Retro Reviews -- Pokemon Blue: Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Pokemon Blue was the first video game that I ever owned. In 1999 I recieved this game for Christmas when I was just five years old. My brother and I both copped a Gameboy Pocket and a copy of Pokemon Blue. We hardly wanted to open the rest of our presents considering how bad we wanted to play. I remember the moment I received my first Pokemon from Professor Oak in Pallet Town. This moment would lead to years and years of playing all of the new Pokemons.

This was the first installment in a series that would continue to be best sellers for the next seventeen years. It would also spawn a TV show, trading card game & one of the worlds greatest merchandise lines.

The battles in this game were very similar to Final Fantasy. Turn for turn attack with the use of items inbetween turns. The combat system works on a elemental basis. (I. E. water beats fire, fire beats grass.) There is many differen't elements of pokemon in this game: fire, water, grass, ghost, normal, fighting, & electric.

Starting out in all Pokemon games you get to chose a starting Pokemon. They are always fire, water or grass. The first time I played this game I remember choosing Squirtle because he was a turtle and we had a pet turtle. You can bet I named him Henry (The name of our turtle).

The map of this game was pretty big for a gameboy game. Stretching over eleven cities you could easily find yourself lost in this game for hours & hours. Pokemon Blue had some great features for traveling the map such as riding a bike, using the move surf allowing for you to ride water on a pokemon & teleport (Quick travel before Skyrim made it cool!).

The premise of the game was to collect all one hundred and fifty pokemon. Also you needed to create a team of seven Pokemon that you could use to beat the elite four. The elite four were the last boss level were you had to fight the four people picture above with no breaks. This was a very hard task to complete but when you finally created the perfect line up to beat them it felt well deserved!

I would give this game five stars and rank it in my top three games of all time!