You're a kid named Ash (which can be changed within the game, but for now, you'll be known as Ash), who dreams of being a Pokemon master. So, you leave home to fulfill your dream. You'll travel from town to town, defeating each town's Gym master with the Pokemon you've captured and trained, until you earn all the badges necessary to be considered a Pokemon Master.
Pokemon is a very traditional oriented Japanese RPG and overhead view, super deformed characters, tile-based dungeons, random creature encounters...the works. The appeal of Pokemon, however, is the sheer amount of personality in the game. There are literally more than 150 Pokemon to uncover and capture, and your collection becomes a status symbol and how many Pokemon have you found? Or, more importantly, how many Pokemon have you captured?
See, when you encounter a wild Pokemon, you must do battle with it and the only way to do battle with a Pokemon is with another Pokemon. Each of the game's Pokemon has its own strength and weakness, its own attack and defense capabilities. All Pokemon belong to one of fifteen categories, and some types of Pokemon can utterly destroy Pokemon in other categories such as Fire to Water, Water to Rock, and so on. It literally becomes a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors as you try and discover which Pokemon works best against others.
Okay, so that's Pokemon in a nutshell. What does Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition bring to the table?
First of all, the story of Pokemon Red and Blue has been altered slightly to mirror the cartoon. In Pokemon Red and Blue, you had your choice of three Pokemon at the start of the game. In Pokemon Yellow, Professor Oak captures and hands you Pikachu as your first Pokemon. Because Pikachu is a rather rare and powerful Pokemon in the game, Pokemon Yellow is slightly easier to play since battles are a lot easier to win but during the first big battle with Brock, Pikachu is useless, so you're best to capture as many other Pokemon and train them before the first Badge battle. And like the cartoon, Pikachu doesn't like being housed in a Pokeball so he follows you around like a companion. He cannot be traded, or let go, and he will never evolve. You can check out how well you're treating your Pikachu by "talking" to it, this will bring up a window showing its mood. Take pride in knowing you're taking care of it.
Because the game somewhat mirrors the cartoon, the graphics have been altered a bit. It's nothing major Brock looks like Brock in the cartoon, and Jesse and James from Team Rocket now make an appearance. Other small tidbits have been added, like Jigglypuff showing up to sing the Jigglypuff song (putting Pikachu to sleep in the process).
Speech has been added, when you use or talk to Pikachu, it'll say its trademark "Pika!" "Pi!" or "Pikachu!" in crappy, low quality digitized audio. It's obvious the existing game engine was never meant to have speech and the sound quality shows.
In Pokemon Red and Blue, when you played, the game had a blue or red hue throughout the adventure. In Pokemon Yellow, the color palette changes depending on what screen you're on -- battle sequences are slightly more colorful, and you'll notice the color change as you walk from town to town ,the color switch is pretty obvious.
Features
- Updated Pokémon adventure using the existing Pokémon Red/Blue engine
- New Pikachu-related elements
- Follows the cartoon story
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