Nintendo and Monolith Soft have been good buddies over the last few years this year, the Switch will see Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the third game in the franchise to land on the hybrid console in 5 years, and the series has seen considerable recognition in Super Smash Bros. While not technically a Virtual Console offering, Xenoblade Chronicles X is being left behind by its Switch brothers and Nintendo alike. The 3DS includes Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, and even Super Nintendo games, while the Wii U brought Game Boy Advance, Wii, and even DS games to your home theatre system. Meanwhile, the digital offerings for both retired systems offer so much more than the standard fare you’ll find in things like the NES Classic. Nintendo Switch Online’s library of classic games is included with the service, but have universally been ridiculed for incomplete and disappointing lineups, or even substandard emulation. However, it’s no less disappointing for retro game fans, collectors, and preservationists to see the rug pulled out on two incredibly robust e-storefronts and their Virtual Consoles. The writing has been on the wall for this move for some time, since both systems have been retired in favour of the juggernaut that is the Switch, and Sony tried to pull a similar move last year with the PS3, PSP, and Vita. Here are five gems you may want to grab digitally while you still can. It’s one of the most flexible and interesting role-playing games ever made, and the best testament to the quality of these original versions is how little the formula, or even presentation, has changed in the last 20 years.The robust Virtual Consoles found on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U are about to be closed off after nearly a decade of faithful service to the retro gaming community. This means you have to be very careful about what pokémon you field, and creating specialised pokémon for specific situations quickly becomes an obsession.Īll this, we should remind you, is in a game that most people that haven’t played it probably assume was made for undemanding six-year-olds. On top of this there are also many other move types that do things like poison or stun an opponent. grass pokémon are vulnerable to fire attacks). New moves are earned by levelling up, and many of the pokémon can evolve into one or two new forms at certain points.Įach pokémon you capture and train has a type (anything from grass to ghost) and that means they’re vulnerable to different moves which have opposing types (i.e. (That sounds a little macabre on paper but none of them ever die, they just ‘faint’.) This is achieved by a deceptively complex turn-based battle where each pokémon has access to up to four moves. But first you have to get them weak enough so they don’t resist, by making one of your existing pokémon battle them. You do this by capturing each of the critters in a pokéball. Hold the ‘L’ and ‘R‘ shoulder buttons and press ‘Y’ and it’ll even switch to the original black and green).
(As a special feature on the 3DS keep the ‘Start’ button held down as you load the game and you’ll get a display that mimics the original resolution and look of the Game Boy. It was also designed to work with the Game Boy Color console, so had an increased colour palette instead of the stark black and white of the original Game Boy. It has a slightly different story, that incorporates elements from the cartoon – including Jessie and James from Team Rocket. Pokémon Yellow is essentially a director’s cut, that at the time was released a couple of years later and includes some minor enhancements and changes. You’re not supposed to buy both, but instead the differences are intended to encourage trading between players – which we’ll get into later. For those that don’t know, the mainline Pokémon games are always released in pairs, which are more or less identical except for some minor story details and a few pokémon that are exclusive to each. Although we’ve also had a quick play around with Pokémon Yellow as well.
Since Pokémon Blue is the version I played back in the day (as an American import, in what must’ve been 1998) that’s the one I’ve gone back to here.