After talking to an old man and swimming around near Cinnabar Island, players could encounter “MissingNo,” an unintentional Pokémon-ish creature that was born from glitchy data, in order to duplicate items in their bag. Weirdest thing: Prof Oak forgetting his own grandson’s name still comes across as odd, but the craziest part of these games is still the collection of glitches that it allowed players to exploit. You may not have snazzy items to hold or OTT special moves to deploy, but selecting the right types for match-ups and choosing the right moves is still of paramount importance. Last year’s Let’s Goremakes added fun little flourishes like petting your partner, and took the fairly drastic decision to remove most of the battles with wild Pokémon, but the core battling dynamics remain exactly the same. Gameplay: It’s really striking how much of the original formula is still the same. One thing that was easy was to become addicted, to become properly obsessed with your favorite Pokémon, curating a party for every occasion and working your way through this wide and wonderful world. It’d be interesting to see what modern-day kids make of the experience.īack in the day, playing these games always felt more like a pleasure than an uphill struggle, even though it was really a bit of both. Actually catching them all was even more difficult, requiring a Link Cable and a willing trade partner, as well as the ability to attend special events or partake in glitchy workarounds (if you really wanted that elusive Mew). And, whatever your past playthroughs were like, you’ll raise a wry smile when you bump into that youngster who really likes wearing shorts again.Ĭute and funny as these games were, what stands out now is that they were quite tough to master, and it took days of your life to finish the story. Returning to the scene of your childhood stress will bring you right back there on an emotional level. Anne will have a special significance if your younger self really bought into the rumors that Mew was hiding under a truck behind the boat or if you got stuck for ages in Rock Tunnel without the ability to use Flash. There’s just something really magical about wandering around Kanto, getting into scrapes and doing your best to catch ’em all (while running away from Zubats and Rattatas at every opportunity).ĭepending on your personal experience of previous playthroughs, going back to certain areas in the game will bring back floods of memories: for instance, revisiting the S.S. The world retains its rich and detailed feel, even though we’ve seen plenty of remakes over the years with their own added bells and whistles. In the Let’s Go games, by comparison, the first properly hard battle doesn’t come until Mewtwo’s cave in the post-game.ĭespite this high difficulty level and the grainy old-school graphics, Pokémon Red and Blueare still absolutely brilliant. In these original titles, if you rush straight into every battle that you can, you’re bound to black out on regular occasions. Coming up against Ghost-types and Psychic-types for the first time isn’t easy, either. If you picked Charmander as your starter Pokémon, going up against Brock in the first gym was a genuine struggle and you’d have to put the work in to make a victory happen.
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Taking on gyms and battles used to be a lot harder, as well. And if you want to level up your whole party, you’ll need to do a fair bit of grinding and alternating to spread the XP around the old-fashioned way. You’ll come to hate the sight and sound of a Pidgey for this very reason. While the recent Kanto revisits of Pokémon: Let’s Go Eeveeand Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu held the player’s hand quite a bit, allowing you to dodge Pokémon you didn’t fancy fighting and simultaneously train up your entire squad using an XP-sharing mechanic, the original Red and Blue offered no such luxuries.Īlmost every time you wander through some grass in these original games, a critter will jump out at you. One thing that really stands out, with modern eyes, is how challenging the original Pokémon games were. Don’t forget to grab a town map from your rival’s sister on the way out of town. The opening of the game hits all those familiar beats, which were repeated so many times in the years that followed: Professor Oak asks your name (and the name of his own grandson), and then you wake up in the game, leave your mum’s house, pick up a Pokémon and head off on a Pokédex-compiling adventure.