Introduction: Pokemon Red/Blue was the game that started it all for the huge fad and franchise known as Pokemon, that is now practically dead.

Review: It is an RPG but a beginner’s one at that. It’s not your typical run of the mill RPG. It doesn’t have an extremely deep story and you don’t save the world from a huge evil being or fight hordes of enemies. But does that make it a bad game? Not at all! Some people may find it less exciting, but it has good things to offer too.

You start off by choosing one of three pokemon from Prof. Oak’s lab. A water type, fire type, or grass type. They each have weaknesses and strengths to each other. After you choose, your rival will choose one. He will always choose the one that you are weak against. The next goal is to fill up your Pokedex with pokemon info and become a pokemon master. Your rival wishes to do the same. You must travel through Kanto to eight gyms and defeat the gym masters to get their badges and ultimately reach the elite four. There is a large amount of opponents to fight also.

Your main character assumes the role of a trainer and your pokemon do all of the battling. You can carry up to 6 pokemon at a time with you. The battle system is completely turn based. You do battle with one pokemon at a time. Because there are fifteen different types of pokemon, strategy also plays a large part in battles. E.G. Water attacks are super effective against fire, and ghost pokemon are unaffected by physical attacks. When your pokemon defeat other pokemon they gain experience points depending on the the pokemon defeated and level. Eventually, some will evolve and become stronger than their previous form. Some even evolve twice! When they gain a few levels they will learn a new move that makes them even more useful in battle. Some moves can only be taught with an item such as a TM and some can be used outside of battle. Unfortunately, each pokemon may only know four moves at one time. This takes away from the depth of battles that is vital in other RPGs.

There is a total of 150 pokemon to collect. To collect them all you will need to trade pokemon with a friend who has the other version. This makes the replay value very high and makes the game very long especially for a Gameboy game.

Conclusion: This is an amazing GB game that everyone should play at least once. It may not have the most engrossing story but the amount of things to perfect is amazing for a game of that platform. This game is a must have. Download it at Emuparadise.

Ratings: (scale of 0.0 - 5.0)