Collection essentials #160: Pokémon Yellow (Game Boy)

After the raging success of Pokémon Red and Blue, the developers saw fit to create a refined version of the original game. With the Pokémon cartoon being so wildly successful, they decided to incorporate some elements of it into the games to more resemble the cartoon. The protagonist of the show, Ash Ketchum, is known for having a Pikachu who always stays outside of its Poké Ball (small containers which magically hold any Pokémon, no matter how large it is). And so, most obviously and notably, a major change in Yellow is the fact that you always start with a Pikachu who follows you around rather than stay in a Poké Ball. And they even implemented voice samples from Pikachu’s real life voice actress to make it sound more authentic, and added special animations for when the player talks to their Pikachu. The antagonists Jesse and James from Team Rocket also appear in this game after debuting in the cartoon. 

By and large the basic adventure is the same as the Red and Blue versions and doesn’t actually follow the plot of the show. There are a lot of little tweaks and improvements in addition to incorporating elements from the show, too. Another obvious change is that the graphics of the Pokémon have all been completely redone and are generally much better. Many designs in Red and Blue look a little odd in retrospect as the developers still hadn’t entirely nailed down how they wanted some of the Pokémon to look yet. They all look much closer to what they would look like in every other form of media going forward. I’m not going to list every single other change, but other things include varying ways to catch certain Pokémon including making a few rare ones easier to find, some different Pokémon teams sported by gym leaders that one must battle, some glitches fixed, and with a few additions to the repertoire of moves for certain Pokémon. 

Fixing glitches is actually sort of a downside, as Pokémon Red and Blue had one of the most famous and useful video game glitches in history which let the user clone an item in their inventory very easily, and given that some items can only be obtained once per adventure, this was a big deal. Nevertheless, I think most would agree that Pokémon Yellow is a better overall game than Red and Blue.

Pokémon Yellow was the first main-series Pokémon game that I owned, and I was VERY hungry for it. If I remember right, it wasn’t the fall of 2000 that I finally got it along with my own system to play it on, and it had been well over a year that I was dying to have a copy of the game for myself. I already had a good amount of familiarity with it due to playing friend’s copies, such as my cousin PJ’s which is the one I probably played the most. I eventually completed the Pokédex, catching all 150 Pokémon. I still have my childhood copy of the game, though sadly my old save data was erased before I was able to back it up. (And the box, manual, etc. in the photo are not the ones my original cartridge came with)

Do I recommend playing Pokémon Yellow in modern times? Yup, I sure do. It’s not the very best Pokémon game, but it’s still a good time, and there’s a certain fun game on a certain late-’90s Nintendo console it can connect to that makes it even more worth it.