Ladies and gentlemen, start your emulators! It is time for another episode of RetrOS. This is the show where we give you your recommended dose of nostalgia by reviewing games from your childhood.
This episode is the big one! The anniversary special! This year, we take a look at the remake of the game that I remember playing before, and the immediate aftermath of my accident in 2004. Does this remaster truly live up to the game's legacy? Or should this game be lost forever in the pages of gaming history?
Let's find out!
This review is more of a follow-on to the review that I posted 2 years ago.
The date of posting marked 22 years since the day that my past, present, and future changed. And in under 24 hours, I have gone from an average 13-year-old boy to a person whose life is hanging by a thread and in an intensive care unit, with a survival rate of under 10%.
Even 22 years on, I still cannot understand why I have been able to fight off these odds and live the lifestyle I have been given.
Anyway, back to the review at hand. As I have said in my review of Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon was Nintendo's licence to print money, and still is! The series started in 1996, when the original Red and Green (or Blue over here in the West!) were released for the Game Boy in Japan.
The franchise went on to take the West by storm with the release of the original two versions in the US and Europe in 1999. During that time, Nintendo pushed that craze as far as they could. They accomplished this by releasing an anime series, dubbed by 4 Kids Entertainment, a trading card game done by Magic: The Gathering creators, Wizards of the Coast, and, of course, video games.
Tell me, when you went to your local theatre to watch Pokémon the 1st movie, did you do it to watch the film, or to score the limited-edition trading card that was given to everyone who watched the movie? Let me know down in those comments!
In 2002, Nintendo released Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire in Japan for the Game Boy Advance. Players in the West had to wait until 2003 to get their grubby hands on a copy. In 2014, The Pokémon Company released this classic for the Nintendo 3DS.
The game is set in the Hoenn region, which was based on Japan's Kyushu Island. Your character has recently moved from the Johto region.
You and your rival, Brendan and May, are tasked with completing an encyclopaedia of all Pokémon in the region, the Pokedex, by Professor Birch, while collecting gym badges, then going on to defeat the Elite Four, while stopping an organisation hellbent on waking an ancient Pokémon which has the power to wipe out humanity altogether!
The access ability scores are as follows –
Visibility 9.5
In terms of this category, it's quite playable. When selecting a move during battle, the icons of a particular move are colour coded by type. For example, the icons of normal type attacks are in grey backgrounds, fire types are in red, ground types are in brown and grass type attacks are in green.
You know as well as I do, red and green are a no-no with players with visual impairments. But the text in the smaller icons should give you an indication of what type each attack is. So this game can be easily playable for players with visual impairments.
Audibility 10
As par for the course, there is no spoken dialogue in this game. All dialogue is text based. So imagination should be able to fill in the blanks. From all the games from the series, none of them has spoken dialogue present.( Except for Stadium)
Mobility 10
You use the circle pad to move your character around. For series veterans, you can use the D-Pad to move too. When navigating the ui, the circle pad or the touch screen can be used. These options can make the game more accessible, and a great way to utilise one of the 3DS' distinguishing features.
Gameplay 11
Take note Halo Studios, this is how you remake a game. When in contrast with the original GBA version, it's astounding, a true testament to what 12 years' worth of technological advancement looks like.
Nintendo used their own proprietary engine, the same one that X and Y run on. The game runs smoothly on a 3ds console, with little change in the game's assets. There's a tonne of new features added from other entries. These features include Mega Evolutions, Secret Bases, and the new types of Pokemon that are present thanks to Y's engine. It's like going back to the original game with the additional features that you would normally expect from a modern Pokemon game.
I have said before I remember playing the original 2003 version of this game before the accident itself and it was one of the first games I played after my family member replaced my old Game Boy Advance SP that was in my pocket when I took the fall. So this particular game has a lot of sentimental value.
This particular version is a pure nostalgia trip from the good old days. Seriously, this game is a reason why I bought a 3DS console from Forgotten Worlds.
This game as a must-have for any 3DS owner's collection. Sure, it can be expensive, but the gameplay experience it makes it worth every penny.
OVERALL SCORE 101.25%
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