Pokemon. Pocket Monsters. They begun as a small (big-small) cartoon which set Ash, this young boy, on a journey to find 8 badges. Badges, yes. This also involved capturing 151 Pokemon in a pokeball. This is starting to sound weird, isn’t it? Well, no. It would, it’s just that everyone knows what it is. So, after the cartoon there was this Pokemon Red/Blue game. Then came along a load of sell out stuff, then Pokemon yellow, which is more or less another sell out cartridge, then even more sell out stuff (this includes clothing and bad sheets etc.). Then, some N64 games came, which sold well. Then another game boy game came along in the name of Pokemon Trading Game. (I’m not going into the Trading Card hell; it’s too vile to write about).

So what next? Nintendo had thought of a way to keep this Pokemon thing alive: Pokemon Gold and Silver. The way they have the 2 separate games is just like the way they used Red/Blue: There were some Pokemon missing in Red, some missing in Blue. This was probably a scam to raise the sales of link cables, but it does the job. Gold and Silver is, in basic terms, the same game as the game/s before it. You do more or less the same thing. You start off in a very (very) small village/town where you meet this professor; he gives you your license to train Pokemon. You can choose from 3 Pokemon; a fire type, a water type and a grass type. Yes, just like Red/Blue. The fire one is the one I chose; it’s called Cyndaquil. I highly recommend this one as I found it best compared to the others. The second best is Totodile, the water Pokemon. This one is good against all the fire enemies you come across, and the steel and rock Pokemon you face will have no chance at all. This one is also worth picking. The next, and probably the worst, is Chikorita. It is of grass element, so it’s good against the water and rock Pokemon, but doesn’t stand up very well when pitted against fire type Pokemon. I can’
t really ‘officially’ decide which is the best of the 3, I can just say I chose Cyndaquil and did well. So, you got your Pokemon, you then go get a pokedex; which is just like an encyclopedia of Pokemon you come across.

Then, you battle wild Pokemon on the grassy areas, and when you wane (sorry, I got bored with Word’s Synonyms, it was weaken before wane) them (don’t knock them out), you throw a pokeball at them and hope you caught it. Then it’s all yours to train. It is rather satisfying doing this at first, but when you have completed Johto and Kanto (I’ll go in a bit more detail after) and you are collecting Pokemon, it does get very boring after the #178th Pokemon capture. Nevertheless, this is a good challenge and is very rewarding (in a satisfying-rewarding way). The leveling up is very similar to other Role Playing Games – it’s all in the experience points. But remember; if you defeat a, oh I don’t know, wild Chancey, level 22, you will not get as much experience as you would defeating a trainers’ Level 22 Chancey. Which brings me to another topic: the trainer battles. Along the Johto journey, you will come across many, many trainers who wish to battle. They are usually easy, and are very good for experience. Defeating trainers are good for gaining money; too. If you lose a battle to these trainers… neigh, a battle, wild or trainer, you will lose exactly half your money. So, train up well in the lower level areas before going to a battle you know you aren’t prepared for.

The Gyms are located in nearly every town (which consists of about 5 other houses), and they are what give you your badge. They don’t GIVE you it, exactly: you must earn it in a test to how well you have been leveling up your Pokemon. There are normally a lot of trainers in the Gyms, who are much harder than the current trainers out in the forests and roads etc. So make sure that you can beat these
before going head first into the Gym Leader. If you have been training up your Pokemon well, then you shouldn’t really have TOO much trouble defeating them; it’s not easy though. So, defeating one of these gets you one of those badges. I know they are badges, but they work out in the end. Well, that’s the basic storyline. You also have a rival, like Gary to Ash, but this one is actually a thief and stole the Pokemon, the person is not really a trainer. The encounters you have with this person are sometimes challenging and are also unpredictable; so remember to always be prepared for battle.

You now have this PokeGear, which comes in your inventory. In it is the date and time; which is stored on the cartridge, a world map of either Johto or Kanto, whichever you are in, a radio to listen to (although you don’t), and a phone. This is pretty useless too, except from the fact that your Mum (on the game) saves some of the money and notifies you about purchases she makes with it. That’s it, really. The trainers give you their number, but they call you almost all the bloody time about ‘Hey! I just caught this cool Pokemon on ROUTE 22! Did you know about that? I’m getting to become a real trainer now! See ya!’ This becomes annoying to the extreme, so please do not do it.

The time system: Well, the timing system for this game is very unique, especially for a Game Boy game. It is more or less a clock, which interacts with the game. In the morning, the clock says ‘Morning’ (clever, eh?) and the screen is bright. In the middle of the day it’ll say ‘Afternoon’ and it is like the original Pokemon games. After 6:00pm, everything goes dark and lights in the house get switched on. This is a very good feature. Better yet, there are Pokemon, which only come out at night (like Hoot Hoot, the Owl Pokemon) and don’t appear in the day, but are sometimes seen in the morning. This is actual
ly a big factor, which makes the game that little bit more worth getting.

OK, what else is there? Hmm… Ooh, ooh, the 2-player mode. If you go into a Pokemon center (which is the place where you heal all your Pokemon up to full HP), you get your mate to link you up to the 2 Game Boy Colours (I’m not sure if I should put Color or Colour, but I’ve put Colour. So live with it) and then you go and talk to this computer thing. The computers are located upstairs in the centers, one is for direct battling, one for trading your collected Pokemon, and another one (this one is a big, gray thing) is for trading and battling with Pokemon red and blue, and yellow. This is another good edition to the game, but I won’t be going into the time machine any more, as you are about to find out what trading and battling 2-player is like. The trading is very self-explaining, a bit too self-explaining if you ask me… anyway, you go over to the computer, you and your mate, and you have a list of your party and the Pokemon boxes which your Pokemon are stored in (you can only have 6 Pokemon in your party, personally it would make more sense to put in the highest level Pokemon, if you see where I’m going). This is mainly used for getting the Pokemon that are previously unavailable in the game, as I had said before.

The battle system for the 2-player is good, also. You connect by more or less the same way as the trading method, then you battle with the Pokemon in your current party (like I said before, choose the highest level Pokemon). This is very good fun, especially when the levels are about even. The only thing is, though, you don’t get any experience for doing the 2-player battles. At all.

The Time Machine? Figure it out.

OK, so that’s all done. There is a new item storage backpack, which is very organized and easy to get things into. Instead of R/B/Y’s backpack, which has all your items in 1 long list
, you now have several compartments, which are left, right, middle and top. In the left you have all your items, which you use on Pokemon, like potions and elemental equipping (which you put on a Pokemon to make the Pokemon stronger towards/against a particular type of attack) etc. the right pocket holds all your pokeballs, which come in all manners of different kinds, like Great Ball, Lure Ball, Heavy Ball, Fast Ball… there is a very big list. So, the top pocket: that’s got all the items, which you must keep, like keys and passes etc. You cannot get rid of these. The middle pocket, to end with, is the other undroppable items like fishing rods and the bicycle. These are not essential, but good. One note about these items: you can ‘equip’ them to the select button, so you only have to press select instead of going into the menu.

I think I’ve covered more or less all the basic topics of the game, so Ill conclude by saying: This game, hyped or not, has to be a major improvement over all the other Pokemon games, and is much more fun to play than ALL the other Pokemon games * cough Pokemon Stadium cough *, and it another cartridge which will fit snugly in your Game boy Colours/Advances. It is worth buying, but there are a lot more games, which I would rather buy right now for my Game Boy Advance <pose>, i.e. Rayman Advance, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2… So, if you like Pokemon you would already have this game, no? If you don’t then well, don’t get it. If you are somewhere in the middle, try renting it. Personally, I like it. And it’s my opinion. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. ^_^