I was going to catch.
My brother technically bought both of the versions, but let me play Pokemon Blue whilst he played Pokemon Red and it eventually became mine, but anyway moving on from that, I can remember when I started, I was drawn to Bulbasaur, so that Pokemon is one of my favourite starters.
I was immediately hooked once I started playing the game, I enjoyed pretty much all of the areas but I’m going to be honest, I really found areas that were underground or in caves really tedious, especially at a lower level because of all of the Pokemon that you would encounter and the amount of potions I would have to use. I honestly can say these were the few times I used the guide as I had to navigate my way around, because they were just long and overly annoying! I didn’t even mind fighting trainers that were spread out over Kanto. But I remember as soon as I was able to trade Pokemon over, I would trade my entire team to my brother and vice versa, then traded them back over. Because once Pokemon were traded, they would earn boosted XP.
Since I've mentioned trading, I will explain about the trading feature and the pros and cons with trading.
Like I said above, my brother and I would trade our teams over to each other, then back. This didn't cause us any issues as we were the Pokemon's original trainer, but if you trade a Pokemon and you receive a different one, you can find yourself with a couple of problems. The main pro with trading Pokemon is that you gain a Pokemon that you can not originally obtain, thus completing more of your Pokedex. Also, as I stated before, the Pokemon gains boosted XP (experience, by the way). The Pokemon then tend to level faster as opposed to a Pokemon you caught yourself, which yes great you can evolve your Pokemon that little bit faster, but here's where you cause problems to yourself. Because you aren't the original trainer of the Pokemon who caught it, unless you have certain badges and the Pokemon gets to a certain level, it will become lazy and lose respect for you, so in battle it will then ignore you which can cause you untold problems. I definitely had this problem a few times with Pokemon from Pokemon Red (remember, my brother played this one).
Another thing to note about Pokemon and trading, for some reason, unless you trade certain Pokemon (Machoke for example) then you physically can not obtain their final evolution stage.
With the link cable you can also battle your Pokemon against a friend for mere pride!
We are now coming to the end of this generation, but I have failed to mention that there was actually a third version of the game, Pokemon Yellow! But, alas, this is long enough as it is, and Pokemon Yellow is different from the first two versions, so I will go in to depth of Pokemon Yellow next time!
Overall, I would say back in the day this game was highly entertaining, it kept me amused for hours anyway, there were various things that could be improved, but in later games they have pretty much done that. I will go into more detail, when I come across the next games.
I will give this game a 9/10!
Hope you enjoy reading this review!
Welcome to my Game Corner, where I will be reviewing games and games series, the first one that I have chosen is:Pokemon!
Because there are so many games, I am actually going to break this down and start with generation one.
This was by no means one of the first games that I played but this is one of the most popular series, so why not?
The concept of Pokemon was first thought of around 1989, created in 1996, being released in Japan first, which makes sense because it was made in Japan. The versions in Japan were known as Pocket Monsters Aka and Midori, translating to Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green. Pokemon Blue was released in Japan, this version had many bugs and glitches fixed. The game proved to be a huge success in Japan and was eventually translated and ported out to the US on 30th September 1998, becoming available in all regions on October 5, 1999, under the names of Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue. Two different versions of the same game, how could they possibly both be successful? Just worth pointing out, both the versions were based off of the Pokemon Blue Japanese version.
Well, the idea of having two different versions was thought out, because Nintendo wanted to make use of the link cable (known by many as the trading cable back in the day) that links two Game Boys together.
The concept of Pokemon was to "Catch'em all" and depending on which version of the game you had, you could only catch certain Pokemon. For example, on Pokemon Red, you could catch Growlithe, but you couldn't catch Vulpix whom you caught in Pokemon Blue and vice versa. Another example was Oddish and Bellsprout, you could catch Oddish in Pokemon Red but not in Pokemon Blue, and Bellsprout was Blue's exclusive Pokemon.
Since Pokemon was so popular in Japan, by the time the games came out for us, we had the anime where the protoganist was called Ash Ketchum and the rival was Gary Oak. I was highly convinced back then that was what the characters in games were called, so upon entering the world of Pokemon Blue which became my version, I called my guy Ash (sorry Red) and the rival, because come on, he did look a lot like him, Gary. But for some reason, the main character was called Red as I hinted at above and the rival was actually called Blue. Funny names but hey, who am I to judge!
Upon starting up the game, Professor Oak appears asking you for your name and also asks for the name of your rival. Once all that has been completed, you find yourself in your bedroom in Pallet Town. You go downstairs and you get your mother talking rubbish etc. then you get full control of the game. You can explore the town if you wish, visiting Blue's house or Prof. Oak's lab but nothing much is really going to happen until you attempt to leave the area to the north of the map. Once you step on a patch of grass Prof. Oak comes running telling you to stop and that it's not safe to leave the town without a Pokemon (huh, so you're stuck in this small town if you don't have a Pokemon? Okay then).
He takes you to his lab and you are able to pick one of three Pokemon, Charmander according to sources I have looked at appears to be the most popular but Charmander is weak against the first two Gym Leaders you will have to face, so if there are any kind of game settings at all in this game, I would go as far to say choosing Charmander is the hard setting. The next choice is Squirtle, which would be medium setting, as Squirtle is very effective against the first Gym Leader but isn't so effective in the second Gym and in the third Gym you are definitely at a disadvantage, but by this point you should have a strong enough team to not have to choose Squirtle to fight.
Last but not least is Bulbasaur who would be the easy choice as he is super effective against the first two Gym Leaders and stands a fair chance against the third Gym Leader.
(Just stating, at the time of playing these games, this information never occurred to me. I chose who I liked the look of more in all honesty.)
Before you get to choose your Pokemon though, your rival, also Prof. Oak's grandson comes in asking for a Pokemon too! You get first pick out of the Pokemon, but your rival will always choose the Pokemon stronger than your own, no matter who you choose, so if you choose Charmander, he will pick Squirtle for example. Once you both have your Pokemon, your rival will challenge you to a battle. It doesn't really matter if you win or lose here but I like to win if I am honest because it makes me feel better in myself to beat Blue from the start, his attitude tends to grate on me!
You are almost all set to go on your adventure but you have a task to complete where you need to go to Viridian City to collect something for Oak. This seems utterly pointless to me but I can only assume it's to get you used to the battling concept and talking to people along the way. If you speak to a guy a little way above Pallet Town, he will give you a free potion which usually is a pretty useful thing, you never know when you may need to use a potion. Once you collect the item and return to Oak, he will give you some PokeBalls to capture Pokemon, so now you're all set, you have your Pokemon, your Pokedex to record data of Pokemon you see and capture and now you have PokeBalls to capture along the way.
On your way back up to Viridian you come across Pokemon such as Pidgey and Rattata, Pokemon I generally try and keep for as long as I can, I find them both very useful, Pidgey more so as I feel he is a strong flying type.
Once you get back to Viridian, you will find that you can't actually enter the Gym there yet... I wonder why? Not very much you can do here, other than heal your Pokemon in the Poke Centre or visit the Poke Mart for supplies but you do have little cash to spend here, so I would recommend giving this a miss.
You can head up to Viridian Forest straight away if you want or if you're the kind who wants to battle more Pokemon, perhaps capture or level up a bit more then explore Viridian City properly, you will see a large gap (you will head here much later on in the game). This is actually the route towards the Elite Four, but more on that soon. The Pokemon here are low level and also you get the chance to catch a Nidoran here, who can be an early strong fighting type Pokemon who can help you in the third Gym at least.
I won't go too in depth, so I will now just give a summary of the rest of the game.
As you continue along your journey, you will encounter many different people, trainers to battle, people willing to trade with you, annoying guards who won't let you past certain areas because they are thirsty (not surprising here really, when you see the price of drinks in this world!) and Team Rocket, a group of criminals who want to use Pokemon as tools for their crimes. They have given the local authority problems so it is down to you, a ten year old boy, to scupper their plans! You come up against these a couple of times as far as I remember.
Now there's one place in Pokemon I always found oddly disturbing and that is Lavender Town. The Pokemon you are raising, you never see them die, they only faint and once you take them to a Pokemon Centre, they will return to you fully healed, no problem. If you were like me you would get a little attatched to your team, so arriving at Lavender Town and finding this is a place where you can find graves of dead Pokemon is quite distressing as a child! The Tower is even worse, when you first enter it, you encounter 'ghosts' which terrify your Pokemon and you can't attack them yet.
Now among all this, you will battle Gym Leaders as I have mentioned before. Each Gym Leader will give you a badge upon beating them in battle. You require eight Gym Badges, which you use to gain the right to battle the Elite Four. Each Gym Leader favour one type of Pokemon, so having a varied team and not all, water type Pokemon for instance is the way to go. Having beaten all the Gym Leaders (just quickly noting that the final Gym Leader, the Gym you couldn't enter in Viridian City at the start, is in actual fact Giovanni, the leader or soon to be ex leader of Team Rocket!) it's not time to face the challenge of the Elite Four.
As can be guessed, you face Four Elite trainers who have very strong Pokemon, all of which have specific Pokemon types like the Gym Leaders. You've now beaten the Elite Four, but wait, surely you could see this coming?
You have faced off against your rival numerous times throughout the game, he's always been one step ahead of you, the smarmy little git and there's no difference here. There can only be one Pokemon Champion, Blue has beaten the Elite Four, he even claims he weakened the Elite Four and that's how you beat them. There's only one way to decide who is the Pokemon Master (this was your main goal, to become the number one trainer in the (Pokemon) World!) One last Pokemon Battle! Now, like you (hopefully) your rival will have a varied team and the team changes depending which Pokemon he chose at the start of the game.
Be smart, and you will eventually beat Blue once and for all, gaining the respect of everyone. Prof. Oak comes along and congratulates you, also telling Blue off for not caring enough about his Pokemon.
You get every Pokemon in your party put into the Hall of Fame, giving you a great sense of achievement.
Ah, but you are not done just yet, aswell as completing the Pokedex Oak gave you, you now can head off to Victory Road. Here, you come across THE ultimate Pokemon (of this Generation), Mewtwo. Who is actually a clone of the legdendary Pokemon, Mew. In Pokemon Red and Blue, you can get a total of 151 Pokemon, but you can only get #151, Mew, from official Nintendo events.
I will be honest, my brother had bought a Pokemon strategy guide which was produced by the Official Nintendo magazine, so I did use this to look at Pokemon moves, which ones I would think best for whichever Pokemon I was going to catch.
My brother technically bought both of the versions, but let me play Pokemon Blue whilst he played Pokemon Red and it eventually became mine, but anyway moving on from that, I can remember when I started, I was drawn to Bulbasaur, so that Pokemon is one of my favourite starters.
I was immediately hooked once I started playing the game, I enjoyed pretty much all of the areas but I’m going to be honest, I really found areas that were underground or in caves really tedious, especially at a lower level because of all of the Pokemon that you would encounter and the amount of potions I would have to use. I honestly can say these were the few times I used the guide as I had to navigate my way around, because they were just long and overly annoying! I didn’t even mind fighting trainers that were spread out over Kanto. But I remember as soon as I was able to trade Pokemon over, I would trade my entire team to my brother and vice versa, then traded them back over. Because once Pokemon were traded, they would earn boosted XP.
Since I've mentioned trading, I will explain about the trading feature and the pros and cons with trading.
Like I said above, my brother and I would trade our teams over to each other, then back. This didn't cause us any issues as we were the Pokemon's original trainer, but if you trade a Pokemon and you receive a different one, you can find yourself with a couple of problems. The main pro with trading Pokemon is that you gain a Pokemon that you can not originally obtain, thus completing more of your Pokedex. Also, as I stated before, the Pokemon gains boosted XP (experience, by the way). The Pokemon then tend to level faster as opposed to a Pokemon you caught yourself, which yes great you can evolve your Pokemon that little bit faster, but here's where you cause problems to yourself. Because you aren't the original trainer of the Pokemon who caught it, unless you have certain badges and the Pokemon gets to a certain level, it will become lazy and lose respect for you, so in battle it will then ignore you which can cause you untold problems. I definitely had this problem a few times with Pokemon from Pokemon Red (remember, my brother played this one).
Another thing to note about Pokemon and trading, for some reason, unless you trade certain Pokemon (Machoke for example) then you physically can not obtain their final evolution stage.
With the link cable you can also battle your Pokemon against a friend for mere pride!
We are now coming to the end of this generation, but I have failed to mention that there was actually a third version of the game, Pokemon Yellow! But, alas, this is long enough as it is, and Pokemon Yellow is different from the first two versions, so I will go in to depth of Pokemon Yellow next time!
Overall, I would say back in the day this game was highly entertaining, it kept me amused for hours anyway, there were various things that could be improved, but in later games they have pretty much done that. I will go into more detail, when I come across the next games.
I will give this game a 9/10!
Hope you enjoy reading this review!