Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue

The games introduced the basic premise that would be used by all main series Pokemon games until 2016: you play a child who is given their very first Pokemon creature, and instructed to go off and challenge the 8 Pokemon gyms of the region, in order to challenge the Pokemon League and be declared the champion of the region. Along the way they'll catch and train more Pokemon, encounter villainous criminal groups, and fill up their Pokedex, the encyclopedia of all Pokemon in the region. In this case, the region is called Kanto, and is directly based on the real life Japanese region of the same name. In fact, there are some hints that it was originally meant to take place in our world, with one gym leader claiming to be from the USA, and a model of the space shuttle Columbia on display in the museum in Pewter City. This concept was completely abandoned in subsequent games, besides vaguely basing each new region on a real life location.

The region of Kanto itself is rather barebones in this game. Outside of gym challenges, there is usually only a single relatively straightforward quest of sorts per town, and apart from that, most of the NPC interactions are (admittedly sometimes amusing) filler. The gyms themselves are themed after the type of Pokemon the leader specializes in, though sometimes the choice is more obvious than others. For example, Blaine, the fire gym leader, has a series of quiz machines you have to pass before you get to him, ostensibly because he is a scientist. Or Giovanni, the ground gym leader, who has filled his gym with a series of conveyors that you must navigate, because he's also the head of the villain team who used those regularly. That said, none of the gyms are very frustrating, and some of them can be fun to maneuver through. Each gym leader defeated nets you a permanent boost to a specific stat of your Pokemon, as well as a TM to teach one of you Pokemon a move the gym leader used on you.

Once you've defeated all 8, you can pass through the Pokemon League gates, fight your way through the lengthy Victory Road dungeon, and emerge on the other side at the Pokemon League itself. There, you will fight the Elite 4, 4 trainers who act like buffed gym leaders, followed by the League champion, who just happens to be your rival who's been dogging your steps throughout your entire adventure. Prevail here, and you'll be crowned the champion, have your team recorded for posterity, and then be sent home as the credits roll, free to finish collecting every Pokemon in the game, or whatever else may feel like doing. The game also has a B plot that runs alongside your gym challenge, involving the criminal group Team Rocket, who steal people's Pokemon and sell them for profit. You end up running into them in a cave on your way to the second gym town, then again underneath a casino that they secretly run (despite having their name plastered on the front), and finally culminating in Team Rocket taking over an office tower in Saffron City. Each time, in both later encounters, you will have to explore the area to find various keys, before eventually defeating the leader, Giovanni, at which point the entire organization will vanish from the area, as if they were never there. This is all fairly standard fare for Pokemon games ever since, but it all feels well constructed, if a bit barebones by comparison.

The rest of the game mechanics are not quite so well put together. The inventory allows you to hold up to 20 types of items in your bag, with not way to categorize anything. If you run out of space, you can deposit items into the computer storage system, accessible from Pokemon Centers in most towns, but that is limited to 50 types of items. You can also sell items you don't want, but there are many key items you can't sell, and between those and one-of-a-kind useful items, you'll be running into inventory issues regularly. Another related issue is Pokemon storage, which is accomplished using the PC. You are given a set of 12 boxes which can hold 20 Pokemon each, and Pokemon you catch that don't fit in your party are automatically transferred to the currently selected box, but once that box fills up, you can't catch anymore Pokemon. Frustratingly, the game doesn't inform you of this until you go to try to catch, leaving you with no option except to run from the encounter and go find a PC to change boxes.

Other issues include no in-battle indicator of how much experience your Pokemon have, no in-game way to view any information on the moves your Pokemon know or are trying to learn, and needing to dig through your menus to access certain moves out of battle. Most these issues would be resolved in the next generation of games, but they are an obstacle every time I think about replaying any of this generation of Pokemon games. Overall, these games are a solid, if buggy, foundation to would be significantly improved on in later games. They're definitely worth a play, so long as you go in expecting some antiquated interfaces.

One final note, in the screenshots on this page, I'm using a fan patch called PRFG, or Pokemon Red for Girls, which does what it says on the tin, turn the player character into a girl. Pokemon games wouldn't introduce a gender option until 2001, and it's something that always bugs me with these older games, so I liked that this patch changes that. It does glitch a lot of the endgame dialog, but otherwise it's a well done patch, even modifying your rival as well (who I think now kinda looks like Asuka Evangelion?). Unfortunately, the place I originally got the patch no longer has it available, and I haven't been able to find another site that carries it. If anyone knows of a legit site that has it available, let me know and I'll link it here. Either way though, it's still an enjoyable playthrough, and one I'd definitely recommend.