Classic Game of the Month: April 2012

Pokémon: Red Version/Blue Version

One of the most well know franchises by Nintendo is the Pokémon franchise. It was developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo The game sparked what would be a an incredibly wide-spread phenomenon including trading cards, TV anime, and plenty of merchandise and Pokémon Red and Blue Versions were the games that started it all.

Story

The world of Pokémon. A world where powerful creatures and humans live together. These Pokémon can be caught and trained by people to battle; some for sport and friendship, while others use them selfishly for evil. You control a young trainer who's just starting out on his own Pokémon adventure. Your character is a native of Pallet Town (a town in the Kanto region) and live a few homes away from renowned Pokémon expert, Professor Oak. The good professor gives you the choice of starting out with one of 3 Pokémon: The grass type Bulbasaur, the water type Squirtle, or the fire type Charmander. 

With your new partner, you embark your quest to take on other trainers, gym leaders, and finally the Pokémon league. 

Overview

Choosing your first Pokémon

The main Pokémon games have three game-play elements: RPG (role-playing game), Battling, and Collection. While exploring the world, you will meet different people who will want to battle you and others who will ask you to do things for them. Some quests are optional while others are requirements to further the plot of the story and reach new areas. Battles between Pokémon are turn based where each Pokémon gets to use an attack on the other. Wild Pokémon are found in locations such as in tall grass, forests and caves and can be caught with a Pokéball (a capturing device) to add them to your team of Pokémon. 

Two separate versions exist of this game, Red and Blue. They were released at the same time and do not differ in gameplay. What they do differ is in that some Pokémon are unavailable in one game that are fairly common in the other. This would make players have to find someone with the opposite version to be able to really "catch 'em all". 

Pokémon Battle

Battling

Pokémon battles are turn based; each Pokémon performs one attack per turn with the fastest Pokémon going first. Trainers select to send their Pokémon to attack, to switch their current Pokémon with another in their possession to use an item or to run away. Pokémon can know up to 4 moves which can focus on doing brute damage, raising it's own status, recovering, or causing some sort of status effect on the opponent. Each Pokémon has its own unique amount of HP (hit points) and when that number reaches zero, it faints. When all of a trainer's Pokémon have fainted, he/she has lost to the opponent.


Graphics

The Overworld

Pokémon Red and Blue was released for the GameBoy and was one of the first "Top-Down" games for the system. The game makes use of the GameBoy's black and clear monochrome screen and made good use of different shades to provide different "colors". Although it pales in comparison to modern games, the game looks pretty good next to other games of its time.




Legacy

Pokémon Red/Blue generated an explosion of popularity giving Nintendo a new audience of gamers, especially females, who would enjoy and appreciate cuter characters and turn-based game play adventures. It also started the idea of having multiple versions of the same game with differing content. Trading Pokémon was also revolutionary as transmitting data permanently was previously unheard of. Remakes of these games were made about 20 years later as Pokémon Fire Red and Pokémon Leaf Green for the GameBoy Advance. The Kanto region is also revisited in Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions taking place 3 years after the events of Pokémon Red and Blue.


Further Reading
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Red_and_Blue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue