Back when it was first released, Pokémon was considered groundbreaking. The basic engine was simple – you collected creatures, fought in a turn-based RPG system, and how well your attacks worked was effectively paper-rock-scissors. The genius, though, lied in that the game kept spurring you to collect every single creature, and you needed to trade with other people who owned other versions of the game in order to do that. I had complete strangers come up to me and ask for a Bellsprout when I only had Pokémon Blue. Now, it seems that every single Game Boy game has some collecting aspect, and trading happens even with console games.
With that said, though, the original Pokémon games, Red and Blue, were some of the buggiest games ever made. I personally knew enough cheats (like how to catch a wild level 232 Mewtwo) and sneaky maneuvers that it’s still a wonder to me how the cartridge could ever work in the first place. While the sequel, Pokémon Gold and Silver, corrected a few of these flaws, both were still fundamentally broken, which is why Nintendo made sure that Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire would not communicate with those two. But of course there were plenty of Pokémon that weren’t available, so it was inevitable that Nintendo would bring them back, in the only way that made sense for them: they made a remake. So the question is, after catching the original 150 before, is it worth it to go again in Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen?
Now, to begin, the game is a direct remake of the original Pokémon Red/Blue. Thus, you’ll begin by following Ash’s original course. This time, though, you do get to choose your gender, so you could instead be Ash’s long-lost fraternal twin sister. Not knowing you’ve had a twin sister for 6 years? Truth be told, I have heard zanier. Gender and twin relations aside, though, you are to guide your trainer past the original eight gym leaders, take on Team Rocket (who have been totally absent from the video games since Pokémon Yellow came around), and get past Gary Oak to become the Pokémon League champion. Just like before, the game is a really simple plotline, and it is there unchanged from its original incarnation. As with all the other portable Pokémon titles, the main plot is ornamentation for the game’s battle system.
One thing that has changed, though, is that there is plot that opens up after you’ve beaten the Elite Four. There are seven islands that you can reach with boat passes. You get the first after taking out Blaine, the seventh gym leader, and that gives you access to the first three islands. The other four open up after the Elite Four tilt. While the plot doesn’t progress too much in this new area, it does have the advantage of giving you more to explore than the original game gave. Plus, in terms of challenge, subsequent runs at the Pokémon League have a much more powerful Elite Four, so the game presents a much greater challenge than the original did.
Of course, the big question is, exactly how much better balanced is FireRed/LeafGreen? In the old days, you couldn’t choose to start with Charmander in Blue, because you’d otherwise be totally stuck against Brock when you met him early on. Moreover, Blue was much more useful to play through because that was the only place to find Meowth, which learned the money-finding Pay Day attack. Plus, of course, you had the nigh-unstoppable power of Psychic types ruining the day. This time, though, Nintendo has sorted out all of those issues. Meowth is no longer a color-exclusive Pokémon, nor is Mankey (who is found early enough to clean Brock’s clock). Charmander also learns Steel Claw now, which also cleaves through Brock right away. So you no longer have to pick up one or the other to be assured of handling the earlier parts of the game.
More importantly, they balanced out what Pokémon can learn, to make the Pokémon types much more balanced. Plenty of Pokémon learn Dark attacks, so you’ll be able to fight Psychics despite the fact that you won’t see your first Dark type for a while. Moreover, unlike last time, there are Ghost attacks worth using and they do cause extra damage to Psychic types this time. Unlike before, when you could create an invincible Mewtwo, there is no single guaranteed game-breaking Pokémon. While there are certainly still powerhouses that can sweep through others quite well, it’s no longer a video game version of South Park Roshambo. Instead, it’s more like actual Rochambeau.
Finally, many people want to know whether the old Pokémon compare to the new ones. Well, no fear there: there are plenty of great combinations for all Pokémon available in all the games. I get to have my trusty Exeggutor back, and I’m going to partner it with a Swampert. There are easily hundreds more team combinations and move sets available, and no one single Pokémon game holds any significant advantage over any other. Of course, the best is to trade amongst them all, but in any given game, you can put together a serious team for taking on your opponents.
Of course, you also have to compare this game to Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire, as people will want to know what works best between the games. For the most part, almost everything is the same, even to the point where less than ten moves appear here that weren’t in Ruby/Sapphire. And that’s even factoring in that Metronome disappeared in Ruby/Sapphire. One change that you will notice is in TMs – this game uses the exact same ones as Ruby/Sapphire did. But for those who really want to teach a Pokémon Double Edge or Thunder Wave, Nintendo threw in Move Tutors in various places in the game, and they function much the same as TMs, with the exception that they’re not portable. They even made some TMs, like the incredibly useful Iron Tail and Brick Break ones, replenishable now, so you can get a lot more of the best moves to customize your Pokémon.
Perhaps the only big change is that contests and everything associated with them don’t exist in Kanto, the original world of Pokémon. So that includes making berry blocks, adjusting contest traits, and even planting more berries. You can get many berries still from using the Itemfinder, or a Pokémon with the Pickup ability, but you won’t be able to adjust contest traits anymore. There’s actually a great side to this, though: this game adds a different Berry Blender, which powders berries and can be used to trade for highly useful items (including PP Ups, easily the most valuable item to many committed fans of the game). Moreover, the contest traits didn’t go away; they just stay totally in Hoenn, and a Pokémon has to go back to Hoenn in order to take advantage of them.
Also, one thing that’s a huge shift for veterans is that there’s no longer a money crunch. First off, Meowth now has Pickup, which means lots of free items at random times. Moreover, Pay Day has improved to give you five times your current level in Pokémon dollars, ten times if the Amulet Coin is in play, per use. Finally, you’ll get an item called the Vs. Seeker, which allows you to rematch against many of the trainers in the game for more money. After the relative poverty the original put players through, the wealth in FireRed/LeafGreen is almost astounding.
This, however, leads to one of the game’s drawbacks. Up until you defeat the Elite Four, you are playing the original Red/Blue in pretty much every way. You can’t trade between Ruby, Sapphire, or Colosseum. You won’t be able to breed out new Pokémon, though Ditto can still breed with nearly anything as it did in Gold, Silver, and Crystal. You won’t even be able to open up alternate evolutions of the original 150 Pokémon until after you clear the Pokémon League for the first time. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the original, particularly with everything more balanced. But I’ve already run through the game twice (I own both Pokémon Red and Blue), and I’m probably not the only one dreading yet another slog through the game. While it was great to see Brock and Misty one more time (good old Brock... everything beats Brock), I really didn’t want to have to deal with the entire Team Rocket rigmarole again.
The controls are just slightly tweaked from before, and they’re quite familiar to everyone who played through Ruby/Sapphire. You even get Running Shoes in this one, making your various treks that much faster. The only major difference between the controls here and the controls in the others is that the L and R buttons now open up a help feature. In some ways, this is quite useful: Pokémon has long had a younger audience, who can’t necessarily keep the entire attack chart in their heads. It’s good to have that information at their fingertips. On the other hand, though, I’d like to be able to deactivate that, as I have this habit of interrupting a good battle by accidentally hitting a shoulder button. But overall, as this is a role-playing game at heart, the controls are really incidental to the action.
The game’s graphics are, as you’d expect, quite beyond what was available back in the monochrome Game Boy days, during the first game’s release. The sprites are noticeably larger (they’re even a bit bigger than the ones in Ruby/Sapphire), and FireRed/LeafGreen’s color palette is bright and easy to look at even if you’re using the classic GBA. Similarly, the graphics in battle are sharp, and just about the same as the ones used in Ruby/Sapphire. There is only one tiny complaint about the graphics, and I’m sure I’m the only person who would have noticed. Back in the day, each city actually changed color palettes when you went into them if you played Red/Blue on the Super Game Boy. It was pretty simple: Pewter City was a slightly reddish grey, Vermilion City was a deep red, Cerulean City was a light blue, and so on. It actually made some sense of the colored city names. But now, all the cities look alike, and all the buildings are the same. It takes some of the character out of the game.
The game’s music really hasn’t changed that much since the beginning; Ruby/Sapphire mostly muddle through with remixes of the original music as well. It’s only slightly tweaked in FireRed/LeafGreen, and it is still tinny Game Boy music. I know you generally don’t listen to Game Boy music for good reason, but it’s almost obligatory to discuss it. Basically, unless you’re on the Game Boy Player or a glutton for punishment, you’ll want to skip the music yourself.
Perhaps the one big new thing is the wireless adapter that comes with the game. First, keep in mind that you can still use the old link cable to trade and battle, and in fact you’ll have to rely on that to communicate with Ruby and Sapphire once you get the ability to do so. But in addition to that, the wireless adapter allows you to play some mini-games thrown in as well as go into a type of chat room called the Union Room, which can be accessed by any player within range of the adapter. You can even conduct trades or a quick versus battle in the room. The concept is interesting, and obviously an attempt to test out how well portable gamers will take to the upcoming DS’s built-in wireless communications. However, it still requires some work. The adapter only has a range of about ten yards, so you aren’t going to connect to many people. You can only offer vague suggestions for trades, and the battles are just two Pokémon no greater than level 30 against the same. Moreover, the chat module within the game requires picking out each particular character, and it’s ponderous to the point of being glacial. While it does connect easily enough, the functionality of it needs to be bumped up. However, given that it’s an experiment that was packaged free with the game, it could have been a lot worse.
Finally, I have to note that Nintendo cleaned up a ton of bad code that was in the original. You no longer will encounter MissingNo., you can’t duplicate items or Pokémon, and you can’t make Safari Zone Pokémon appear off the coast of Cinnabar Island. And, most importantly, you can’t use a combination of a name cheat and a Rare Candy surplus to create level 2 Mewtwos that you can raise for an obscene amount of power.
In all honesty, it seems really odd that Nintendo has decided to remake a game that was released just six years ago. Of course, things have changed since then. I picked up the original game totally on a lark, and it’s become a minor gaming obsession for me. I’ve even made friends purely on the fact that both parties play Pokémon. So I certainly know of the potential social aspect of the game. But the fact remains that most Pokémon veterans have already played this game, and while it’s great to see the old ones again, I’d really rather play through a new game with the old Pokémon. Heck, bring back some interesting old faces, like Brock and Team Rocket, and throw them into a brand new plot. Adding a few extra areas onto the game just doesn’t quite feel fulfilling.
As much as I love Pokémon, I can’t, in good conscience, give this game an emphatic recommendation. If you’ve never been exposed to Pokémon before at all, then this game is perfect for you. Then again, climbing out of the media-proof bunker you live in is also a perfect idea. If you’re like me, and can plan out a five-step breeding chain without thinking this is unusual at all, then you’ll want FireRed or LeafGreen to complete your collection and create better teams. However, if you’re just a passive Pokémon fan looking for a new pickup, this isn’t worth it for you. Stick with Ruby or Sapphire, and that will be plenty of Pokémon for you. Remaking a game that is only 6 years old just smacks of laziness, and Pokémon fans deserve better. Even if I’ve already planned out how to get Ancientpower from Relicanth to Exeggutor, I still feel that I should have gotten a heavy discount, since I already own this game twice. The serious fans will want this to catch them all. But everyone else, you should stay away, because the wallet sting just isn’t worth the nostalgia for something that recent.
