INTRODUCTION I use to love Pokemon and collect the cards. I don’t collect the cards anymore but I will always love the Pokemon Gameboy games. Pokemon Ruby is probably the best RPG game for the Gameboy I have ever seen or played in my opinion. The graphics in Pokemon Ruby are excellent especially compared to the original Pokemon games (not including Pokemon Sapphire). There are also a bunch of new things in Pokemon Ruby that make it worth going out and buying this game even if you have or have not played any of the original games. Now lets talk about the game itself………. THE GAME The game according
to Nintendo is 128 MB and was released Mar
17, 2003. There are
tons of new Pokemon in the game and some of the old ones are also
still there! You start out as a boy or girl who has recently moved to Littleroot Town. You then go to find Professor Birch. He for some reason is not in his lab so you go to look for him. You find him being attacked by wild Pokemon. You borrow one of Professor Birch’s Pokemon, which you can choose from Mudkip, Torchic, or Treecko. You easily defeat the wild Pokemon. Professor Birch gives you the Pokemon you chose as thanks for saving him. Your Journey as a Pokemon trainer Begins! Now that you know a little about the game lets talk about some of the things I liked and the things I was a little disappointed in……… SOME THINGS I LIKED The graphics were one of the first things that got my attention. Things were very detailed and things like flowers would move in the wind. In some areas it will be raining or there would be smog everywhere. There is even a place where there is a sand storm. There are lots of other neat graphics too. Basically what I'm saying is things are very realistic. You can talk to people and during certain events or times they will say different things. It’s like you’re in a virtual world! The sound is much, much, much better than the original games (not talking about Pokemon Sapphire). In the old games the sound was like BEEP….BEEP BEEP…..BEEP. Now in Pokemon Ruby the sound actually sounds good and is pleasant to listen too. It doesn’t sound like an old midi file. The sounds of the pokemon’s attacks sound much better too. One cool thing is the Pokemon Contests. This is a whole new way to “battle”, you could say, your Pokemon. First of all they (the computer judges) judge your Pokemon in the category that you chose (cool, beauty, cute, smart, and tough). You can raise these aspects of your Pokemon by making and then feeding your Pokemon PokeBLOCKs. The second part of the competition is you have to impress the judges by doing certain Pokemon moves. Certain moves will do certain things. For example some moves will impress the judges and will give you more points or some will intimidate the other Pokemon and maybe then one of the other Pokemon won’t get to go the next turn. These are just a couple of examples. Another cool thing is having your own Secret Base. Once you get a little into the game you will be told how to have a secret base. In your secret base that can be in some trees, caves, or other places, then you can put decorations and furniture in the base. The only bad thing about this is that you can only put so many items in your secret base before you get a message that says you can’t have any more items in your base. Some people may never run into this problem but if you try to put a bunch of Pokemon dolls in your base plus furniture you will run into this problem. Yet another cool thing is 2 on 2 battles. In 2 on 2 battles you battle 2 of your Pokemon against 2 other peoples Pokemon. This is a nice addition to the game and a major change that was not in any of the previous Pokemon games (not including Pokemon Sapphire). You should know 2 on 2 battles are a little different if you play against a friend via a link cable. Read on for the details… MULTIPLAYER CAPABILITIES—You can test your Pokemon’s battling skill against all your friends if one or 3 of your friends has a Gameboy Advance, either Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire, and one person has a link cable. In a normal battle you just hook your Gameboy up to your friend’s Gameboy and you can have a Pokemon battle. Each of you gets to have up to 6 Pokemon to battle with. The new thing in Pokemon Ruby is 2 on 2 battles. In 2 on 2 battles you can have two teams of 2. You hook up 4 Gameboy Advances together via a link cable (everyone has to have Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire). Everyone can have 3 Pokemon. You battle with one of your friends as a team to defeat 2 of your other friends. Pretty cool huh:)? Another thing you can do is trade Pokemon with other people who have Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire. A neat addition to this is that you can also trade items! If you have your Pokemon hold an item and your friend’s Pokemon hold an item then you trade Pokemon you then have traded the items. Also if you want you Pokemon back just take the item from the Pokemon and trade each other’s Pokemon back. Another really cool thing you can do by hooking up 2 Gameboys together is mix records. When you do this your friends secret base will appear in your game, your secret base will appear in their game, information about your friends Pokemon battle will be on your TV (in the game of course), and information about your Pokemon battles will appear on your friend’s TV. One final thing you can do by hooking up 2 Gameboys is make PokeBLOCKs. I discussed PokeBLOCKs earlier in this article. Another thing I liked about Pokemon Ruby was Berries. You can find berries growing all over the Pokemon world. Some berries will restore HP (hit points) or heal your Pokemon of certain things like confusion. There are lots of other things berries are good for too. You will have to replant some of the berries to get more of them because if you don’t, once you pick all the berries in the Pokemon game you will have no more. So you have to plant some of your berries in soft soil then water them. In a day or so you will have Berry plants that you can pick berries off of. It’s like having your own virtual garden! Now lets talk about the things I was a little disappointed in. SOME DISAPPOINTMENTS One of the major disappointments is that not all the original Pokemon are in the games. People who are new to the game probably won’t miss anything but for everyone who has played the older Pokemon games you may be a little disappointed. All the popular old Pokemon are still in there like good old Pikachu so it’s not that bad and also there are a ton more new Pokemon to make up for it! Another disappointment is that you can’t link up with the older Pokemon games (this doesn’t include Pokemon Sapphire), like Pokemon Yellow or Silver, to battle or trade Pokemon. The final disappointment is that things don’t happen in real time. In Pokemon Silver and gold it would be dark when you played at night or light when you played in the middle of the day….you get the point. Also certain events only happened during certain times. Now I don’t totally miss this because it sometimes got kind of annoying. Like I wanted to take a boat to the other Pokemon World but it wasn’t the right day. I ended up changing the time and date a lot. Oh, for those of you who have Pokemon Silver or Gold you are probably thinking,” You can’t change the time. What is he saying.” Well you can! If you hold the A button and press start or something like that you will get a screen asking you to enter in a code. You enter in the code and you can change the date and time. I don’t remember how to do this and I have no idea how to figure out the code. It’s a Math Problem I think. Search for it in Google and you will find it. They have online code generators too. For some reason Nintendo didn’t want people changing the time. Ok now back to Pokemon Ruby…… SOME FINAL THINGS I say this is a great game and for anyone who likes RPG (Role Playing Games) games or even if you don’t I say get this game. This was one of the first games I got for my Gameboy Advance and is still one of my favorites. This game will keep you entertained for hours. Where it says how many hours I have been playing it says 29 hours, 45 minutes and I haven’t even finished the game but I’m close to finishing it. It’s a great time waster, LOL:). I hope my article helps a lot of people in making a decision in buying Pokemon Ruby. |
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