Dom Robinson reviews

Price: £24.99 Players: 1 When I first inserted Pokemon Crystal into the Gameboy Advance, one thought crossed my mind: "I have absolutely no idea what's going on." Things start to become apparent though - the more you play - and this latest incarnation adds to the Gold and Silver series with the Battle Tower, the mysterious secrets of the Unown, an all-new way to catch Suicune you can play as a male or female trainer for the first time and it's also compatible with Pokemon Stadium 2 on the Nintendo 64. In the game, Professor Elm, who lives in New Bark Town, the place in which you begin your adventure, is busy continuing his research into what makes Pokemon tick and he receives an email from Mr. Pokemon asking him to come and take a look at his latest discovery, but he sends you in his place as he's too preoccupied with his work. There's also a strange boy hanging about outside with something to say... Strange introductions aside, your aim is to collect and train as many Pokemon as possible (there's 151 in all, apparently) and store them in your Pokedex. You can also collect gear called Pokegear (starting to get the picture here?) such as a radio, town map, cellphone on which to call your Mum and the professor and a watch. Note that you can set the correct time as in real life and this will be reflected in the game - eg. play at night and it will be dark in the game and it can also work out what GMT and BST are, although it refers to them in American terms as "Daylight Savings Time".

The graphics and sound here are not the game's strong point, but to their credit they're the same as they have been in previous variants such as Gold, Silver, Red and Yellow, the game's look having a pseudo-3D top-down appearance which works well in terms of enabling you to work out what's happening. Once you've got into the game, the music becomes more engaging too. Hiding in the undergrowth are the baddies in which you'll have to fight with your own Pokemon. I can't remember what mine was originally called as I changed his name to something unprintable, which adds to the amusement because the game certainly doesn't have an in-built profanity filter. Anyway, back to the plot and for someone who has never tried to understand the Pokeman concept before I found it becoming more entertaining as I built up experience points from winning battles and going up to the next level by scratching, leering and raging away.

While it's easy to get to grips with, given the time, it misses out one element from the Japanese original. It appears they had a mobile phone facility so that you could somehow text each other or send info about your Pokemon between the units. What you can do with a Gameboy Advance is toggle the screen with the shoulder buttons so as to view it in a central 4:3 ratio as on the Gameboy Colour, or stretch it sideways to fill the 16:9 widescreen of the latest hand-held console. Of course, whatever I say here will be of no consequence to all the kids who are massive fans of the franchise as they'll want anything with Pokemon on the cover and they're bound to enjoy it as much as the previous outings. Crap gag time: How do you get 151 Pikachus on a bus? Pokemon!

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
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OVERALL (for children)

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.