Pokemon Red/Blue (GB)

In the modern world, there are boundaries and rules governing everything that we do. These rules especially apply to children. Long gone are the times when children used to go out to work in the mines at 14 instead of continuing at school. These days, kids stay on at school, get pregnant do drugs and sit about on benefits. According to the Japanese, however, kids go out into the world and spend their time getting beaten up, battling and catching wild animals….all made out of various lines of computer code. Or something. Basically, the world you’re running about in is full of bad people from ‘Team Rocket’ who you defeat by battling Pokémon with them.

The basic story is that at the age of 11 you are given your very first Pokémon by a creepy old guy known as Professor Oak. He gives you a Pokémon, you then have to deliver a package to him, and then you’re free to, for the most part, your own devices. You then have to through the rest of the “world” (which is actually about the size of a small county…..though how you’d walk through the entire county in the space of about 18 hours is beyond me). During this time, you also have to collect numerous badges by visiting gym leaders. After collecting all 8, you can entire the Pokémon league, giving you the chance to defeat the Elite Four, who are deemed to be the supreme beings of Pokémon fighting. Once you defeat these guys, the only thing left to do it collect all 150 Pokémon. Wow, joy.

So, the whole premise of this game, as you have probably gathered by now, is to collect 150 different creatures and raise them up until they are strong enough to defeat anybody else. Of course, I have never actually done this, as I could never actually be bothered to collect all 150 Pokémon of the damn things. I really don’t have that much time on my hands, or the energy, or patience or lack of everything else in my life. One of the biggest challenges is working out which attacks work against which Pokémon. For example, psychic attacks work brilliantly against grass or ghost types, but are awful against other psychic types. However, once you’ve worked this bit out, the rest of the game becomes a breeze. Just make sure you send out the right Pokémon against the right type, or you’ll be dealing no damage and wasting your time, leaving you set to lose the battle.

In honesty , there’s actually a lot to say about this game – you collect Pokémon, you battle them, you raise them til they’re strong, you defeat the elite four, you catch them all (yeah, I went there). As a whole though, I really rather enjoy this game. It’s not exactly on its own anymore and the graphics are so blocky it’s untrue, but it’s still good. It’s a good game to play when you’re bored and having nothing else to do, and its veeeeery good to play when you’re very bored on a long journey. There are better games, but I’ll stick with this one for now.