Level Up: Pokemon Silver

I think it’s now time to take another look at the Pokemon series by moving to the 2^nd generation. I got to experience it through Pokemon Silver for the Game Boy Color.

Imagine this: you’re a 10 year old kid playing Pokemon, trying to be a master by finding every one there is. You know the Poke Rap by heart, so it’s just a matter of time. Then one day you learn of a Pokemon you’ve never heard of before. Immediately, you need to find out what this means. Now, though we could look stuff up online, back then it wasn’t as fluid with information like now. We would have to wait a bit, but eventually the news came out: a Pokemon game was coming with new Pokemon.

This was a dream come true. I don’t know anyone at that time that didn’t make their own “Fakemon” (I still have sketches of some of mine). Some of the first ones we knew about included Togepie (who was in the anime), Snubble and Marill (or as we knew him, “Pika-Blue”). As the game came closer to release date, we frantically searched for any hint of what we could look forward to.

Sorry if this little Nostalgia rant bored you, but it really is the basis for my feelings on this game.

Onto what has changed between games. I’ll start with my big complaint from the last time: the graphics. There is a HUGE improvement, and I don’t just mean that there’s now color: the sprites have been redone, so the Pokemon look more like they should.  A lot of the unbalanced moves were also fixed and enemy Pokemon now have the same move limit as you. However, the PC boxes still suck.

So what’s been added? Well, I think you already got the hint that there are new Pokemon, about 100 more. But with these new Pokemon came two new “types”: dark and steel. Considering the combinations and strategies you could come up with before, just adding 2 added a lot. This is also the only time types have been added so far.

Of the new Pokemon, special attention was also given to “Baby Pokemon”. These are Pokemon that weren’t found in the wild and are “pre-evolution” of ones that could be. You would do this by using the new breeding system: drop two Pokemon at the daycare and if they’re compatible, you should get an egg with one of their most basic forms. Carry that egg around for a while to hatch it.

Another drastic change is the addition of time. A clock was put in the game meaning that certain events would only happen at certain times. An innovative change… but I don’t really like it, basically because setting an alarm to catch “morning” Pokemon annoyed me. Maybe I would have liked it if there was just day and night, (can you tell I’m not a morning person?).

Other new things involved new ways to evolve Pokemon, a Pokemon’s ability to hold items, a phone feature, the apricorns that you could get made into special Pokeballs and other minute things like the ability to see your experience meter and whether or not you caught a Pokemon while you battle. All just a bunch of things to really iron out and add a bit to the Pokemon gaming system.

So that’s basically Pokemon Silver (and gold), which is basically an improvement on Pokemon Blue and Red. However, if we are to be perfectly honest, I don’t like the 2^nd Gen that much. Now, before you guys go for that unsubscribe button, let me explain: while I think it did advance the series a bit, it comes off as more of an “add-on” to the original generation in my eyes. It was like playing “Pokemon Blue and a half” to me. Now, don’t think that I’m going to say all Pokemon games after blue are just building on it and suffer for that (if that was the case, I would HATE the whole platforming genre except for Super Mario Brother). No, my problem is that it is TOO similar: it should have taken a giant leap forward, instead of a small hop. I felt like it was a new version of the same game. A very much improved version of a great game, but I had already played it. I give Pokemon Silver for the Game Boy Color 8.5 levels out of 10.