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Best of Virtual Console: Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow are still great on 3DS (but experience is essential)

Re-releases have become so prevalent I’ve become accustom to indifferently glancing in their direction and lethargically rolling my eyes, like a disinterested teenager forced to be in attendance by overexcited parents desperately trying to recapture their youth. Yet, I’ve become consumed by the re-release of the 20-year-old original Pokémon games on 3DS, more than anything else thus far in 2016. Perhaps because it’s just that: a faithful re-release, and not a marked up quasi-remake or upscaled port.

If you missed the memo, Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow were released on the 3DS eShop last weekend to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original duo, Red and Green, in Japan. Truth be told, the Aussie celebrations are more than a tad premature (we’ll have the real party in 2018). Yellow, my choice of the three $13 Game Boy Classics because it’s the edition to which I surrendered my spare time as a 10-year-old, and because I appreciate the splash of colour, was released locally 16-and-a-half years ago (to nitpick, Yellow says it was released in 2000 on the eShop, but that was in Europe. Australia was September 1999. Get your sh*t together, Nintendo Australia historians); but in essence, it’s a trio of variants of a game made long before Windows 98 was installed on the “good” computer at your primary school.

I’ve played a lot of Pokémon games since then. Probably too many. Some are beloved, and others hastily grew tired. I’ve improved as a Pokémon trainer, and more broadly as an RPG player, and welcome the tweaks and minor evolutions that come each generation. And yet, I cannot look past Red, Blue and Yellow. Sure, there’s an element of nostalgia. The genre-defining instalment in a enduring franchise inevitably carries a greater sense of purpose than any of its sequels, but that’s only part of the picture with Pokémon.

After downloading Yellow on 3DS, I played for seven minutes and promptly enabled Sleep Mode. The nostalgic wave arose and vanished in a shorter span than anticipated, but not by much. I expected to be momentarily transported back to a simpler time in gaming, courtesy of a pillar of entertainment from my childhood, and be done with it. Initially I was.

Then I was drawn back.

My playtime is now encroaching upon 10 hours, and showing no signs of slowing down. There’s much more to this re-release than merely reliving a fabled childhood pastime – especially one that’s been emulated almost annually in the subsequent two decades.

There’s something about the original trilogy inherently lacking from X&Y and even the more recent, yet also much older, (Alpha) Sapphire and (Omega) Ruby. Despite its technical limitations – though ground-breaking at the time – RBY emits a much greater sense of amazement and adventure.

The Pokémon formula has proven its longevity to remain constant for 20 years, but returning to the beginning unleashes a newfound respect for how much has changed; more than most casual players might expect. The backbone is all here, but the usability is severely lacking. The menus are poor and it’s much harder to find the crucial stats, which are at the forefront of modern Pokémon games. It’s for this reason younger fans, initiated on DS or 3DS, mightn’t have the same respect for a game that’s held up remarkably well were it counts. Pokémon RBY is great to return to on 3DS, by experience is essential.

Pokemon Red and Blue

The structure is aberrant to modern standards, in stark contrast to Nintendo’s current fixation with Super Guides and mass-market hand-holding. With limited explanation, you’re given a starter Pokémon – without any direction – and set you on your merry way. Early exploration reveals protagonist Red (who can be renamed) is confined to a more linear path than meets the eye. RBY fleetingly walks through its mechanics, scarcely explaining any of them. If this were a formula devised in 2016, we would expect 45 minutes of overbearing tutorials highlighting every actionable item before the real game starts. Yet this is only part of what makes it great, and still so engaging.

As you progress, the world begins to open. There’s some backtracking, made less tedious with the Fly ability, and often the illusion of several paths when there’s only one place to go; yet it feels like a massive world ripe for exploration. Confining the action to the original 151 Pokémon is a key element in why RBY still holds up so well in 2016. I’m horribly bored by re-completing the Pokédex in every new instalment. It’s been done a million times, and makes no sense – Pokémon can be traded between generations, but not Pokédex information? In RBY, compiling the Pokédex feels like a meaningful pursuit, and in contrast to the 700-odd total figure, a manageable one.

I won’t pretend the original roster is as ingenious as the rose-tinted memories cultivated from childhood imagination. There’s no uninspired garbage-bag-émon, but the opening stanza inundates some of the worst Pokémon, both imaginatively and practically, of the entire game. On the journey to the first gym badge, our youthful trainer encounters a couple of smug birds, caterpillars with learning difficulties, a flattened monkey, a buck-toothed rat and a useless pea-pod that cannot do anything until it evolves into a cowardly butterfly. The situation isn’t helped when Zubat, the suckiest suck who ever sucked, leads the charge on the trek to the second gym leader.

Pokemon Red and Blue

Yet, despite some of worst Pokémon tarnishing the beginning of RBY, I didn’t care, and happily powered through. Playing again much later in life, I recognised how this is essentially the unspoken tutorial. Many games pretend to throw you in the deep-end, while secretly leaving the training wheels on, but few do it so well without ever uttering a word of compulsory advice.

It remains to be seen how long I’ll continue to play for. My history with Pokémon games suggests the appeal will dwindle between the 15 and 25 hour mark, which is fast approaching. But I can say I’m enjoying replaying Pokémon Yellow more than any of the 3DS releases. Returning to childhood favourites preserved in memory decades later is a risky endeavour, but Pokémon RBY on 3DS proves remakes aren’t always necessary, especially when the real thing still stands tall.


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About the author

Ben Salter

Ben has been writing about games in a professional capacity since 2008. He even did it full-time for a while, but his mum never really understood what that meant. He's been part of the Stevivor team since 2016. You will find his work across all sections of the site (if you look hard enough). Gamertag / PSN ID: Gryllis.