Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Amazing"

Pokemon Red is an RPG developed by Creatures Inc. In Pokemon Red you are a young protagonist named Red, usually mistaken for Ash from the Anime series. The game is set in the Kanto Region where many trainers raise Pokemon and battle with one and other.

You start out in the small town of Pallet Town and start your adventure to find all of the Pokemon in the PokeDex, a quest given to you by the Pokemon Professor Professor Oak. On this quest you will have to fight your way through 8 Gyms of which consist of the gym leaders, Brock, Misty, Surge, Erica, Koga, Blaine, Sabrina and Giovanni getting the 8 gym badges will give you a place in the Pokemon League, a place where all the greatest trainers have gone to test their ability against the best. Throughout your journey you will have to face your rival Blue (also mistaken for Gary from the Anime as he looks exactly the same) and you will have to take down the might of Team Rocket and infamous team of people plotting to rule the world. The story takes you through many towns and cities the biggest of which is Saffron City a sprawling Metropolis in the centre of the Kanto Region. The games is around 20 hours long but with a quick play through you could achieve completion within around 15 hours but the game will keep you going for hours and hours if you try and catch every Pokemon in the region. Within Kanto there are 151 Pokemon, 150 of which can be captured, some you will have to trade from the other version as some Pokemon are exclusive to the other game or are just easier to find.

Gameplay wise Pokemon is great, the battle system is a turn based battle system similar to that of the Final Fantasy franchise. Each character has their own personality; although you can't really see this unless you talk to the characters within the game they do have their own personalities just like the real world. Many people within the game look exactly the same, this is because there is just for example, Pokemon Trainer Bob, the trainers have being grouped, so you will get something more like Youngster Bob, Biker Bob, Oddball Bob and so on. Although this isn't a great thing you don't lose faith in how amazing these games actually are. There are many different types of Pokemon in the game and when battling it works like a rock paper scissors game, Water beats Fire, Fire beats Grass and so on. There are many different types of Pokemon, Water, Fire, Grass, Ghost, Psychic, Poison and so on. But the primary types are Fire, Water and Grass. The game had a major glitch in which you could do a cheat to get maximum amounts of any item. This wasn't a button tapping cheat this was just a strange flaw within the game that wasn't meant to be there, although many people believe Creatures Inc put it in on purpose.

Graphically Pokemon is great, quite like the Nintendo Entertainment System, 2D characters on a 2D background. In battle you get some great battle animations when you use an attack on another Pokemon, beams will shoot from the Pokemon and other things like that.

Musically I love the Pokemon games, the music is 8-bit but it has a great feel to it. Each place has a different tune to it and it give you the emotion of each town, the town of Lavender is a dark town which contains the Pokemon Cemetery so the music is very dark and creeps you out a little bit. Pokemon is best played with the sound on, without the sound you can't really interact emotionally with the games. The music changes even in battle, if it is an important battle you will get a fast paced heart stopping music, but if it's just a wild battle you will get the bog standard Pokemon battle music, which is also quite thrilling but it's quite a happy tune.

Overall Pokemon Red/Blue is a fantastic game; there aren't really any flaws with it obviously except for the major glitch. The game overall is great though so I advice you to play it. If you no longer own a Gameboy or a Gameboy Colour and have never played these games, get you hard earned cash, go buy a Gameboy or Gameboy Colour and buy Pokemon Red/Blue and have one of the greatest gaming experiences you will ever have.

Score- 10