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About three weeks ago, Nintendo unleashed their latest
Pokémon translation on the United States. It was pretty much a
sell out around here, but those of us who got there early
managed to get theirs with no problems (unlike the Playstation 2,
but Ill write about that later).
What do these latest versions of Pokémon for the
Game Boy have that the others do not? Lets find out.
As with the originals (except yellow,) you get a choice of one
of three pokémon. There is Chikorita the grass type, who looks
like a pear wearing green pearls and has a giant leaf growing out
of its head. There is the fire type Cyndaquil, that looks like a
hedgehog with fire coming out of its back. And finally, there is
the water type Totodile, who looks like a blue Godzilla hand
puppet. I choose Totodile because it looked so cute and at the
same time psychopathic.
There are many changes game play wise with the game. First
is the use of a real-time clock in the game, so you know if you
are playing in the morning, during the day or at night. When you
turn on the game for the first time, it will ask you to set the time,
the day of the week and if it is daylight savings time. From then
on, the game keeps perfect time whether or not you have it in
the Game Boy and turned on or not. [I found this downright
creepy.] The time in the game also has an effect on what you can
catch. For example, there is a bird pokémon called Hoot-Hoot
that only comes out at night and will soon be as annoying as
Pidgey was in the original games. Also, some Pokémon evolve
into different forms at night. The best example I can give is Evee.
Evee will evolve in one of two ways, either by exposing it to a
stone like in the other games or by it hitting a certain level during
the day or night. By evolving Evee during the night, it becomes a
new species of Pokémon called a dark pokémon.
Second, is the addition of something called Pokégear.
This is a special device that allows you to add special cards that
you can get throughout the game to expand its uses. Theres a
map, a cellular telephone, a radio and maybe one other thing that
I cannot remember off hand. In addition, you will have the
Pokedex and your backpack that aid in your quest.
Third is the fact that you can breed Pokémon. This has been
done before in another game, but this is a first in Pokémon. For
example, if you catch one male and one female Pikachu and take
it to this certain house and give it to the people there, after a
certain amount of time you can come back and you will have an
egg that will eventually hatch into Pichu, or baby form of
Pikachu. You can also breed them with different types of
Pokémon, but the egg that eventually hatches will always contain
the non-evolved female version of that pokémon. Experment
and see what other pokémon will eventually produce an egg that
evolves into a baby form of that pokémon. Beware, there are
some pokémon in the game that are only female while others are
only male.
These two games introduce one hundred new pokémon, and
like with the original three, there are some that are in gold that
are not in silver and vice versa. There are some really cool ones
in the gold version that I am playing that I am glad they made.
The one that I really like is the spider pokémon, Spinarak. There
is also the electric sheep Mareep and the bug/fighting type
Heracross.
They have not improved on the graphics all that much in the
game. If you own one of the original three, then thats about
what the graphics are like. On the other hand, the fight
animations are vary different. Although Im only on the fourth
badge (I do have a life) Ive seen some changes. For example,
my Alakazam has psybeam and instead of looking like a sort of
thermometer like in red and blue, it turns the screen dark and
colorful circles are shot at the opposing pokémon. It looks cool.
The music, like with all Pokémon games, is fun to listen to, but
after about fifteen minutes it will drive you crazy, so you will just
leave the sound turned down.
The suggested retail price for these games are about thirty
dollars each and they are compatible with both game boy and
game boy color. You can also use the game boy printer to print
out the pokedex entries and use the game link cable to trade
between games.
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