Pokemon Silver Version: Play by Play

So, I've been noticing a bit of a Pokemon resurgence lately within my information channels. I am aware that they churn out another one (or three) of these games every few years, but I haven't been paying much attention since handheld gaming technology passed up the Game Boy Advance. In the past decade, I've been known to pick up Blue or Silver and play a bit but never get all the way through. My resurfacing interest in the series was brought about by Scott Kurtz recently Tweeting about his first excursion into the series with the new Black version. His excitement about it got me thinking about the fun I had back in the day, and while I was visiting my parents this past week, I decided to pick up my Game Boy Advance (the original, not DS) and pop in Pokemon Silver.


Silver turns 11 years old this year, and it definitely shows it. Having played later GBA games like Golden Sun and Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral town, seen screenshots of games from the DS and PSP (not to mention iPod/iPhone stuff), and recently fiddling with a 3DS at a Best Buy, I'm impressed with how far handheld gaming has come. Silver doesn't look great, but it certainly looks fine for its era, and it's definitely still fun. I haven't played any of the Pokemon games since the second generation of Gold and Silver (the series is currently in its fifth generation with Black and White), but I assume they're all essentially the same: Start by picking one of three Pokemon (fire, water, or grass) from a professor named after a tree, go from town to town catching additional Pokemon, earning badges, bringing justice to an underground crime syndicate, becoming a champion of some sort, and so on.


The game is fun, no doubt about that, but playing it at the age of 24 instead of 13, I'm noticing that the game is pretty absurd all-around, and I suppose that's because the target audience is children and young adults. I can go along with the idea that there's a popular sport in this world where people train and battle creatures for sport (Let's hope PETA never finds out.), but, just for fun, let's list some things that really push the suspension of disbelief threshold.

-The entire world revolves around these creatures. Soccer (or Football for non-Americans) is the most popular sport on Earth, or so I've been told. Imagine every industry, government, and person on Earth being involved with soccer/football in one way or another.

-People have been interacting with these creatures for thousands of years, but no one knows a damn thing about them! Even this so-called professor in Silver doesn't know how they breed. I realize they put this in there to introduce the game's breeding mechanic, but really? No one had any idea before you found an egg that you made a 13-year-old carry around?

-Why are the towns so isolated? For the most part, the only way to get from one town to another is by walking through miles of dangerous wilderness. How do these towns survive?

-You can store a living creature inside a tiny ball, which can then be stored inside a computer and accessed anywhere (the same goes for items). How can the world so quaint in so many ways and yet have Star Trek transporter technology?

-Why does organized crime have so much more presence than organized government?

That's it for now, but I'm sure I'll have more as I go. The impossibility of the world of Pokemon is really just one of the things that gives it its charm.


So, currently, I'm about 6.5 hours into the game. I've gotten two gym badges, have 20-odd Pokemon, and am about to go through a dark, scary forest to get to the next town. I'm sure you're all familiar with the core gameplay and know it's pretty solid, so I won't spend time on the things that are generally good. I'd rather praise things that are really exceptional and nitpick the rest of the time.

Praises:

-Name schemes. In generation one, all the towns were named after colors. Here, they're all named after plants. I just like it.

-Available elemental types. I seem to remember, back when I played Blue, being stuck with catching almost all Normal- and Bug-type Pokemon for quite a while near the beginning. With Silver, by the time I reached the first gym, my team was quite diverse.

-Good balance of old and new gameplay elements.

Nitpicks:
These are things specific to Silver, and I would hope many of them have been remedied in the past 11 years. If anyone has played more recent games, please do let me know how they've improved.

-Phone calls. Silver introduces a phone system that allows you to communicate with the Professor, your mother, and specified trainers. With the Professor, it's usually important story stuff and your mother tells you about buying special items for you, but the trainers are usually just annoying. Theoretically, they're supposed to call to schedule followup battles, which is great because you get way more experience from fighting them than wild Pokemon. So far, one guy has called me about five times just to tell me how his day was. Unfortunately, since he never moves, his day is always the exact same. That part gets annoying.

-Computers. This game improved on the first generation by allowing you to name the "boxes" within the computer wherein your extra Pokemon are stored. To help me best find the ones I need, I name them after the elemental type of the Pokemon inside. However, the game forces you to save between switching boxes. I understand that it was probably necessary to avoid glitches, but the save dialog takes about 15 seconds to get through, which makes it very difficult to shuffle the Pokemon around (You can only carry six on your person, and extra ones caught in the wild go directly to whatever box happens to be open). I like to stay organized, but it can be very time-consuming.


That's about all I've got for now. Now that I write about games as I play them, I tend to finish them, so I'll probably get farther in this than ever before. It'll be interesting to be switching between this and The Witcher. I hope to get some good dialog going on this, too, as I'm sure a good bunch of you have played some of these games.

Another oddity in the game: After you get your team healed, the nurse says she hopes to see you soon. She must delight in the pain of these creatures.

I seem to remember a story or show or something where a character was talking to Death (but not dead or dying) and just as he disappears he says, "See you soon."

I've been cranking along in this game pretty quickly (for me anyway). We have a friend who's been coming over to our apartment quite often to play Metal Gear Solid 4 on my roommate's PS3. While he's playing, I usually hang out and play my own game at the same time. He yells out things like, "What the heck, where'd he come from?" and I yell out things like, "It's super effective!" It's good times.

Anyway, I arrived at Ecruteak City tonight, where I will obtain my fourth gym badge. I've caught around 30 Pokemon, and I have a few that I keep with me pretty much all the time. I've actually found myself relying on the same ones I have in past playthroughs. I'm trying to play with some that I've never really tried before, but it can be hard when there are only so many of each type available early on. I generally try to avoid duplicate types in my 6-member team so I can be ready for anything. For each gym encounter, though, I've been intentional in training up a few Pokemon with specific type advantages.

I'm still having a lot of fun with it, even though it is clearly made for younger folks than myself. But I find myself wondering about the gambling aspect of a game made for kids. Apart from the exchange of money that happens after a battle (I think it might be cool to actually bet on the matches rather than end up with a set sum of money based on the trainer type), there's also a casino with cards games and slot machines. At least those things aren't easy to win. If they were, we might have a bunch of Pokemon fans ending up broke on their 18th birthday trips to Vegas.

Today's absurdity is related to the gambling. Why do members of Team Rocket hand over money when you beat them? Why do they follow the rules of a Pokemon battle at all? They're supposed to be a crime syndicate. There's little wonder why they can be taken down by a 6th-grader.

I've made some progress, although my progress is still greatly dependent on whether or not my buddy is over playing MGS4. I grabbed my 5th gym badge tonight, which allows me to use Fly, so now I can get around much faster.

The latest bit of training my team has been pretty tough. The elemental types that had an advantage against the latest gym did not have an advantage against the trainers between, which means training goes pretty slow. At least a lot of the wild Pokemon in the area are of high enough levels to provide a good bit of XP.

Three more badges to go in this region...

I have seven badges, but haven't played in several weeks. I think I may have just got a little burned out on the game. One of these days, I'll get to the next town.