Nostalgia is a pretty fickle animal, but it certainly has something to do with it. In particular, fans of Pokemon can refer to such a claim, which reflects the fact that 2016 marked 20th anniversary of Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. The companies announced a myriad of new products to release to capitalize on their above mentioned ever-enhanced feelings, mainly through releases on the 3DS Virtual Console – for their original trio of titles from Pocket Monster, Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue and the definitive Pokemon Yellow Version.
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That's why I've been inspired to get my weathered Game Boy Color out of storage and re-connect myself with Kanto in Pokemon Yellow, the aforementioned area. I was tiresome because revisiting a game which, after all these years, I kept so close to my heart would defile my perception of the adventure I had during my young years. The result was that the game did not, since in the period since its inaugural release in 1999, the game held remarkably well.
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As many longtime fans know, the game looks like the events of the anime show more closely. I had been given the mascot, Pikachu, as my original monster, completely overlooking the original three starter Pokemone (Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur). Like the show, the electric rodent refuses to stay in its Pokeball and follows my character instead on the screen. This mechanic was pioneered by Yellow Version, and resurrected later in the heart Gold and Soul Silver Pokemon, but it's fun to differentiate it from the early stages of the game from Red and Blue.
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In addition to the uncapsulated Pikachu, the cartoon's recognizable faces are also seen (a la Jesse and James Rocket's team) rounding up the character cast. More importantly, the need to trade to get all the original Pokemon starter is absolutely eliminated, because I have handyly scored each one by simply completing tasks and talking to trainers in the game world. I was good and in the recent memory I could build one of the best Pokemon teams with the original cast of criticizers for an entirely familiar line-up.
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If there is one big problem with my charmander, squirt and bulbasaur score-running method, they arrive too late in the game at such a low level. They get almost back to back, but my team had a slightly higher level of Pokemon when they claimed a spot on the roster. This is affectively ironed by thousands of wild animals competing in the garbage scattered across the globe, but the final game for those parts is more of a grind than something extraordinarily delightful.
I found the ability to remember and recognise every single Pokemon that I saw from memory invigorating. As someone who has ever played each of the franchise's core games, I have long been unable to name every single Pocket Monster as a result of non-stop additions. With the latest Pokedex jumping into the 700's, it's good to get the basics back to a set of Poképartners that I've known since I've been seven years old. This view is, perhaps, a rose-tone view not that everybody can share, but the point I make is that, compared to the almost ludicrous number that is in circulation at present, the simplicity of the 151 beasts is refreshing.
The turn-based gameplay is still true to the formula introduced in new entries, which is why it is possibly not obsolete. Of course, the creatures that appear in Pokemon Yellow during the years since its release have introduced additional styles and skills, making combat and building strategy a second-guessing affair for long-standing players like me. One example would be poison attacks, which are super successful against monsters of the Bug type, but the rock paper scissors aspect of the game is radically different from the expectations of today – it seems like stupid retrospective oversights.These elements are not detractors of the nature of the subsequent fights, but are key indicators of how I felt out of the area after being so long away from Kanto.
It is difficult to evaluate a game that has been so highly regarded by you for over 15 years, but it is refreshing to realize that it is largely unchanged for a reason. The definitive version of the Game Boy originals is Pokemon Yellow and it can be argued that the same is true for Pokemon X or Y – maybe better just due to the simpler premise, modes, list and subsequent arsenal. It's strange to admit that a game that I thought I knew I had been learning is learning curve, which offers a very polarized experience that reveals how video games don't always hold as you recall. Thankfully, Pokemon Yellow holds up and those who are searching for a nice memory track find it.