Game Review: Pokémon Red Version

Pokémon is a series of role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo. Pokémon is the second best-selling video game franchise with more than 300 million Pokémon games having been sold worldwide as of November 2017 (Schmidt). The games are often released in pairs, each with slight variations. The introduction to the world of Pokémon and the first installment of the series was the pair, Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version; first released in Japan in 1996 and later in 1998 in the United States. In this review, I will discuss the possibility of Pokémon Red Version (the superior of the pair) as an artgame.

Pokemon Red Version is a role-playing game in which the player controls a protagonist from an overhead perspective and navigates him throughout the fictional region of Kanto. The goal of the game is to become the champion of the Indigo League. To do this, the player must defeat the eight Gym Leaders as well as the top four Pokémon trainers in the land. In addition to this, the player must complex their Pokédex by capturing the game’s 150 Pokémon. You begin in Pallet Town. It is your tenth birthday and you leave everything behind, hoping to become the champion of the Kanto region. Bonding with your Pokémon along the way and meeting both friends and foes, you are now on your question to becoming a Pokémon master.

The game is played on the Game Boy, an 8-bit handheld game console. Its gameplay consists of a third-person view with three basic screens: the overworld (navigation of the protagonist), the side view battle screen, and the menu interface. Players can use their Pokémon to battle with other Pokémon, in which the screen switches to a battle screen displaying engaged Pokémon. Players can also catch wild Pokémon by throwing Poké Balls at them. The game also allows players to trade their Pokémon via a Game Link Cable. This must be done in order to complete the Pokédex as certain Pokémon will only evolve once traded. The music, composed by Junichi Masuda at his home computer and converted to the Game Boy with a program he had written (Hanson), is incredible (it gets an A+ from me). One can tell that is was composed with great precision and thought. There is not one bad track and each song can get stuck in your head.

When thinking about Pokémon Red Version, it never occurred to me that there could be some meaning behind the game. To me, it seemed like it would be what Henry Jenkins describes as a game with an enacting story - “stories which respond to alternative aesthetic principles, privileging spatial organization over plot development” (Jenkins, 7). As such, it seemed strange to me that such a game might be an artgame. John Sharp describes artgames as “carefully designed to provide players with a certain kind of experience as they pursue their goals...challenge is often found in their unconventional themes and the mechanics used to explore them” (Sharp, 51). Although Pokémon Red Version doesn’t seem to be about much more than training, battling, and catching Pokémon, upon closer examination the possibility of a designed experience can be found.

The ultimate challenge of the game sees the protagonist facing high-level Pokémon. While fighting to achieve your goal, you realize the reason you are here; you remember all the ups and downs of your journey; most importantly, you remember your Pokémon - your friends who will fight tooth and nail not for themselves but for you. Just as you are about to defeat your final opponent, your Pokémon looks back at you and smiles. Upon your opponent’s defeat, you are taken to the Hall of Fame and registered in the historic books. The credits roll and sweet end music plays as your dream is now fully accomplished and your adventure comes to a close. The key moment here is the player recalling his journey up to the point of the final battle. The Pokémon games are notorious for allowing the player to only make tiny, incremental improvements. The game is full of obstacles to ensure that the path to victory is a long one. This makes victory even sweeter as it proves that you have got what it takes to become Pokémon League Champion. However, although you are league champion, the game still isn’t over. You may have captured the 150 Pokémon in the game but there are several hundred left to find. The game becomes a reminder that no matter how hard you work in life or how much you accomplish, you are never going to stop improving. There are an infinite number of ways for one to better oneself and the game “tells” its players to never settle as there is always a new quest to complete. John Sharp describes the play of an art game as intended “to have some social, intellectual, moral, or humanistic impact on the player” (Sharp, 54). Pokémon Red Version does just this - by reminding players, just as it did me, that they can’t give up just yet.

Overall, Pokémon Red Version is an amazing game that continues to play well two decades after its initial release. It created everything we love about the Pokémon games and has kept the franchise going for 21 years. While some may say that it is unplayable and outdated, it is an experience that every Pokémon fan should have the chance to take a part in.

Works Cited

Schmidt, Alex. Pokemon games sold over 300 million games worldwide. WholesGame. November 24, 2017

Hanson, Ben. Pokémon's Music Master: The Man Behind The Catchiest Songs. Game Informer. May 13, 2014

Jenkins, Henry. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. 21 Sept. 2005, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f82f/061e7a44530d1dee281b96d9b1640485aa74.pdf

Sharp, John. Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art. MIT Press. March 6, 2015