Pokémon Gold & Silver

The whole “gen-wuner” sentiment across the cultural zeitgeist of Pokemon has never ceased to spark some personal contention within me. I completely understand that a large margin of people were children during the height of “Pokemania'' and aged out of the franchise's young demographic as it still managed to march on with subsequent releases past its commercial peak in its first generation. For many, Pokemon is strictly a substantial centerpiece of popular media at the turn of the millennium in their respective nostalgia capsules, and that is perfectly acceptable. I was one of these people throughout my adolescence until a social shift occurred in my college years, reeling me back into Pokemon out of curiosity on what I missed during the time when I was “too cool” for Pikachu. Still, my enclosed area of sentimentality beforehand was not restricted to Pokemon’s first generation. I suppose I could call myself a “gen-twoer,” as the era of Pokemon Gold and Silver is where I set my arbitrary boundaries. Pokemon’s second generation was also my introduction point to Pokemon as my older cousin gave me his Gameboy Color with a copy of Pokemon Silver when I was seven and unknowingly created a crippling addiction for me that was difficult to mandate. Given this information, it's no surprise that I’ve encompassed both the first and second generations in my personal sphere of wonderment for Pokemon’s past. Still, I question why my situation isn’t as common with those who grew up with the franchise and how the Gold/Silver generation eludes them. Pokemon’s sophomore outing was released two years after Red/Blue when the franchise's fire was still roaring hot, so its sales still benefited from the ongoing Pokemania craze. It’s not as if Gold/Silver wasn’t a heavily anticipated entry because the Pokemon fad was waning. Are the Kanto enthusiasts that dense to think that the franchise peaked with the first entry, even with the coarse, black and white Gameboy pixels and unsightly depictions of the Pokemon to contend with? If this is the case, they need to stop smoking the nostalgia crack pipe and come to their senses. Pokemon Gold/Silver should ideally be the primary source of warm recollections for when Nintendo’s franchise was a cultural phenomenon, for it’s essentially an extension of the first generation with so many clear improvements that it’s hard to deny its objective superiority.

Pokemon Gold/Silver begins with the same sense of excitement as Red/Blue did. The player is taking control of another bright-eyed rookie trainer with ambitious dreams of besting everyone in the profession of Pokemon training. This time, the trainer wakes up in his hometown of New Bark Town in the land of Johto that neighbors Kanto directly to the west. The deviation in setting here establishes that every Pokemon adventure is going to be across the entire jurisdiction of an uncharted land from here on out. The player’s mom will wish him good luck, and he’ll walk next door to the Pokemon laboratory where Professor Elm will gift him a starter Pokemon that the player will cherish and grow with throughout the game. So far, the starting process to this Pokemon adventure should ring familiar, except for the starter Pokemon displayed for the player to select. Every new entry to the Pokemon franchise adds at least one hundred new additions to the accumulative roster, with the region specific Pokedex altering itself to give the fresh faces higher precedence. Listed at the top of Johto’s national Pokedex are the three starter Pokemon replacing those from Red/Blue: the leafy little Chikorita who highlights the herbivore diet of the long-necked dinosaurs it's modeled after, the anteater Cyndaquil that spurts flames from its backside, and the blue, fun-sized crocodile Totodile. As one could probably guess from their designs, the starters cement that the contrasting grass, fire, and water types will be the selection at the start from here on out. While copying the elemental types of the beginning batch of starters seems like the transition was slick and smooth, Johto’s first Pokemon friends are admittedly underwhelming. Their initial forms are cute, but Chikorita forgets to shed that baby face when it fully evolves into Meganium. Despite its bulky body, no one is going to be intimidated by anything that looks this goofy. Typhlosion’s deficient array of fire moves it learns hardly makes it a barn burner pick, as much as it pains me to admit because of my sentimental attachment to Cyndaquil as my very first Pokemon. Totodile’s final form Feraligatr is probably the most formidable choice, but is ultimately bogged down by a single typing like the rest of its starter mates. None of the fully evolved starters even represent their respective games on the box art, opting for the legendary pair of Lugia and Ho-oh instead. The threesome here lack the charisma and capabilities that made the previous starters Pokemon icons.

Fortunately, Pokemon’s initiative is to build that eclectic sextet, covering most if not all of the bases to compensate for your starter Pokemon’s elemental blind spots. In my overall summation of the second generation’s Pokemon contributions, we have a divisive mix of fantastic additions alongside some laughably pitiful duds. On the respectable side of the coin, every player should consider putting Hoothoot and Mareep in their Pokemon arsenal, for they evolve into majestic beasts (Noctowl and Ampharos) and can be encountered early on to assuage the growing pains of a paltry pokemon team. The player is guaranteed more confidence during their amateur era as opposed to when Red/Blue expected them to blaze through the first few gym leaders with a bushel of frail bug pokemon. For those who still give the weakest pokemon type in the series a fighting chance, Gold/Silver introduces Heracross and Forretress to firmly instill that sense of entomophobia in other trainers. Gold/Silver also starts the trend of pokemon with contradictory elemental typings, a hybrid the developers probably took into stressful consideration and decided that it wasn’t oxymoronic or made these pokemon impervious. Lanturn’s anglerfish design (a non-hideous one) is a biologically sound influence to craft a water and electric pokemon, as the detached dandelion cotton spore Jumpluff is for a grass and flying pokemon. Wooper and Quagsire are the first evolutionary line to have both water and ground types properties, an elite fusion as long as the trainer keeps them off the grass as stern as a neighborhood sign. The rugged rock tree Sudowoodo is Johto’s Snorlax, a waypoint impediment that requires an item to reanimate and fight for the taking. Ursaring, Donphan, Xatu, Skarmory, Sneasel, and Houndoom are all alluring on their designs alone. Unfortunately, all of Gold/Silver’s striking and sturdy new pokemon are counteracted on the whole by just as many unexceptional ones. For some reason, Johto unloads an abundance of single evolution pokemon that feel included just to round out the pokedex. Who seriously shares any attachment towards Aipom, Qwilfish, Yanma, or Stantler? Dunsparce, the oversized sweat bee that resides in a remote, dark cave, is so pitiful that I find it endearing. Delibird, Smeargle, and the alphabetized Unown are practically novelty pokemon. Girafarig is the only substantial one of the unevolvable bunch because its normal and psychic typing gives it immunity to ghost, and battling Shuckle is akin to attempting to break open a diamond. Still, I glance at the entire roster and am disappointed that Farfetch’d was multiplied in triplets.

Fortunately, if one is unsatisfied or is feeling obdurately reverent, Kanto’s pokemon are scattered about Johto as extensively as its native species. However, a sizable portion of Gold/Silver’s roster is dedicated to adding variations on the original lineup. Evidently, there is something in Johto’s water supply that allows previously established pokemon to extend their evolutionary capacities. Before we discuss the old pokemon’s addendums, we should probably make note of their more infantile forms that have just been discovered. The Johto daycare’s services not only increase the level of a pokemon without needing to battle: if the player leaves two pokemon of the opposite gender alone in the yard, there is a strong possibility that there will be three pokemon in the pen by the time the player returns to retrieve them, if you catch my drift. If the concept of evolution was enough for the conservative, Christian parents of America to put Pokemon on their shit list, imagine their reactions when the sequel introduces a mechanic revolving around sexual reproduction. Little Timmy will have so many questions left unanswered! Anyways, for a small percentage of pokemon, passing down their genetic material by making whoopee with another of a similar typing and relative size (or the amorphous pile of sex putty that is Ditto), an egg will naturally slide out of the female and will hatch into a “baby pokemon” after walking about with it for a brief period. Pichu is the infant version of Pikachu, Magby is for Magmar, Elekid for Electabuzz, etc. The only baby pokemon totally removed from Kanto lineage is Togepi, a freebie given to the player by Professor Elm to test the new mechanic. These adorable little tykes are so underdeveloped that using them in battle would be unspeakably cruel, but at least they can learn new moves once they evolve that their non-bred equivalents in the wild cannot. Regarding the evolution end of the spectrum, the swift Crobat is evolved from the gaping-mouthed Golbat via “friendship” where increasing the bond between a man and his pokemon actually provides some tangible benefits. The same process evolves the additional “Eeveelutions” Espeon and Umbreon, two pokemon that intentionally display a contrast between night and day. Some old pokemon simply needed a material incentive to evolve, such as Slowpoke transforming into the hyper-intelligent Slowking upon acquiring a king’s rock, or Scyther and Onix into Scizor and Steelix when traded with a Metal Coat attached. I don’t know how someone could stick their noses up at how Gold/Silver augments the classics from Kanto, for the examples I’ve given are among the coolest and most competent pokemon that the second generation has to offer.

The last two pokemon I mentioned, along with the coal-black Eevee evolved form Umbreon, are also examples of two typings unheard of in Red/Blue: Steel and Dark. The series didn’t introduce any elemental types until several generations down the line, so two whole new categorizations after the first entry is an exciting prospect. Shuffling steel and dark into the deck of pokemon battle attributes is sure to confuse those who had memorized each strength and weakness. Actually, what their inclusion really does is give the once god-like psychic types something to be afraid of, as dark’s super effectiveness against them sensibly stems from the common fear of a lack of luminescence. Now, psychics tremble to what they cannot see, and we all take delight in their quaking vulnerability. With a slight in logic, dark’s primary weakness is fighting, somehow suggesting that martial arts are more potent and accurate when one is blind like a mystical samurai. Steel, on the other hand, is a solid defensive type strong against ice and rock while crumbling to fighting, ground, and fire. They are also totally immune to poison, so no antidotes are necessary. Unfortunately, pokemon of either type are a scarce breed. Scyther and Onix only evolve through the trading process, so that is a no-go for most players unless they have a link cable and a fellow man-child friend ready to initiate the process. Forretress and the retroactively changed Magneton will have to suffice. In an unfortunate twist of fate, Umbreon is THE only dark type pokemon available before the post-game epilogue, so the player will have to rely on dark type moves like “Bite” and “Faint Attack” to defend themselves against mind-bending maneuvers. Game Freak are a group of sadists.

Adding an elemental type that triumphs over the cocky psychics is what I’d consider as a quality-of-life improvement. For more traditional instances of the term, Gold/Silver is filled to the brim with stark enhancements. It goes without saying that the added color flair of the Gameboy Color obviously makes Gold/Silver more visually appealing than the murky gray that presented Red/Blue. Seeing the Pokemon world’s bright sunlight, brick buildings, grassy fields, and sparkling waters after Red/Blue muted all of them is what I imagine taking the bandages off after Lasik surgery is like. Suddenly, everything is wonderfully vibrant and that feeling of excitement for a grand, country-spanning adventure is reinvigorated. That added color extends to the pokemon’s health bars during battle as well, using stop light shades to signify their level of health. A blue color bar is introduced to give the player an indication of how close their pokemon are to the next level, so the eventual grind will be more manageable with a visual reference. Inventory items are organized by general categorizations. It’s far more manageable than the one page in Red/Blue but plenty of miscellaneous items that aren’t pokeballs or TMs/HMs are still jumbled up in a single menu and they still overflow as a result. Berry trees are scattered all over Johto, and their juicy fruit can heal a small percentage of health or cure an ailment. Some trees are conversely draped in apricorns, which can be molded into pokeballs with specific properties when brought to a man in Azalea Town named Kurt. Pokemon encounters now depend on three general times of the day, which coincides with a clock that the player sets before they wake up to start their adventure. I’d still argue the colorization is the most significant improvement because of how the black and white of Red/Blue inadvertently made the game a vexing challenge at times. However, every last addition to Gold/Silver ultimately does its part to make the game a smoother and engaging experience than Red/Blue anyways.

For as involved Johto is in improving the mold of Pokemon, the entire country is surprisingly much more subdued than its neighbor to the east. The region of Johto is directly inspired by the real-life Kansai region of Japan, which is situated on the same island as its capital Tokyo where Kanto took inspiration from. Unlike the bustling industrialized marvel of the modern age that Kanto strived to emulate, Johto’s landscape has a comparatively placid atmosphere. Johto achieves this laidback sensation through its rural iconography. The towering buildings that shadow the notable districts are ancient architectures crafted from wood and bronze, with the triangular roof as the cherry on top to signify its worn and torn history. Unlike places of Buddhist worship in Japan, Johto’s spiritual houses were erected to practice pokemon devotion. This strange phenomenon can be witnessed as early as Violet City where bald monks kneel at the visage of golden Bellsprouts in the Sprout Tower. The Ruins of Alph feature an exhibit dedicated to uncovering the primeval mystery behind the Unown and translating the supposed language behind their cuneiform bodies. South of the ruins, the people of Azalea Town rely on their rampant Slowpoke population to predict the weather (boy, are they betting on the wrong horse). Mahogany Town is a perfectly quaint place to stay by the picturesque Lake of Rage, and the island of Cianwood City is so off the grid that it's a wonder how they communicate with the rest of Johto. All of the region’s urbanity is congested to Goldenrod City, whose glimmering roads and buildings arguably dwarf any of the metropolises of Kanto. After exploring Johto again, I now realize why fans of Kanto look down on them: they are a bunch of backwards rubes stuck in the wrong century. Ironically enough, for how advanced Kanto claims to be, navigating through Johto’s unaffected landscape is a far breezier excursion. Misremembering the Union Cave made me anticipate another grueling Mt. Moon escapade, but the exit is merely down the path from the entrance. The Ilex Forest is intentionally designed like a maze, and I had an easier time walking through it than any of Kanto’s commercial sites that were made to be accessible for its citizens. However, one aspect of traversing through Johto that turns me off is the inclusion of two new water-type HMs on top of Surf needed to power past whirlpools and trek upwards on waterfalls. I don’t like the idea of my chosen water-type pokemon having three redundant water moves in its selective range of skills, especially since it was Quagsire whose ground nature was heavily undermined by this requisite.

Because Johto is relatively nonchalant, the overall pokemon adventure here is overall fairly languid. Sure, becoming a Pokemon master by collecting all eight gym badges and defeating the Elite Four is still an admirable goal to strive for, but there is not as much content in between completing the primary quest. Team Rocket are still retaining their presence as a nefarious organization but without Giovanni as their menacing leader, the group is rudderless. The player will stop their black market Slowpoke tail scheme along with halting their radiowave mind control operation, with Elite Four member Lance disappointingly volunteering to do most of the leg work. A mission to procure medicine from a sick Ampharos being hospitalized by gym leader Jasmine in the Olivine Lighthouse facilitates a non-linear sequence of collecting three nearby gym badges similarly to the middle of Red/Blue. Still, Cianwood’s distant location away from the Johto inland will probably result in the player completing these gyms in the intended order anyways. Also, the player’s rival this time around will never be up to snuff with their pokemon training prowess. Yes, the red-haired thief is just as much of an asshole as Oak’s grandson from Red/Blue, but he falls under the spectrum of a hostile, emotionally distraught asshole who desperately needs therapy. The brutal treatment of his pokemon never leads him to victory, something that infuriates him to no end due to his pure strength prerogative. Eventually, we learn he’s Giovanni’s son, which explains his fiery disposition and why he’s so hellbent on winning. Learning this makes his motives interesting, but we know he’ll never skid past the Elite Four before you in a million years. Having a competent rival greatly raised the stakes for that climb to victory.

Gold/Silver will keep the player busy anyways because the player will be busy grinding to adequately match the gym leaders. Matching the correct weaknesses of the opposing pokemon is no longer a sure fire guarantee for smooth success as it was in Red/Blue. The combat greatly considers other aspects like level and base stats, which unfortunately fosters the need to train one’s pokemon outside the series of consistent trainer battles. Also, the assemblage of pokemon gym leaders in Johto specialize in the other half of typings that weren’t featured in Kanto, and these types are the more unorthodox ones. The one available Machop to trade in Goldenrod is the ace up everyone’s sleeves for the deceivingly strong Whitney unless they want to be pulverized again by her Miltank, and catching Swinub in the Ice Cave is the only pokemon that will even dent Clair’s dragon pokemon in Blackthorn. Speaking of dragon pokemon, establishing a grinding regimen is essential this time around not only because the Elite Four members have high-leveled pokemon in their arsenal, but because newly appointed champion Lance has THREE fucking Dragonites this time around. Tell us you have a tiny penis without explicitly telling us you have a tiny penis, Lance. Because Lance’s six beasts are massive and vicious unlike his shriveled manhood, it’s recommended to leave a trail of dead Golbat, Onix, Rhyhorn, and Graveler in their wake from the Victory Road exit, even though the process will truly grate on every player’s patience.

As climactic as it feels, mastering Johto’s Pokemon League is not the finishing moment that rounds out the Gold/Silver journey. After returning home to New Bark Town to rest momentarily, Professor Elm gives the player a ticket to the familiar SS Anne cruise ship docked in Olivine. As expected, the fanciful ship arrives in its home in the southern port city of Vermillion, and Lt. Surge is now the first of eight gym leaders to conquer in another tour around Kanto. If featuring almost all of Kanto’s pokemon in Johto didn’t tie a connective rope between Red/Blue and Gold/Silver, then the trek around the franchise’s first nation once again is practically what makes Gold/Silver a direct sequel. However, it’s a truncated tour that will only take the player a few hours to accomplish. While on this short lark, the player can marvel at the little things that have changed in the three years since Red put himself on the pedestal of the pokemon hall-of-fame. Regarding the gym leaders the player will face, Koga’s daughter Janine is running the poison-type gym leader in Fuchsia and ex-champion Blue has got himself a full time gig as Giovanni’s replacement in Viridian. Blaine’s island of Cinnabar has washed away to the point where he is its only resident, and the Safari Zone is closed indefinitely. Instances like these snap the revisiting Red/Blue players back to the reality of time upon expecting a Gold/Silver Kanto to pave a road of untainted nostalgic bliss. Then again, why would anyone want to see Kanto again the way it was when the colorful graphics that are now rendering it are so pleasant? Arriving at the old hub of Pallet Town before the final Kanto gym badge sees a distraught Red’s mom wondering where her son is, as he’s become an instance of someone who evidently couldn’t handle the pressure of fame and literally hid from the overwhelming limelight. Finding Kanto’s finest at the peak of the perilous Mt. Silver across the Johto border to battle him is the true final challenge that Gold/Silver provides. Because Red’s reputation as a champion is surely documented, his pokemon are leveled far higher than any other team of pokemon in the game, so be prepared for a ruthless duel that will have you sweating bullets. Another tedious grinding session aside, having the final opponent of Gold/Silver as what is essentially the player from a past life as the ultimate test of trainer aptitude blows the Elite Four out of the water. Red’s stoic silence isn’t awkward at all, for the scope of this fight leaves me speechless as well.

Gold/Silver’s final fight is also a genius way to illustrate how the new guard of Pokemon has vanquished the old, which is exactly its modus operandi that it never shies away from flaunting. Gold/Silver is unmistakenly familiar to its predecessor because it attempts to succeed the Pokemon formula with pinpoint specificity to improve Red/Blue. It shares the same pokemon, the same pace of progression, and the same troublesome terrorist organization of Team Rocket and streamlines all of these, erasing the jaggedness that came with Red/Blue’s presence on the original Gameboy. Red/Blue’s pokemon championship narrative was admittedly already rounded to perfection, which is why the same arc executed in Gold/Silver is a tad less gratifying. Then, returning to Kanto to face the true champion of the series offered an unprecedented final battle that could make the player faint with its tension. Gold/Silver’s superiority to Red/Blue isn’t simply due to the shift into color on the advanced Gameboy Color model, even if it does improve the graphics significantly. With its positive streamlining, additional content, and glowing visual flair, Pokemon Gold/Silver eats Red/Blue for breakfast, and I can’t believe there is still a large portion of Pokemon fans who refuse to admit it with all the evidence at hand.

Despite how rudimentary and flawed Red and Blue were, they proved to be a massive success and set the stage for Pokémon to become a globally recognized household name. Similar to its predecessors, Gold and Silver were released during a time where Game Freak was still a relatively small and inexperienced team, however, the amount of improvement in between releases is very noticeable. The game disappointingly sticks to the progression structure of Red and Blue while doing very little to improve the core gameplay issues, though many of the surrounding elements that fell flat in those games were changed for the better. The Johto region is a much more interesting and varied location than that of Kanto, and it feels like there's actually stuff to do outside of collecting the gym badges. The inventory system has been completely overhauled, with the bag now able to carry more items than it could before since it separates Poké Balls, TMs, and Key Items into their own pockets, which eliminates the frustration of inventory management in a game that didn't need it. Many of the battle mechanics have been drastically changed in an effort to balance the game more, such as the Special stat being divided into both Special Attack and Special Defense, the introduction of hold items to grant passive effects to the Pokémon holding them, the sleep status no longer lasting up to 7 turns or having a wake up turn, the frozen status no longer being permanent, the incredibly overpowered Psychic and Normal types being nerfed, as well as a handful of other positive changes. HMs are still required for progression and they still take up valuable move slots on your Pokémon, though the introduction of the move deleter means that your Pokémon are no longer permanently stuck with awful moves and can forget them when you no longer have any use for them. The effort that was put into these games is clear to see, and I will give Game Freak credit for the steps they took to improve their games mechanically, though Gold and Silver still suffer from the same core issues that Red and Blue did while introducing some of its own issues. The gameplay suffers from a severe lack of difficulty given that trainers almost never switch Pokémon and are stuck with pretty poorly designed teams that are easily run over by one or two over-leveled Pokémon. A great example of this is the steel type gym leader, Jasmine, whose ace is a Steelix that knows Sunny Day, a move that does nothing to help her team while boosting the power of YOUR fire moves, which is one of the types that steel is weak to. The story is somehow a downgrade from Red and Blue; Team Rocket's goal in this game is simply just to find Giovanni, strangely unaware that Team Rocket was disbanded by him years ago in the last game. Just like before, they are more of an annoyance than a legitimate threat and they eventually just give up on doing anything once they learn that Giovanni no longer wants them to be active, leaving the player's focus to be mainly set on obtaining badges. There's a side plot with the rival that involves them learning to love their Pokémon instead of viewing them as tools that could have been interesting, though like most story elements in Pokémon, it isn't explored to any extent that would make it worthwhile. Gold and Silver make an effort to be somewhat open ended, as once you get to Ecruteak City you're given the option to travel west to the steel and fighting gyms or east to the ice gym. The problem with this approach in an RPG grounded in rigid numbers is that without a level scaling mechanic, all three of these gyms must be at around the same level so that the player could realistically beat any of them as their fifth gym, something that destroys the level curve of Gold and Silver and makes them even more of a mindless cakewalk than they need to be. The new Pokémon introduced in Johto are not utilized very well; most important trainers in the game mostly use Kanto Pokémon (for example, the ghost type gym leader, Morty, uses only Pokémon from the Gastly line and doesn't use Johto's only new ghost type, Misdreavus) and the player's options can feel very limited if they try to only use Johto Pokémon, as many of them are either too weak to want to use or are only available in the post-game long after the player would have their team figured out and trained up. One aspect of Gold and Silver that has seen universal praise from fans is the ability to return to Kanto in the post-game, though the novelty wears off once you realize that all of the trainers are pathetically weak, including most of the gym leaders, and there is practically nothing to do except for catching Pokémon, some of which being Johto Pokémon that should have been accessible in Johto in the first place. The last challenge the game presents to you is a fight against the protagonist of the previous games, Red, which is a pretty cool moment, though the spike in level between Red and the next strongest trainer, Blue, is about a 20 level leap, meaning you'll have to spam items like no tomorrow or indulge in a lot of boring grinding just to be able to beat him. I appreciate the step forward in detail that these games take from Red and Blue and there are aspects of the game that I really enjoy such as the music, art direction, Pokémon designs, and the improved battle mechanics, though I find it difficult to ever want to replay these games, especially when the remakes exist, and while those games don't fix all of the problems with Gold and Silver, they are far more polished products.

The fact that after all these years this game is still almost just as good as when it was released back in 1999 says a lot. There are 2 year old games that have aged way worse than this game that is now more than twenty years old.

It's hard to say how well it holds up, but in terms of building on the original game, Gold and Silver properly stepped it up for the sequel. The greater integration of Pokemon moves in the environment and the occasionally zig-zagging progression make Johto feel more organic, and beating the Elite Four only to keep going east back to Kanto is a huge rush, ending in a climactic encounter with the original protagonist that says nothing literally but figuratively is a great representation of the journey: completely one-upping its predecessor and feeling mighty doing it.

Though i dont have nearly as much nostalgia for it as with the first title, Pokem Gold and Silver basically took the basic formula of the first game and improved it a huge lot when it came to visuals and gameplay. It is set in the Johton region, and much like the first game the plot revolves around you getting the best pokemon, defeating gyms for badges and ultimatly defeat the Elite 4 and become the champion.

The new pokemon are great, and the great majority of the first gen pokemon can also be found in this game, with upgraded sprites in all. Stuff like actual having colour in the game, to small touches like an xp bar, all made the game that much more enjoyable to play in a minute by minute basis. There is even a day and night cycle. The new pokemon type Dark, made the game much more balanced (as psychic is not longer so op). However what really sells the game for me is the post end game, in which you are given the opportunity to revisit Kanto region once again. Defeating Red, the protagonist from the last game is quite possible one of the best moments in gaming. Then apart from this there are a lot of stuff added to the game to make it all that much long lasting, like the pokemon contests and breeding.

Its a great, casual JRPG. Its one of the best improved sequels out there, even if the gen I is more memorable for me personally because thats the one that i lived through the most.

It’s Pokemon. I mean, come on. It’s Pokemon. What else is there to say about Pokemon? It’s Pokemon.

Reviewing this franchise is like reviewing Tetris or The Godfather or anything else so completely ubiquitous that it isn’t even fun to talk about anymore. It’s too big of a deal. It’s hard to separate any one of the games from everything associated with it. With Pokemon, especially, it’s hard to separate the games from growing up with the whole universe. Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was more familiar with Ask Ketchum than I was with George W. Bush, or even like, Jesus.

So Pokemon is a big deal, and this is probably the best generation the series ever saw. G/S/C (and especially Crystal) took everything great about the first generation and made it even better. The sprites are better, the moves are more intuitive and less buggy, and there’s so much more content. This is one of those games that seemingly made its predecessor irrelevant (but nostalgia prevents us from admitting to that) and it does it in such a remarkable way. This generation isn’t too different from the first generation, but it builds on that fantastic foundation so well that it feels brand new.

With the first generation, Game Freak found the best JRPG formula and they’ve been working with that ever since. With the second generation, Game Freak made sure we would still be coming back for more twenty years later (look out for Pokemon Sun & Moon, coming Winter 2016!).

The color adds a whole new layer to this game and it makes it way more engaging to look at, and makes the Pokemon themselves seem so vibrant. The trainer’s rival is a total asshole, making the rival battles even more fun. Few games are more comforting than this one, and it’s something I could pick up any day and play again.

Too bad it didn’t have those starters from the first game. That’s the only reason anyone even picks up the first generation anymore.

Play it on: There’s only one real version of this, and you can emulate it on anything, but the full experience is best on handhelds, so GBC, GBA or emulated on a PSP are great ways to play this.