E-mail me at:
cod@compusmart.ab.ca

Pokemon - The Game Boy games that started it all

It's amazing how much of a craze three little Game Boy cartridges can start, but it happened; three years ago, Nintendo of Japan, Gamefreak and Creatures released "Pokemon", a monster training game that combined RPG and strategy elements. Japan fell in love with it, and everything evolved into an anime and lots of toys... but I digress.

There are four "flavours" of Pokemon available in Japan: blue, green and red and yellow, the blue version being the rarer one since it was a limited edition cartridge. Each cartridge had a different selection of monsters; while one monster can be abundant in one version, it can be the rarest thing since a free lunch in another. Sometimes, a monster can't even be found in one version, forcing the player to either trade with a friend using a Game Boy link cable, or to buy a second Game Boy and version of a cartridge and make the trade him/herself.

The Yellow version is also a special edition cartridge; instead of starting with the three starter Pokemon (Hitokage/Charmander, Zenigame/Squirtle and Fushigidane/Bulbasaur), you do like Satoshi/Ash did in the anime and start with the lovable Pikachu. Since he doesn't like being in a monster-ball/poke-ball, he follows you around throughout the game. Also, there is a cameo appearance of Musashi/Jessie and Kojiro/James. (They weren't in the original Game Boy games.)

Pokemon Red and Blue was released on September 28th in the United States and September 30th in Canada, and so far the sales seem to have been big. The translation is pretty much true to form, and the music and gameplay hasn't changed a bit from the original games, save for a modification in the battle menu (the options aren't at the same place).

Now that the English version is released, I'm slowly building up a FAQ of the questions you people ask me the most. As soon as it gets big enough, I'll post it on my page. If you get stuck in a rut in the game and don't know what to do, send mail to me at cod@compusmart.ab.ca with the heading "Pokemon Help" (I get so much mail that I'll ignore your letter for a while if it doesn't say that) and I'll try to reply to you in about three days. Please don't send me any emulator questions, I've never used one in my life and I have no idea how they work. Also, I'm going through the game myself, so if you've got a question about an area I haven't been to yet, please be patient, I'm going through the game as fast as I can.