When I first inserted Pokemon Crystal
into the Gameboy Advance, one thought crossed my mind: "I have absolutely
no idea what's going on." Things start to become apparent though - the more
you play - and this latest incarnation adds to the Gold and Silver series with
the Battle Tower, the mysterious secrets of the Unown, an all-new way to
catch Suicune you can play as a male or female trainer for the first time and
it's also compatible with Pokemon Stadium 2 on the Nintendo 64.
In the game, Professor Elm, who lives in New Bark Town, the place in which you
begin your adventure, is busy continuing his research into what makes
Pokemon tick and he receives an email from Mr. Pokemon asking him to come and
take a look at his latest discovery, but he sends you in his place as he's
too preoccupied with his work. There's also a strange boy hanging about outside
with something to say...
Strange introductions aside, your aim is to collect and train as many Pokemon
as possible (there's 151 in all, apparently) and store them in your Pokedex.
You can also collect gear called Pokegear (starting to get the picture here?)
such as a radio, town map, cellphone on which to call your Mum and the professor
and a watch. Note that you can set the correct time as in real life and this
will be reflected in the game - eg. play at night and it will be dark in the
game and it can also work out what GMT and BST are, although it refers to them
in American terms as "Daylight Savings Time".
The graphics and sound here are not the game's strong point, but to their
credit they're the same as they have been in previous variants such as
Gold, Silver, Red and Yellow, the game's look having a pseudo-3D
top-down appearance which works well in terms of enabling you to work out what's
happening. Once you've got into the game, the music becomes more engaging too.
Hiding in the undergrowth are the baddies in which you'll have to fight with
your own Pokemon. I can't remember what mine was originally called as I changed
his name to something unprintable, which adds to the amusement because the
game certainly doesn't have an in-built profanity filter. Anyway, back to the
plot and for someone who has never tried to understand the Pokeman concept
before I found it becoming more entertaining as I built up experience points
from winning battles and going up to the next level by scratching, leering
and raging away.
While it's easy to get to grips with, given the time, it misses out one
element from the Japanese original. It appears they had a mobile phone
facility so that you could somehow text each other or send info about your
Pokemon between the units.
What you can do with a
Gameboy Advance
is toggle the screen with the shoulder buttons so as to view it in a central
4:3 ratio as on the Gameboy Colour, or stretch it sideways to fill the
16:9 widescreen of the latest hand-held console.
Of course, whatever I say here will be of no consequence to all the kids who
are massive fans of the franchise as they'll want anything with Pokemon on
the cover and they're bound to enjoy it as much as the previous outings.
Crap gag time: How do you get 151 Pikachus on a bus? Pokemon!
GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
The graphics and sound here are not the game's strong point, but to their
credit they're the same as they have been in previous variants such as
Gold, Silver, Red and Yellow, the game's look having a pseudo-3D
top-down appearance which works well in terms of enabling you to work out what's
happening. Once you've got into the game, the music becomes more engaging too.
While it's easy to get to grips with, given the time, it misses out one
element from the Japanese original. It appears they had a mobile phone
facility so that you could somehow text each other or send info about your
Pokemon between the units.
