Video Game Reviews - Pokemon Red

Pokemon Red is an RPG developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the GameBoy in 1996. It's a game about a child who tames monsters in a quest to become the very best "trainer" there ever was. It's infamous for its glitchy programming; it even lets you have portable arbitrary code execution! While the game is glitchy, it is also fun, following the story as intended or playing with a challenge (like playing through the whole game with one Ditto). The glitches add another layer of fun as well. Pokemon Red is also fun to see Any% NSC speedruns for (NSC = No Save Corruption, bans glitch that allows ~2min completion time) due to how absurd the glitches get. The most recent glitch uses ACE in Viridian Forest to skip to the Hall of Fame! Other glitches include custom trainers and lots of exploits, including one that allows you to run code on someone else's GameBoy through the Link Cable!

Anyways, enough about the glitches. Pretty much everything in Pokemon is logical, making it easy to understand without having any prior knowledge. For a game on such a lightweight system, Pokemon Red's battle system is very in-depth, as stats and other variables that keep you on your toes. Planning your team to be strong, diverse, and successful with the right movesets can be satisfying, especially when used in competitive play. That being said, the game does not force you to play in any particular way. Wanna catch 'em all? Go for it! Do you just want to beat the game? Sure thing! There's no real forced story, other than the order in which you proceed through the game. That being said, the limits don't feel like seriously tight constraints, and there are even ROM hacks that change this completely, allowing you to start anywhere and do whatever, if you want to!

All in all, this game is lots of fun. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes Pokemon or wants to see where it all began.

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