Pokemon is the unicorn of heldheld gaming
What you see before your eyes is a review for one of the most popular games ever created, which inspired a generation. Pokemon Red and Blue were games available in Japan in 1996, and then transferred over seas to the U.S. in 1998. It doesn't matter if you love 'em or hate them, no one can deny the following Pokemon led in the 90's. Spawning a successful cartoon after the games success, and popularization of a trading card series in the global market, Pokemon seemed to be unstoppable. It all started with two simple traditional Japanese RPG's birthed from mother Nintendo.
The game's setting is a fictional world populated by Pokemon, which symbolize various animals, fantasy creatures, and imaginative original designs. Pokemon are the fascination of the game's world, studied by science, used as pets, and Pokemon trainers capture these Pokemon to engage them in fights with other trainers in dog-fighting style competitions. All these Pokemon are capable of powerful abilities in relation to what elemental class they are. Pokemon are separated into fire, water, grass, flying, ghost, electric, ect. All these classes have differing strengths and weaknesses, all centering a rock/paper/scissors formula. For example, fire beats grass, electric beats flying, rock beats electric, water beats rock, and so on. Battle normally involves you choosing the opposite element of which ever Pokemon you're facing, if you battling a fire Pokemon, you going to be breaking out your water fighter.
You are a lone adventurer on a quest to become the greatest Pokemon Trainer in the Pokemon League. The world won't simply hand you the championship belt, you must prove yourself by traveling to the world's eight unique Pokemon gyms, and defeating their gym masters. The game itself is focused on traveling gym to gym, but also juggling various quests, battling random trainers, and coming toe to toe with the nefarious Team Rocket, who play as the villians of this story.
The quest itself is not a challenging one, once you master the formula. However this does not mean this is a short winded adventure; the game should take a good 20-30 hours to beat depending on how you play. Completionists will be in awe over the 150 Pokemon you can capture, train, and evolve, racking the play time up dozens of hours.
Past its cute kid-friendly shell, Pokemon is a masterful RPG interlacing simplistic Japanese designs, and implementing an addictive formula. As a representative of the RPG genre it's easy enough for newcomers and enjoyable for the hard-core audience. Pokemon is a legendary franchise from Nintendo and is an all time classic adventure. Giving this game a perfect 10 was no easy decision, but one I feel comfortable with. Very few games every created deserve this medal, but Pokemon is the unicorn of handheld gaming, no one should pass up.
