•
Rating: When I was in fourth grade, I lived a happy life playing with Lego and had no worries, until one morning at school I discovered that everyone was collecting odd stickers featuring unlikely little monsters. I still didn't know it, but the large-scale Pokémon invasion to conquer the world had also reached Italy. I tried with all my might to resist—those monsters were really ugly—but in the end, after a week of isolation during which other kids wouldn’t talk to me because I didn’t want to have anything to do with Pikachu, I had to give in. First, I had that silly sticker album bought for me, and then I discovered there was also a video game, and much sooner than I thought, I found myself ensnared by it.
The goal of the game was to capture these Pokémon and train them to defeat other trainers. You find yourself embodying a young kid who decides to set off around the world after an old neighbor gives him one of these creatures (your choice between: a dinosaur with a bulb on its back, a red lizard with a flaming tail, but most notably a super cool turtle that shoots water jets) to beat all the gym leaders—those guys who spend all day waiting for your arrival and who you must defeat to get the badges that allow access to the prestigious Pokémon League, where the Elite Four, the most badass trainers of all, must be annihilated one after another without allowing your friendly pocket monsters to be healed at the Pokémon Centers (read as Pokémon emergency room). To do all this, you'll need to know and exploit the various weaknesses and resistances of the various elemental types into which the little creatures are divided and possibly evolve them (some Pokémon can transform into stronger but sometimes even uglier versions of themselves).
To achieve your goal, you'll wander through the marvelous Kanto region, traversing fields infested with creatures of all kinds, which, if you appreciate, you can catch with convenient Poké Balls, exploring caves stuffed with bothersome blue bats and rocks with arms, and teaching some Pokémon to swim, others to fly, and/or to cut down scraggly trees. In your way will be him, the old man's grandson, an irritating kid who does everything before you should and then boasts like a real braggart until you leave him in the dust. Additionally, you'll have to deal with Team Rocket, a criminal organization involved in trafficking and exploiting indigent little animals, as well as gambling, whose leader is infiltrated in the upper echelons of the regional federation of united trainers. You may wonder where to procure weapons to counter these unscrupulous individuals; well, you won’t need to assemble an arsenal, it'll be enough to defeat their pitiful Rattata and Zubat, and they will immediately surrender, without thinking of beating you and breaking all your bones as any good tough guy would do, though they will curse you and call for revenge with phrases like: "My fellow Rockets will take care of you, flea!"
Moreover, you will have a second task, given to you by the old man, which consists of capturing all known Pokémon and recording their data in the Pokédex, and to achieve this you must search every nook and cranny, and if you're skilled enough, you can even capture some "legendary" Pokémon (and here, if you think of bragging later, you're dead wrong, for none of those layabouts you’ll meet will ever recognize the amazing and mythical creatures you captured with much effort), but you'll also need to trade some Pokémon with friends using the practical cable*, in fact, not all those found in the Blue version of the game are found in the Red one and vice versa, while others evolve only if traded.
In essence, this is a brief description of the video game that was so successful at the end of the last millennium and ruined the childhood of many children, some of whom, I’m sorry to say, still pull their Game Boy out of the drawer today to unleash all the immense and terrible power of their Mewtwo.
*Item sold separately. Generally, there were two separate scenarios:
1) you were a spoiled kid and therefore your parents bought you the cable
2) you waited for a spoiled friend to buy the cable
Loading comments slowly
