Pokémon Red & Blue

I was born 1990. Pokemon appeared in my life at a perfect age. I don't remember how exactly, but I got my hands on a comic, I think it was the same as an early episode of the Anime. Ash & Misty were going through Viridian Forest, Ash catches a Caterpie, and this seemingly useless bug destroyed Team Rocket. I was fucking awe-struck, noted that my brother had the game, and I told him to help me catch a Caterpie. Man that's how it all started!

Eventually I got my own copy of the game. In fact, I got so crazy about Pokémon, I bugged my mom enough about it to get a second copy later on so I had both Red and Blue. I mean, you only get 1 save file, and no way did I want to delete all my progress, but I still wanted to try out the other starters! I was playing on big clunky Game Boy, before GBC, that I somehow still have stored around here. It was fucking hard to light the screen well to really see what's going on. I was always aware of the need preserve batteries and not play the game too often. For this reason I tended to play with very low sound, maybe even totally muted. The batteries would last longer. I had some other Game Boy games, but as soon as I got Pokémon I would simply never ever touch them again.

Being that it was probably the first time I really got into playing an RPG, I was terrible. At first, I didn't even know about poké centers, so I couldn't progress very far, as I would repeatedly die. The game was also in English so I didn't understand half the dialogue (I was like 8 when I started playing, and I'm from Sweden). Even so, I got really into it, but I think it had more to do with the appeal of Pokémonsters, rather than the game itself. I was crazy about Pokémon, and could learn to name all 150 of them... When the show started airing on TV, I would watch every episode. I was even a purist, when Gold/Silver came out, I refused to play them, saying that Pokémon should only have 150 monsters. I couldn't stand looking at the new pokémon or acknowledge them. Yeah, just thinking about what sort of child I was leads to some introspection for sure. How much did I really change? I still feel like an elitist sometimes, but I really did try to change my mindset when I was growing up. Then again, maybe I wasn't wrong about Pokémon. Maybe I was just a clever kid, able to see through the cash grab intentions. Pokémon is a cash cow, they're milking it for all it's worth. No matter if you say the future games are better, who knows, maybe I had the right idea?

I don't know anything about Pokémon beyond Gen1 so let's just talk about Gen1. It's really quite awkward, isn't it? The movesets are unbalanced, and there's lots of weird quirks in the game with the types and effectiveness and lots of other things. The Pokémon sprites look really strange, I feel they're kind of iconic, but I mean I've just seen them so many times... when I was a kid, it wasn't rare that I would see a sprite, and have no idea what the fuck it was meant to look like. Oddish? I saw it as something completely different than what it actually was. The whole game is a really strange mix of something that was amazingly well planned out for a Game Boy title, think about just how damn rich this game is for the system, and awkward, amateurish execution of the actual game itself.

You start out as a young boy who leaves home to become a Pokémon trainer. While that sounds ridiculous to me now, when you're a kid playing, it sounds like the most heavenly adventure ever. Exploring the world to find monsters that will stand by your side and beat up other monsters? Sign me up! Over the course of the game, you find new areas, with their own designated Pokémon. Like, grass areas will have bugs, and trainers with bugs. Caves will have bats, rock pokémon, and trainers with such pokémon. The sea will have water pokémon and trainers with water pokémon. You get the picture, and this is something that SUCKS. Yes, you heard me. It's tedious as hell. Going through the game is simply tedium, nothing else to it. Does anyone over the age of 10 really think it's that fun to go through 10 trainers with the same shit in a row? Furthermore, the game is so badly balanced that it's a terrible strategy to play through it using more than 1 Pokémon. Sure, you'll want to carry a few others for various reasons, but you don't actually level them. Just level up your starter and tackle your way through the whole game. Actually catching new pokémon while intending to use them in fights also means you have to grind them up. Grinding is fun to who, again? If you're given a choice between spending hours grinding up a pokémon so it can be remotely useful, and just going through the game the natural way, what would you choose? As much as I just called the latter tedious, the former is FAR worse. To make things even less appealing, so many of the Pokémon are concentrated into the LATE-game, at the end stretch! Heck, there's even the worst attempt at a post-game ever. What the heck are you supposed to do with your pokémon after you've already beaten the game? Play competitively? LOL. There is no strategy involved in playing this game, at least not if you're not playing against other humans, so there is no real reason to try to pretend to be strategic by using a balanced team. Trust me. It's simply pretense, unless you're legitimately autistic to a degree that grinding pokémon could somehow be enjoyable.

See this is just not a game that ages well when you're no longer infatuated with the franchise. Such infatuation would cloud any kids' judgement. The trainers are terribly programmed. Same with the Gym Leaders. They simply don't make decent decisions with what they have. Oh, and this game is so full of quirks, bugs and exploits that it's honestly hilarious. As a kids' adventure game, yeah, it could be tons of fun. But is it actually a good game? Like, truthfully? No, it just isn't. It has charm, it's rightfully something to feel nostalgic about, but it isn't fun to play. I got over Pokémon rather quickly. It got stale. I couldn't get into the games after Red/Blue. In my early teens, I gave some halfhearted attempt to enjoy the game again during a trip. I was using Missingno. The idea was to have fun, but I couldn't. Then, 5-6 years ago, I learned to speed run this game to get some enjoyment out of it yet again. It was amusing for a while, moreso the social aspect of skyping with some friends also speedrunning. The actual game will always just be more tedious than fun, I feel that I have faith in my feelings now. I will never be able to have fun with this game again. However, I cannot deny the impact it had on my childhood. I will admit that the game world is amazingly well done for a Game Boy title and it was clearly appealing to anyone of the right age at that time. The sound design is pretty ace, and honestly, beating this game for the first time was one of the most memorable moments of my entire life. Dead fucking serious.

Its the game of my childhood so there is no way i can evaluate this one without nostalgia getting in the way. I beat it quite a few times back then, but my highest feat was being able to get a full rooster plus some benched ones on lvl 100. I had a lot of friendships that were forged at the time around this game, either playing or battling friends, or even just sharing strategies or grinding out their team. I replayed this one a few years ago on an emulator, and it was a fantastical nostalgic trip. That said i dont know how much i would enjoy this if i were playing for the first time.

A lot has been pointed out about how unbalanced the first gen of pokemon games handled the stats. That's definitly true, but i always viewed these games as the first RPG for a lot of people. For such a casual audience, that sort of mistakes wont matter nearly as much. What will matter for people playing for the first time is the basic elements and the strenghts and weaknesses to each other. This again is reenforced by trainers using the same pokemon 3 times, to really hammer those strenghts and weaknesses into the heads of kids. Its clear that the game was designed for younger audiences, and as such many of the flaws that people point out to it dont really make sense in that context. Are people really expecting such a multi layered tactical system out of an RPG based of a tv show that was made with an audience of 8-10 year olds in mind?

But i really enjoy this game. I like the slow grind, taking my time through it. Capturing pokemon and investing in the ones i like the most, not the ones that are more efficient. I love the soundtrack with the upbeat melodies and the somber Lavender Town track. The dungeons layouts were very well design, often having labyrinths and requiring the player to map them out on their head. I enjoy the enemy trainers and their personas, the silly dialogues. The monster design that is closer to reality than the sequels. I loved the beating the champions league once, twice, ten, hundred times and i love the post end content. But i will only enjoy playing through it if i had no time to worry about. Thats really my main issue with JRPGs, is that they tend to be slow burners. Thats perhaps the main reason why i couldnt enjoy Chrono trigger as much as i did, i played it at a time when i was eager to finish it to head on to the next must play title in the backlog. While i do intend to play some of the more modern pokemon gen to see how much (or little) the series has evolved.

There was simply something magical for the first one in the series, something that the other have failed to accomplish. It was so unique and charming at the time, at least for me. I had played back then Gold and Ruby, but neither of these managed to grab me the same way that Blue did, though they did have their moments.

Pokemon is Nintendo’s biggest franchise, yet it is also not their biggest franchise. This contradictory statement won’t seem nonsensical if one reflects on Pokemon’s placement among the ranks of gaming’s most celebrated kings of the industry. Sure, if one references the raw data for the sake of argument, Mario has outsold the Pokemon games by a substantial margin, mostly due to predating Pokemon by a whole decade and managing to maintain relevance as the mascot for the company since his inception. One also can’t forget Mario’s whole “saved gaming from utter collapse” act of benevolence that kept the medium from being relegated to a quaint and embarrassing time capsule of 1980s trends alongside hairspray and Knight Rider. Mario is a messianic figure in gaming with no false prophets as potential contenders, which would ultimately make my argument that Pokemon is somehow bigger than video game Jesus a moot, sacreligious point. Still, I stand by my statement because while Mario obviously towers over all in his gaming country, his legacy and impact is relatively confined to the parameters of his initial territory. Pokemon, on the other hand, has gold-standard assets in several other pockets of entertainment. The ubiquity of the anime series and trading card game along with the video games created a tidal wave of “pokemania” that swept over the nation in the late 90s/early 2000s so ferociously that it was like a Japanese cultural invasion was occurring. I was one of the several kids who was totally enraptured by Pokemon at the time, albeit at the tail end of the pandemonium due to being born in 1996, and I can tell you that the highs of pokemania were something that even Mario couldn’t even compete with. Were kids trading cards of Luigi on the school playgrounds during recess, clamoring for the hypothetically rare one where he has the Poltergust 2000 from Luigi’s Mansion? Not hardly. Mario’s goofy early 90s cartoon couldn’t even survive cancellation after only a single season, and the Pokemon anime series is still airing new episodes to this day. Pokemon is such a powerful cultural juggernaut across the world that it’s hard to recall that it stems from a series of games made by Nintendo, untethered to its source medium unlike Mario.

Our first exposure to Pokemon with Pokemon Red/Green (with Blue replacing Green in the west) did not ignite Pokemania, as the IP needed the trinity of the games, anime, and cards to kick the madness into full gear. Still, Red/Blue served as the foundational wick needed to light this roaring candle in the near future. Because Red/Blue is the debut appearance of the entire Pokemon property, the game is the pinnacle of primitive Pokemon artifacts, and not only because the first game is inherently rough around the edges. You see, the trinity that comprises Pokemon’s massive universality keeps one another in check, with one asset influencing the other to maintain a sense of cohesion. Because Red/Blue predates all other Pokemon media by a few years, its presentation is so coarse that it can’t be sanded over. The Pokemon models, for instance, were forever shaped by how they were drawn from the anime, so their draft-level interpretations seen here are a tad jarring, to say the least. Look at how disturbingly chunky the de facto Pokemon mascot Pikachu is in his first depiction, signifying a primordial era in Pokemon’s history when Pikachu was another number in the Pokedex instead of the face of the franchise. They’ve slimmed Pikachu down extensively since then to maintain his cute little figure for the sake of appearances, and it’s wild to comprehend a time when Pikachu wasn’t Pokemon’s prime representative. That’s how far back Red/Blue warps us to. Also, it doesn’t help Red/Blue’s case that it was developed for the original Gameboy practically as the swansong for Nintendo’s first handheld console. If one didn’t know, Pokemon is a play-on compound term for “pocket monsters,” so every mainline game has been developed for one of Nintendo’s handheld consoles to coincide with its cheeky wordplay. However, in the case of Red/Blue, this means that not only will the player have to contend with pixelated people and setpieces, but the visual primitiveness of black and white muting them to the point of aesthetic blankness. It’s no wonder why not even nostalgia saves Red/Blue in the eyes of the earliest Pokemon fanatics, as they suggest to respect the first game in the franchise while giving it a wide berth with engagement. However, for as primitive as Pokemon Red/Blue admittedly is, I think that the game still retains its initial appeal because it established the foundation that every subsequent, graphically superior mainline Pokemon title would continue to emulate.

The foundation in question is the sense of adventure and conquest felt through every Pokemon game’s progression. Pokemon is a fantasy game by definition, but the pocket monsters the player will find are not dragons (or at least the vast majority of them aren’t) and they are not hiking across the stormy countryside on a mission of chivalry assigned by a king. The world of Pokemon is molded by an air of modernity, another early example of what I like to refer to as a “domestic JRPG.” Walking around the various towns and cities in Pokemon Blue as the child protagonist from a birds-eye view will surely remind any experienced gamer of “domestic JRPG” pioneer and fellow Nintendo IP EarthBound, only without color and absurd occurrences to disrupt reality. The young protagonist, whose canon name is the color of the game of the player’s choosing, is but a normal lad of early adolescent age who resides in a small town with his mom, spending his time playing the SNES in his room (the fashionable Nintendo console of the time). Apparently, pokemon are the crux of the Japan-inspired land of Kanto’s cultural and economic backbone, creating a society contingent on interacting, studying, and mastering the 151 different breeds of the wild beasts that roam throughout the country. Don’t worry, the society here doesn’t treat the notion of committing to a pokemon-related career with such insularity like in Harry Potter with wizardry. The player will see plenty of nurses, engineers, scientists, and fisherman along their journey who merely dabble with Pokemon as a hobby. In the protagonist's case, he yearns to be a pokemon master, the equivalent of becoming a professional athlete in the pokemon world. Pokemon Masters are held in the same glorious regard as rockstars, and that’s exactly what the adventure feels like. Every Pokemon game progresses to exude the sensation of a musician or band going on tour, stopping at the eight most populous areas in the country and challenging the gym leaders for their coveted badges before collecting all of them and finishing this renowned tour by defeating the Elite Four at the Indigo Plateau. Or, at least the tour is akin to playing in dive bars at first and then progressing to the pokemon equivalent of Madison Square Garden at the tail end of it. Who sponsors this tour for every eager, young pokemon master in the making is unclear. Even though this tour is being rendered by primitive visuals, this ambitious venture retains its spectacle nevertheless. By the time the player can conveniently come home or arrive organically back to Pallet Town after circling around Kanto, the wash of exhaustion and satisfying growth since they’ve left is still a palpable feeling.

But pokemon are not sterile tools on the player’s tour like instruments, amplifiers, or other pieces of equipment. The relationship between humans and pokemon is a precious bond with a deep, mutual understanding of each other's needs. Pokemon are more effective virtual pets than the tamagotchi could ever dream to be, and the loving pact between man and his high-octane animal friends begins even before the player touches the grass past Pallet Town. In the player’s hometown is the laboratory of grandfatherly pokemon researcher Professor Oak, who has the player choose one of three pokemon as a “starter pokemon.” Picking a pokemon from a laboratory table at the beginning is one of the franchise’s most treasured tropes that persists for every single Pokemon game that would follow. These three pokemon are exclusive to this lab, so one must put their choice into heavy consideration. Red/Blue also begins the tradition of the three starters contrasting each other with the elemental typings of grass, fire, and water. Because they are the first of their kind, the spotted, plant amphibian Bulbasaur, the orange, flame-tailed lizard Charmander, and the aquamarine turtle with a squirrel tail Squirtle are some of the brightest stars synonymous with the Pokemon series. Their fully evolved forms are the photographic representatives for the box art of each respective version of the game, so they and their lineage probably shared equal billing as series mascots before the anime cemented the staticky yellow rat into the prestigious position so deeply that nothing can conceivably touch him. Like all things that come in pairs, the question of which one of the three Red/Blue starters triumphs over the other two goes down as a contentiously heated nerd debate like Kirk versus Picard or if Disney violated the legacy of Star Wars more brutally than George Lucas did with the prequels. Personally, I adore all three of the buggars, but I forewarn people against selecting Charmander because the player will be inadvertently signing themselves up for a glorified hard mode. Still, whether or not the pokemon you’ve chosen has doomed you to suffering prematurely, you’ll never want to stash it in Bill’s cramped, virtual pokemon storage box. Your first Pokemon’s growth coincides with your own because they’ve been present on the journey for the same length of time, and the connection that stems from their matchless tenure with you forms an aura of genuine sentimentality. Other JRPG parties simply cannot compete with Pokemon’s tenderness through pet-like companionship.

So why is Charmander the black sheep of the starting roster when he and his winged, dragon-like evolved form Charizard are easily the most popular of the three? Because Kanto’s odds seem to be stacked against the fiery little lizard. More so than incremental RPG leveling through experience, the core of Pokemon’s combat is a rock, paper, and scissors mechanic interconnected between fifteen distinctive elemental types that all Pokemon fall under. For example, the reason why Charmander is totally screwed early on is because its innate fire nature makes it weak against rock and water, the elemental themes for the first two Kanto gyms. By the time the player reaches bikini-clad water type leader Misty in Cerulean city, at least the player can fry her Pokemon into crispy fish sticks with Pikachu’s thundershock move. Good luck beforehand when you hit the brick wall (or rock wall in this context) with Brock’s rock Pokemon with any of the bugs scattered about Viridian Forest to assist your poor, defenseless Charmander. With Bulbasaur and Squirtle, rock-em sock-em Geodude and the intimidatingly massive rock basilisk Onix will immediately crumble, and that goes double for Misty’s pokemon when Bulbasaur absorbs all of their valuable moisture with his hearty, green leaves. If you couldn’t infer from the radically alternating outcomes, matching the opponent’s pokemon with their contrasting element is paramount to becoming victorious in a pokemon battle. The dynamics between grass, fire, and water are fairly self-explanatory, but how to combat the more cerebral types of pokemon is a tad confusing as their weaknesses aren’t as grounded in logic. Ground’s effectiveness towards rock and electric types is reasonable because of erosion and earthquakes sending society back to the stone age by knocking out their electrical power. However, I cannot fathom why it is also effective against poison. I also can’t comprehend why poison is weak against psychic unless the developers are trying to convey some pseudo-hippy bullshit that meditation can cure illness and disease.

Actually, this is really just a segway to discuss how psychic is the mischievous snake of an elemental type that disrupts the balance of Red/Blue’s mechanics. The few psychic types in the game, namely pokemon ``Nostradamus” Alakazam and the disturbing dream eater Hypno, are so overpowered that they will KO even those who aren’t especially vulnerable to psychic moves with one of their weaponized brain blasts so devastating they’d make Professor X’s nose start bleeding. There are two types that are technically effective against psychic types and no, they are not advanced calculus and a stealthily executed bullet to the back of the head. Bug and ghost are intended to be psychic’s weakness under the rationale that the two are common psychological fears, but the pokemon that fit the classifications are hardly the kryptonite vital in taking down these poke’men of steel. Bug types have abysmally low stats, the lowest of all the pokemon types on average, and most of them like Beedrill and Venomoth are bug-poison hybrids that will ultimately fall to the might of the psychic pokemon in seconds. An even crueler joke is that the only ghost pokemon line of Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar are half poison types as well, so catching one in Lavender Town will still leave the player shit out of luck. The developers engaged the “mind over matter” philosophy as a serious credo, causing a schism in the harmony of the almost perfect elemental mechanics of Pokemon. Dragon types are just as unfairly unbalanced but the player will only face three of them at the end of the game, and there are plenty of substantial ice pokemon with deadly freezing moves to thwart them.

Because no pokemon is perfect despite how a trainer may unconditionally feel about their precious partners, it’s essential to form an eclectically diverse team and build their strength. The tagline and core tenet of the Pokemon franchise is “gotta catch ‘em all!” which should ideally coax the player into sinking enough time and effort to round up all 151 of the beasts. Realistically, due to the finite limit of six per party, I’d suggest finding eight or so pokemon to use in a revolving squadron. The vast majority of Pokemon will not be handed to the player on a silver platter like their starter, which means they’ll be forced to proactively seek out worthy applicants in the tall grasses, abandoned buildings, caves, and by fishing to encounter wild pokemon. The last sliver of the wild pokemon’s health should signify that it’s time to chuck a pokeball to capture the creature if one is so inclined, and they’ll stay in their pint-sized incubator as a member of the player’s party until they are summoned for battle. I hear the interior of the ball is roomier than one might think, but I still remain skeptical. Besides one’s starter who are among the top percentile of base stats, I recommend adding a flying pokemon and a water pokemon for those who passed on Squirtle to the posse. HMs are moves that the player can teach their pokemon exactly like TMs, but the main difference is that the pokemon can use them outside of battle. Fly and Surf allow for a smoother retread of Kanto’s hilly and ruptured landscape whenever the player is forced to travel, plus they are highly effective moves during battle as well. The other two HMs, cut and strength, will merely produce a scratch on any foe, so designate the role of junior deputy HM bitch to a pokemon who can learn both whenever there is a long swath of traversal. Other than that, the key to an effective pokemon sextet is selecting those with adequate base stats relative to what your starter pokemon is lacking in elemental advantages.

But your starter pokemon, namely Charmander, won’t be a sitting duck who needs a battalion of support to survive for long. Through the typical leveling mechanic found in every JRPG comes one of the most interesting and engaging facets of Pokemon. At level 16 for each starter, they will evolve once into Ivysaur, Charmeleon, and Wartortle respectively, and then Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise around the level 32-36 range. Pokemon is really a window into a Darwinian case study, exploring how these creatures adapt to the growing severity of battle rather than their physical environments. As one could infer from the nature of evolution, the advanced forms of each Pokemon that are able to evolve are stronger and far more durable than their cuter, pre-evolved versions. While your Pokemon will become less cuddly, evolving is just as essential to battle as elemental pairings. Out of every pokemon capable of evolving, there isn’t a clearer indication of this point than with Magikarp. The useless, dopey orange fish who simply splashes about evolves into Gyarados at level 20, a sea beast behemoth so intimidating and terrifying that pirates probably tell spooky tales of it while drunk. You’ll be thankful that you didn’t chop up that Magikarp into sashimi and feed it to your other pokemon, as tempting as that sounds. There are a handful of pokemon that don’t evolve, but I’d say that Lapras, Tauros, and the fighting Hitmon brothers are already proficient with their base capabilities. For those that do evolve, fighting the pokemon of your fellow trainers who will challenge you once you cross their line of sight provides a consistent stream of battle experience. A small selection of pokemon can also evolve with elemental stones and by trading with another player via a Gameboy link cable. Not only is evolution important, but the process is also just as exciting for the player. While the stark familiarity one definitely has for every single one of the first 151 pokemon might void the element of surprise with what a pokemon will evolve into, the personal milestone of evolving a pokemon after using it for so long is still gratifying.

That epic aura felt from a Pokemon adventure is due to the chunks of content besides collecting gym badges. Any game’s pacing is always elevated by a consistent deviation from the main objective, and Pokemon succeeds in this aspect with the circular trek around Kanto. Gyms where the player earns the badges are located in metropolitan areas, surrounded by several other establishments that usually include a Pokecenter and a marketplace. As architectural sensibilities would dictate, the various cities of Kanto are not packed together like a bento box. Numbered interstate roads branch off of the cities, connecting them all by a sensible distance like an actual country. On the rural pathways between destinations lies the organic elongation of the pokemon journey. While I appreciate that these places flesh out the pokenation of Kanto, I wish that caves didn’t comprise so goddamn many of them. Being bombarded by an endless slew of pokemon (mostly Zubat) while trying to navigate through the wet, labyrinthian darkness is a maddening excursion, and I’m always relieved and always scream FREEDOM whenever I find the exit. Sure, repel items will stave off the hordes of pokemon for a short period, but they are not purchasable before the instance of difficulty curve whiplash that is Mt. Moon, which is located directly right of the very first gym badge. Once the player is inhibited from traveling linearly to Saffron by both a road closing and a sleeping Snorlax parked along the path, this is the point where progressing around Kanto gets interesting. Navigating around the lazy, fat tub of lard before giving it a rude awakening with the sound of a flute gives the player the freedom of tackling on-edge Lt. Surge, cool and collected Erika, disciplined Koga, mysterious Sabrina, and the hot-headed Blaine in whichever order they please, a random roulette of five of eight gym badges. Along those zigzagging trajectories are a trove of sites unrelated to the main quest like the gamified Safari Zone in Fuschia City, the morbid pokemon gravesite of Lavender Tower where a disquieted Marowak spirit is in a state of unrest, and a relaxing ride on the ritzy S.S. Anne Cruise ship. Pokemon Red/Blue’s B plot that will often distract the player from collecting badges is Team Rocket, a uniformed organization of fundamentalists that use pokemon to enact acts of terrorism. They are led by the sinister Giovanni, who happens to be the final gym leader in Viridian City which might signify a prevailing corruption in the Pokemon League. Defending the peace from these whack jobs provides another solid quest parallel to the main one, but traversing through their places of operation are just as vexing as any of the caves. The black and white graphics visually muddle every floor of the eleven story Silph Co. building, leaving me as hopelessly lost as a guinea pig in a test maze.

Finally gathering all of the gym badges from all across Kanto is always a prideful accomplishment, but the adventure is far from over. Over yonder the western path from Viridian City is the final test of the player’s meddle that will prove their status as a pokemon master at Victory Road (which is yet another fucking cave). At the apex point of this vertical ascension is the Indigo Plateau where the Elite Four reside. If the gym leaders are high school teachers, the Elite Four collective are PhD professors, the leading experts of their field in the Pokemon world. Each member of the Elite Four uses the strongest ensemble of pokemon revolving around a vague elemental theme, and the player will have to fight each of them in order without having all of their Pokemon faint. Failing to do so will result in starting from square one with the first Elite Four member, so the stakes are quite imposing. Stocking up on full restores will sadly not affirm a victory in this strict test of might, however. The Elite Four’s pokemon range from levels 53-62, and the total amount of experience gained through fighting trainers, Team Rocket, and gym leaders will not suffice in matching those numbers for six separate pokemon. To stand a fighting chance against these esteemed Kanto leaders, the player is forced to enact a blistering grinding regimen for so long that all the steps taken to get to this point will feel like forever ago. This tedious process persists for every Pokemon game afterward and is what I dread upon replaying each game in the series.

From all that I’ve described, the world of Pokemon seems like a brutally competitive place. What it takes to succeed in this environment is an ego-driven pursuit to be the best while callously dominating all that stand before you on your way up to the glorious ranks. I stated that a strength of Pokemon was a tender relationship with your pokemon, but using them to step over everyone all throughout the game could prove otherwise that the bond is purely transactional. What verifies that extra layer of emotional substance in Pokemon is comparing and contrasting the adventure arcs between the player and their rival. He started his venture the same day you did and what everyone can immediately deduce from his initial interaction is that he is an insufferable prick. He’s impatient, obnoxious, arrogant, and always undermining your abilities as a trainer from the get-go. Even though you beat him every time he decides to randomly pop his head out anywhere in Kanto, he always has the higher ground in some respects. His adventure is better financed because he’s Professor Oak’s grandson, plus the starter pokemon he chooses is always the type advantage of the one the player selects. Unexpectedly, the rivalry peaks when it’s revealed that your rival has defeated the Elite Four just before you arrived, and he’s the last challenge in the endurance gauntlet to snatch his newly awarded champion title for yourself. While his Pokemon are higher levels than even that of the Elite Four, your rival is somehow easier to subdue than any of the over-qualified members before him. Professor Oak makes an entrance after the final battle to lecture his grandson on treating his pokemon like servants instead of friends, the factor that led you to victory over the snooty little shithead. Pokemon establishes its warm ethos through presenting a foil to the protagonist, a lesson in how unadulterated aggression in battle is not the key to victory.

If you’ve played one Pokemon game, you’ve essentially played all of them. This is both a minor indictment to the series as a whole and a point of validity to the first outing of Pokemon Red/Blue. Its impact on the gaming landscape is something that no other Pokemon title can proudly bestow as some people are still lumping the entirety of the storied franchise with just its early Pokemania era. I completely understand why fans disassociate with this particular entry because of its primitiveness, which I began to sympathize with at certain points of jaggedness relating to its graphics. Besides the few instances of the visuals inadvertently causing more strife in the caves and other tangled dungeon-esque environments the game offers, criticizing the visuals of Red/Blue is a shallow assessment. Pokemon Red/Blue still retains that Pokemon magic by providing a poignant adventure of growth and self-actualization.

Today, Pokémon is the single largest multimedia franchise in the entire world, though despite holding such a monolithic position within the world's culture, it started as a simple pair of Game Boy games developed as a passion project by a small team who had no idea what it would eventually become. The premise is simple, you are a young Pokémon trainer who must set out on a journey to defeat each of the region's gym leaders, with your ultimate goal being to defeat the elite four and become the champion of the region before your rival does while also stopping the nefarious Team Rocket along the way. You will catch a myriad of different Pokémon on your journey, some of which you will raise to be permanent fixtures of your core team. The progression structure of the Pokémon League is something that has been recycled ad nauseam throughout the mainline games, though for games as simple as Red and Blue, it does a passable job of giving you an objective to drive the game forward. Unfortunately, this premise is surrounded by bad design choices and outdated mechanics that make these otherwise innocuous Game Boy games a slog to get through. The primary issue with Red and Blue is the combat; the ability to switch Pokémon at will creates a unique and complex strategy game that works very well so long as you are facing a human opponent who is capable of making equally strategic choices, though the game does not put any effort into making NPC trainers even the least bit challenging. NPC trainers simply do not utilize the switching mechanic that defines Pokémon's combat, turning the game into a boring slog of 1v1 fights devoid of strategy, much like the original Dragon Quest, and while that game has the excuse of being one of the first releases in the RPG genre, Red and Blue released in an era where having multiple active party members at a time was the standard. There is simply no challenge to the games, you can easily win every fight without much difficulty as long as you can cover the bad type matchups of whatever starter you chose. Kanto itself is easily the most boring region in the entire series, featuring no memorable locations outside of its towns and rarely ever rewarding exploration outside of a few useful items. The entirety of your journey will be spent going from point A to B without much to do in between, which when combined with the stale combat make playing thoroughly unengaging. These problems are only further exacerbated by mechanics that only serve to make the game less enjoyable, such as a strict 20 item inventory limit for a game that really does not need one, TMs only having one use and most of them not being reobtainable despite being the only way to put moves on your Pokémon that don't suck ass, and tying field moves to actual moves that your Pokémon have to learn that are usually terrible and can't be forgotten unless you trade them to Gold and Silver, which is obviously not something people could do back when these games first came out. Typically the saving grace for Pokémon games is the multiplayer since that's my preferred way to experience the mainline games, and while there is fun to be had with battling, it is very evident that these games were not originally intended to feature multiplayer, as many aspects of the game are horribly balanced and riddled with bugs. Multiplayer is best left to Pokémon Stadium, as that game has tournament play in mind and makes changes to address some of the problems with battling in Red and Blue. Aside from gameplay, the story isn't anything special, there isn't any interesting narrative to be found in the process of collecting badges, and Team Rocket is a pretty pedestrian group of villains who never feel threatening and are eventually disbanded anyways since your final victory against Giovanni inexplicably quells his sense of greed by reminding him of the joys of battling. The only remotely interesting piece of the story comes in the form of the creation of Mewtwo, though the game barely explores this and leaves many of the details to be filled in by supplementary material such as the anime and manga. Red and Blue not only fail to be compelling RPGs on every level, but fail to even be worthwhile Pokémon games and are not worth revisiting outside of nostalgia. It's easy to excuse the poor quality of Red and Blue due to them being the very first games in the series, though when you look at the debut titles of other successful franchises as well as what was considered the industry standards for the time, Pokémon was outdated the moment it hit store shelves.

As far as the actual experience of playing Red and Blue; it gets old quickly. The mechanics are very unrefined and encourage unthinkingly spamming your highest base power move. You need to be quite seduced by the idea of travelling the land with a crack team of elemental monsters to do anything other than overlevelling and steamrolling trainers with your starter. Speaking of which, the game relies on the wealth of external media like the anime and artwork to be evocative of the monsters, battles, and travels it presents, save for the sound and music which are awesome and an inspired defiance of very limited hardware.

It's best remembered for it's cultural footprint and legacy of games built on its foundation, it's just not as fun as it was when you were nine.

I first got this game when I was six or seven, technically before I ever owned a Gameboy Color, and technically the game I owned was a fake/bootleg/repro with a green shell and Venusaur sticker that happened to store a Blue ROM (I don't still have that copy, so I can't remember what the title screen said, but I'm pretty sure the game used the updated sprites for the American games, based on Japan's Blue). Anyway, like any "millennial" kid, Pokemon was my life for a good while. Unlike a lot of these kids, I somehow didn't know the franchise started with video games, assuming instead that everything was based on the anime (which at the time I did not understand to be of foreign/non-American origin, beyond aesthetic differences from e.g. Dexter's Lab and Rugrats, and superficial aesthetic similarities with the also-Japanese Dragon Ball Z, which I otherwise viewed to be similar to the Batman, Superman, X-Men, and Spider-Man action cartoons...). I'm pretty sure I was watching Pokemon religiously since 1999, but never owned a game until 2001. And, fooled as I was by the green cart advertising itself as a third version of the "classic" Red & Blue as I understood them in my young American brain (despite, at the time, living in the Middle East), I would soon after grab a more "official" Blue from a "real" store (my "Green" came from a souq/bazaar stall), which itself had a standard gray shell rather than the blue it should have had. Noticing no apparent differences, I played most of the game again, before passing it to my younger brother when he would later get a GBC himself (mine was for my birthday, his was because he was jealous...). I would get a third cart, an actual blue one this time, when my grandfather found the game and a little cardboard box filled with trading cards from someone who must have left it at the car dealership for which he was a mechanic - I don't remember what happened to this new copy, so my brother and I may have just sold it to Rhino Games, as we could not have done with the less-official prior copies.

It's fun to reflect on how my child self viewed this game. I started with Charmander because I wanted to eventually have Charizard. Like most kids, I barely put effort into leveling Pokemon other than my starter, so I got my ass beat brutally by Misty's Starmie's dreaded Bubblebeam. Feeling myself having hit an impassible wall, I did the only logical thing: I restarted the game to get Bulbasaur. He turned out to be more useful, shitting on everything in the Moon Cave before murdering Misty. But I also wasted Cut on him, and when I finished the game with a Venusaur in the mid-70s, he still necessarily had Cut, as I don't think there was such thing as a Move Deleter yet. Most significantly for my first time playing the game, I understood Mewtwo to be a villain from Pokémon: The First Movie [劇場版ポケットモンスターミュウツーの逆襲], and so aimed to defeat him, rather than add him to my ranks, instead wasting my Master Ball on something dumb (a Golduck, maybe? Something in Cerulean Cave). So many years later, I don't feel I was too stupid, because, in fairness, there's not much you can do with Mewtwo beyond shit on the Elite Four again....

My familiarity with the Gen I games proved somewhat taxing on my older selves. For one, I could not find value in Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen [ポケットモンスター ファイアレッド・リーフグリーン], as I viewed them as superfluous, and was too annoyed at the lack of an in-game Deoxys to comprehend the usefulness of having the Gen I setting with the ability to use Dark types against the Psychics. I think I also expected some sort of superboss like Red in Pokémon Gold & Silver [ポケットモンスター 金・銀] or at least a new Pokemon hidden away like Rayquaza in Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire [ポケットモンスター ルビー・サファイア]. This was the first step in my eventual falling-out with/from the franchise. I would pass on Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver [ポケットモンスター ハートゴールド・ソウルシルバ] for similar reasons, then dismiss Pokémon Black & White [ポケットモンスターブラック・ホワイト] as I felt I'd become "too old" for the series by that point. I would not return to the franchise until 2015, when I replayed Blue on a whim, on a fourth copy which my brother got from some classmate sometime earlier, having asked random people if they still had any Pokemon games on hand (gathering a working Blue, as well as copies of Gold, Silver, and Ruby, all of which had bum batteries).

In this latest venture, I found myself nearly godlike with my adult knowledge. Aware of some hiccups in the game's design, I tasked myself with catching an Abra above Cerulean, leveling it in the daycare, and murdering everything with Kadabra (who was unable to evolve because no one I knew had physical GB Pokemon, so I couldn't trade him). A couple new flaws revealed themselves to me: Kadabra's major Psychic attacks are all basically just stronger versions of the same shit (Confusion -> Psywave -> Psybeam -> Psychic), and, far more aggravating, Poison-Leader Koga's Gym is filled with Psychic-users instead! I'd made a similar mistake as my child self, powerleveling my Kadabra as I used to do with starters, and not doing much for my other Pokemon. As such, only Kadabra could withstand Koga's henchmen's attacks. Cue a tedious series of standoffs in which my Kadabra would trade Psywaves with opposing Hypnos and things. Waste all my PP against one trainer, pop over to the PokeCenter to restore power, go to the next trainer, waste all my PP again, restore again, fight the next guy, and so on. (I think I just grinded my Charmeleon into a Charizard to take care of Sabrina's Gym, as I don't recall similar issues; maybe I just skipped every fight?). I also made a happier revelation sometime later, that the Legendary Birds may well exist to help counter the Elite Four: Zapdos for Lorelei's Water types and maybe pretend Moltres is useful against Ice, Zapdos's Sky Attack against Bruno's Fighting types and maybe Arcticuno against the Grounds, Zapdos against Lance's Gyarados and Arcticuno against the Dragons (really, Moltres is kind of a turd...). Agatha ends up being more a Poison master than Ghost, and Kadabra takes care of her easily. I also had a Charizard and Gyarados for decoration. No idea what I did against Blue's Alakazam, but it was definitely the toughest enemy. What's kind of shitty is that in the post-game all there is to do is challenge Mewtwo, who's whole deal is basically just "Kadabra, but waaay stronger," so I couldn't damage him much at all, and gave up and tossed the Master Ball after getting him about halfway down his lifebar. I would later try to play Pokémon Stadium [ポケモンスタジアム2] with my 2015 team, only to get my ass beat mercilessly because they were all too strong for the Lv50 cup, but far too weak for the Lv100.

Between nostalgia and my more recent play of the game, I feel I have little choice but to consider Pokemon Blue to be one of my favorite games. I know a lot of people view the first generation as being pretty "janky," which I've kind of acknowledged above, but I find it somewhat fun to work along the jank, and it's not too hard to sort shit out otherwise, unless you really want to run a Bug team, which will get your ass kicked, but I feel like Bug type was always meant to be dogshit in the early games anyway, considering... you know... bugs are easy to squash in real life. Anyway, there are still a lot of good things in this game. I'm pretty sure the music is fantastic, but it could be mostly nostalgia. I love Sugimori's art, and Gen I is the only one to really keep the Pokemon as "Pocket Monsters," where they start getting way too pet-like in later installments (so much of Gen II is "baby Pokemon," for example). The sprites themselves are sometimes iffy; the Green sprites are goofier than the Blue sprites, and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on with Charmeleon's head in the sprite when you're using him on your team. I think I actually enjoy the GB/C sprites for the party screen versus the more accurate individual versions used in Gen III and on, but that's personal opinion. I really like how the game is structured such that it throws Normal, Flying (technically, Normal/Flying), and Bug types at you in the very beginning, being the most common types for the weakest monsters, and being the only types not represented by Gym Leaders or Elite Four (and I love how Gen II kicks off with a trio of Leaders for these same three types). I respect the different pathways to get to Fuchsia, as well as the ability to challenge Koga or Sabrina in different order. I also like how Seafoam can be skipped entirely, allowing you to Fly back to Pallet and Surf south to Cinnabar. Blue and Giovanni both act as rivals throughout the game, with the "twist" that Giovanni is the Viridian Gym Leader, and the slight "twist" that Blue beats you to the Champion spot a little ways ahead of you (this works well in Gen II, when Blue takes Giovanni's position as Viridian Leader). There's also a lot of neat shit that may or may not exist in the background, like the fan-theories that a big war broke out before the game takes place, or the possibility that Ditto is a failed attempt to clone Mew (later games, e.g. Pokémon X & Y [ポケットモンスター X・Y], would get too in-your-face about "backstory").

Is Pokemon Blue a "perfect" game? I can't say it is. I do think it makes for a nearly-perfect duology with GS afterward, as the two generations play on each other nicely, but the individual parts are... questionable. I'll still rate this with a perfect score, and I'd likely do the same for the following generation. After that, I still more or less enjoy the franchise, but it becomes harder to "justify" too-high scores. The conclusion, I think, is that nostalgia plays too large a factor in my analysis of the first two generations, affecting Gen III as well, and possibly IV (though I've yet to get back to those games, as I'm afraid of them being "too slow").