Pokemon Yellow

⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

A few days back a few friends and I decided to Nuzlocke the pokemon games, which, for those unfamiliar, is playing through the games with some specific rules to make them much more difficult and punishing (pokemon gone forever when they faint, can only catch one per area, etc). Man, I had so much fun doing this.

This is not your ordinary playthrough. I played on an emulator on my phone, and played it on 2x speed. I know I hated on Mario 64, and this game obviously does not hold up either. BUT this was totally different for me because I'm SUPER nostalgic for these games. I probably beat this game 30 times as a kid, and to this day knew every secret, every puzzle, and honestly knew which trainer had which mons. That's not to say I didn't have difficulty, because I almost gave up on a few occasions, and it took me 2 tries to beat it. But knowing so much about the game, and being a competitive pokemon player for a decade made this a super fun challenge. I love the feeling of just holding on and getting to that next pokemon centre.

This game does certainly have a lot of great qualities even today. The dialogue is charming, the music is top tier for the 8-bit era, and the map is really a genius interlocking maze. I'm glad I didn't have to actually figure it out, as getting the Saffron City guards fresh water is just muscle memory at this point, but it sure does make for a cool adventure.

So yeah, awesome time. Seeing Gary, Prof Oak, Giovanni and all the awesome old drawings of the original 151 just teleported me. If you want to revisit these games, the 2x speed makes it just perfect (though screws up the music) and the Nuzlocke was the perfect post-Elden Ring challenge, complete with gen 1 BS that can be totally unpredictable. My final team: Gyrados, Jolteon, Starmie, Lapras, Nidoking, Snorlax. Easy Breezy.