Pokémon Yellow - Review

The special Pikachu game. The first one.

Console: Nintendo 3DS.

I have a confession to make: I do not care much about the first generation of Pokémon. About Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow. Sure, these are the games that started it all back in 1996. Well, 1999 for us Europeans. All Pokémon fans such as myself owe countless hours of fun to these games and even a couple of friends. Doesn't mean I actually them much. 

When Pokémon Red & Blue were re-released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in 2016 I bought them. It, at long last, gave me the opportunity to experience the start of it all for myself. I walked away satisfied but not impressed. I found the games to be very simplistic, limited and very rough. Games held together by gum and ducktape but Pokémon Yellow did offer the most fun with its unique anime-inspired extra content. 

They're not games I revisit often, but I do go back to them sometimes. Like when I want to revisit Kanto and realize that I've reviewed both of its remakes on this blog already! I also realized that I had never actively engaged in the glitches that so many Generation I fans fondly talk about, like the Missingo one. Might as well try my hand at a couple of them and see if they might change my perspective, if only a little bit. 

With all of that out of the way, let's talk about Pokémon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition!  

You're a 10-year-old kid who, after receiving a Pikachu from Professor Oak, goes on a journey through the Kanto region. Your goal is to become the best there ever was by gathering all 8 gym badges, become the Champion of the Pokémon League and catch all 151 Pokémon. Also pursuing this goal is your old friend/rival Gary, Oak's grandson, who always seems to be one step ahead of you. Along the way, you run into a group of criminals calling themselves Team Rocket who use and abuse Pokémon for monetary gain. 

I´ve been over this plot twice already - I don't have much to add at this point. What we have here is the tried-and-true Pokémon story in (nearly) its slimmest state, basic and simplistic but nothing offensive. Its remakes, FireRed & LeafGreen and Let's Go Pikachu & Let's Go Eevee, add all these little story elements that the originals lack. Still, it has its charms. To name two the dialogue is nice and snappy, if to the point, and the game throws in some colourful characters to make the proceedings more memorable. 

In short: it's a barebones narrative that does its job but to me had never been all that interesting. 

However, Pokémon Yellow does have more story content than Red & Blue. It throws in elements from the anime which at the time had hit it big. Jessie and James, with Meowth in toe, pop up a couple of times, to prepare trouble and make it double. It's a novel idea but I'm not fond of the execution. There are no new interactions written for them; they replace the 'head' Team Rocket grunt in certain encounters. They never actually get named 'Jessie and James' in the game too. So beyond the novelty itself, they don't really add much. 

Once in a while our favourite dastardly Rocket duo show up to lively up the journey. 

I can lament such things all I want, especially as a guy who enjoys a good narrative, but I recognize that wasn't the focus. Even within this framework, the developers seemed to me to have put more focus on the region itself and its atmosphere. I think they succeeded within the limitations it had to work with. 

The graphics hold back the look of the game, which is something fierce. Yet, with all this black and white, small screen and limited pixel density everything is easily recognizable. The towns, the people, and even most routes. You somehow always know where you are, in no small part thanks to its pretty neat music. The Kanto region has some pretty nice landmarks, such as Mt. Moon, that make the region fun to explore for someone who has never been there before. 

That said, if you look at the sprite work in Red & Green, the Pokémon can look very different from their original designs - and be pretty ugly to boot. A result of Ken Sugimori finalizing the Pokémon after the sprites were made, not the other way around.

Yellow fixes both problems by redoing the Pokémon sprites. The more accurate designs do wonders in making these creatures more distinguishable and, you know, nicer to look at. The colours, while very simplistic, are very nice to have to make the game, well, just a tad more colourful and lively. That the back sprites were not redone is glaringly obvious though. They stand out with how different they are and how inaccurate they can be. 

What also needs to be said is that Yellow uses these better graphics to make its most unique addition better. Just like Ash your first Pokémon is a Pikachu that follows you around everywhere and interacts with you. You can see its mood, hear it say 'Pika-pika' and all that which wouldn't have worked as well had it been in black and white with rougher sprite work. 

For those who like our classic trio of Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle - don't worry! You get all three of them gifted to you in ways, you guessed it, similar to how Ash got them in the anime. 

We really got to circle back to the gameplay. First, the basics again: you travel across an overworld, exploring towns and caves and whatnot, encounter Pokémon in the tall grass and test your mettle against other trainers. Battles are turn-based with a 'rock-paper-scissor' style system with the goal of lowering each other's Pokémon health to zero. As you travel, the Pokémon you caught with Pokéballs after weaking them grow stronger and evolve into different, even stronger Pokémon. 

That Eevee looks a lot more like an the Eevee we know and love, no?

Nowadays explaining all of this will get you a 'du-uh' response but remember: back in the day this was an untested concept. One that worked, that was fun, and whose core still works, and is still fun. There is a reason we are only now seeing Game Freak toying with the core of this gameplay loop. With that in mind, I can't really be sour about how barebones it is and how many flaws and oversights there are. From moves that break the game because they just didn't think them through (cough Calm Mind cough) to moves that are programmed incorrectly and just flat out don't work – or do the exact opposite. 

We also have a different type chart than we're now used to and a couple of bugs and glitches that have some unintended consequences. Starting with the type match-ups, there are things different other than the exclusion of Dark, Steel and Fairy. The types that were introduced in later games. I thought I was a smart cookie by exploiting one of the many glitches and bugs to get a Gengar before I even had a single Badge and train it up as a psychic type killer. Turns out, Psychic is immune to Ghost-type attacks in Generation I. Womp, womp!

On the flip side, Poison and Bug were super-effective against each other here. With the plethora of Grass and Poison types, I got a surprising amount of use out of Golbat and its Leech Life attack even with the low attack.

Another thing I was surprised to discover is that during this playthrough, all the HMs were actually rather useful. Of the many things I dislike about this generation of Pokémon, the limited move pool is a big gone. Take Primeape, for example. The Mankey line was one that as a kid I could not be more indifferent to but that really grew on me over the last years. As such, I wanted to use it here as my premiere fighting type… only to learn it gets only 2 fighting type moves, one of which always does a set amount of damage. Pretty useless. 

Because of these limits, however, the HM moves are comparatively more useful. I never had to give up a spot for an 'HM pony' as everyone on my final team had an HM move simply because they were good moves for them to have. 

Even with how Pokémon Yellow has no meat on its gameplay bones, all of the above makes playing these games noticeably different and, well, unique. I had to use some very different strategies than I was used to with familiar Pokémon having unfamiliar move sets. 

What ghosts are we talking about? Ghost type Pokémon or actual ghosts?

What did very much feel familiar, sadly, is the difficulty curve - or rather the difficulty seesaw. One minute you´re comfortably walking from one gym to a Team Rocket encounter without much effort, the next you're griding for 3 hours because there is a 12-level difference between two Gyms that has no stopgap between them. I really could've gone without any of that especially when you realize that most late-game Gyms are more difficult than the Elite Four, the final challenge in the game. So weird man. 

Oh and if you´re wondering if there is anything to do once you beat the Elite Four: the answer is only one thing: catch Mewtwo. There's is nothing in terms of post-game here other than simply completing your Pokédex. Game Freak had so much trouble getting this game over the finish line there really wasn't any time to beef up the experience even a little bit. It is what it is but it is one of the many reasons why both remakes are the better games to play in my eyes. 

On top of that also comes the actual glitches. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet were blasted for all the performance issues, the framerate dips and clipping and such, they suffered from. I find Generation I is just as broken for all the reasons, and more, I already wrote about. 

Once, I had a discussion online about Red & Blue and the person on the other end told me that he liked them best because they had a blast with all its bugs and glitches. Yeah, it was fun getting that Gengar early but does that weigh up against all the negatives? I mean, do it wrong and you can break the game and put yourself in an unescapable situation. To me, this buggy & glitchy nature of these games is not an asset but a series of flaws, some of which you could have fun with. 

And on that note...

Conclusion

Pokémon Yellow is the best Generation I game - but it's still a generation I Pokémon game. They're the games that started it all, you got to respect that, but they are simplistic titles riddled with flaws, bugs and glitches that frustrate me to no end. 

Yet, even with all that said, I don't regret playing it one more time. Its limitations are part of its charm. The oddball anime references, the ridiculous glitches—they're like old quirks you roll your eyes at but I imagine those who played this game as kids still remember fondly. If nothing else, it gave me a clearer perspective on just how far the series has come.

For my money, there are better ways to experience Kanto. FireRed and LeafGreen are not easy to get your hands on anymore but if you are willing to go on the hunt, it's the best way to travel across Kanto in my book. And, if you do want to play a first-generation title, pick Yellow. With its coloured graphics, walking Pikachu and other small improvements is the best game of the lot.