Collection essentials #532-4: Pokémon Ruby (GBA), Pokémon FireRed (GBA) & Pokémon Emerald (GBA)

Pokémon was far and away the franchise most closely associated with the Game Boy after taking the world by storm in 1998. The first “generation” of Pokémon games consisted of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue, followed later by Pokémon Yellow, which altogether sold dozens of millions of copies and teamed up with a cartoon, trading card game, and tons of merchandise to sweep the globe with “Pokémania” infecting the world’s children unlike anything ever seen before. The follow-up games, comprising the second “generation”, were Gold and Silver and later Crystal introduced 100 new species into the mix, and the games themselves saw a large number of highly noticeable improvements over the originals. Generation 2 was still incredibly popular, and while it may have sold a little less than the first generation, frankly there was nowhere to go but down. Though Crystal, which was an enhanced version of Gold and Silver, showed a notable decline by “only” six million copies, making it to date the poorest-selling mainline entry in the Pokémon series. However, the Game Boy Advance was a brand new system with more powerful hardware which provided a whole host of new possibilities. Nintendo and Game Freak would be sure to give us a third Pokémon “generation” to perhaps rekindle the fire. 

The first games in Generation 3 were Ruby and Sapphire, released in late 2002 in Japan and the rest of the world in 2003. These games feature a whole new adventure in the land of Hoenn, with over 130 new Pokémon to catch on top of some familiar species. The story is generally similar to in previous games, as you play as a young boy or girl (your choice) who sets out on an adventure to catch Pokémon and battle their way through eight gyms in a quest to become champion of the region’s Pokémon League. Along the way, they run into a team of antagonists causing mischief which must be thwarted. One thing neat about Ruby and Sapphire is that they feature different enemy teams who have different goals. Ruby features Team Magna, who seeks to use the legendary Groudon’s power to dry up the oceans to create more land, while Sapphire features Team Aqua attempting to do the opposite with the legendary Kyogre. This is a pretty neat difference, and to my surprise future generations of games chose not to feature an interesting difference like this and instead reverted back to simply having a different set of unavailable Pokémon which must be obtained by trading with friends.

At first glance, Ruby and Sapphire might seem like “more of the same” as they retain very similar gameplay basics and progression to the previous games. But to those who pay attention to the details, it’s apparent that a lot is different or new! Probably the most obvious and notable addition is “double battles”, which has competing trainers send out two Pokémon to battle instead of one, which can really change up the strategy of battling. All four Pokémon act on a given turn, so a lot has to be accounted for when making moves. In addition, many moves in the game function a little differently in double battles, and some brand new moves that Pokémon can learn are specifically made for these battles. For better or worse, the vast majority of battles in the game are still standard single battles.

There are significant changes to Pokémon themselves, and probably the most obvious is “abilities”. Now, every single Pokémon has some kind of ability which has an automatic effect in battle (and/or outside of battle in a few cases). The effects of abilities are very diverse and have a large impact on gameplay. Each species of Pokémon has either one or two specific abilities that they can possibly have, and for those with two, they will always be locked into whatever ability they have when they are caught. In addition to abilities, the way a Pokémon’s stats are calculated works differently too. I won’t be getting into the specifics of that, but I will say that it’s done in a way that promotes more diversity in performance among each individual Pokémon of the same species.

There’s also a new minigame introduced called “contests”, which I suppose could be considered a sort of “Pokémon pageant” where your Pokémon performs its moves for an audience of judges in order to get a favorable score. Moves used in battle have completely different effects in contests, and each Pokémon even has their own specific stats that only affect performance in contests, which can be improved by the player. So there’s a respectable chunk of extra gameplay here for those interested. Personally, though, I never bothered with them.

And as you’d expect, Generation 3 introduced a lot more of the things introduced in previous games. In addition to a lot of new species to catch, there are loads of new moves they can learn too, and more items a Pokémon can hold for use in battle. Competitive battling in Generation 3 is substantially different from the first two generations, as there are tons of new things to account for, leading to a wide variety of possible strategies to consider.

Now, when “Pokémania” was in full swing a little before and after the turn of the millennium, a lot of people speculated about if and when the fad would fade. Many expected and/or hoped that Pokémon would fall out of fashion as kids got a little older and moved on to other things, and that the franchise would fall into relative obscurity. When Generation 2 of Pokémon hit, the franchise may not have quite been the runaway freight train it had been before, but I’d say “Pokémania” was still pretty much intact at that point as fans eagerly awaited the sequel. So did the inescapable fad that was Pokémania finally fade? Well, sort of, but not fully. By the time Ruby and Sapphire hit store shelves, I think it’s safe to say that “Pokémania” was pretty much over at that point. Ruby and Sapphire only barely managed to crack half the sales numbers of the original Red and Blue, and also fell well short of Gold and Silver’s numbers. However, these “modest” sales numbers were still far more than enough to make Ruby and Sapphire the best-selling titles in the entire GBA library. In fact, they sold well over DOUBLE the amount of the best-selling non-Pokémon GBA title (Mario Kart). Pokémon was not quite the ubiquitous, in-your-face cultural phenomenon it had started out as, but it was solidified as one of Nintendo’s best-selling franchises for the long haul, clearly here to stay for decades down the road.

Now, as one of the kids who had originally gotten completely absorbed into Pokémania enthusiasm, I wasn’t quite as hyped to jump into Ruby and Sapphire when they came out. I never truly “got sick” of Pokémon and felt like I “outgrew” it like some kids probably did, but aside from other games also competing for my attention, there were a few things about Ruby and Sapphire that I wasn’t too keen on when I heard about them. I got to see a list of Pokémon appearing in the game in Nintendo Power magazine, and I was disappointed to see many of my old favorites were absent. There’d be no Charizard, Mewtwo or Gengar, for example. You also couldn’t trade up any of your Pokémon from the previous games, which is a feature I had loved before. And I didn’t immediately like the designs of the new Pokémon, thinking in particular that Luvdisc seemed really lame. There were other things missing from Ruby and Sapphire, such as the cool day/night cycle in Generation 2 and the little animations of opposing Pokémon from Crystal. There were also fewer gyms than Gold and Silver, back to the standard number of eight.

However, I did wind up getting a copy of Pokémon Ruby (the same one shown in the photo) at some point, I think perhaps in late 2003 or early 2004. I forget the occasion, but my parents told me I could get something on GBA while we were in some big department store, and I figured I’d go for it. Even then, I wasn’t totally enraptured, as I got a few gym badges, wasn’t sure what to do next, and then put the game down in favor of other things.

Then, Nintendo announced Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, full Generation 3-style remakes of the original Generation 1 titles. This addressed one of my points of contention with Ruby and Sapphire, as all of our old favorites would in fact be taking part in Generation 3 and you would simply need to make some trades to get them onto Ruby and Sapphire. I remember getting my hands on a rom of Japanese FireRed and trying it out on an emulator months before the U.S. release. I was pleased, although I didn’t actually get FireRed until 2007. I don’t have a ton to say about FireRed, which is part of why I’m lumping it in this post. This remake has some new content, but the main adventure is the same. It’s nice as a way to get older Pokémon into Gen 3, though as games themselves they aren’t the most impressive in the series.

In 2005, we would get Pokémon Emerald, which is a spruced-up third version to go with Ruby and Sapphire, much in the same way Yellow and Crystal were in their generations. Emerald incorporates both Team Magma and Team Aqua in its storyline which is a little bit different. There are many improvements which may seem small, but on the whole go a long way, such as more Pokémon being available, double battles being more frequent, and sprite animations making a return. But perhaps the coolest addition is the “Battle Frontier”, a special postgame place for challenging battles under a variety of different rules, similar to the Battle Tower from Crystal. Pokémon Emerald is considered by many to be one of the best Pokémon games ever made, rightfully so in my opinion.

While I wasn’t super into these games when they first came out, I wound up getting much more into them in the decade that followed. I don’t remember which years I actually beat Ruby and FireRed, but it was sometime in the 2000s. The following generation (stay tuned for a future post on that) rekindled my interest in these games, and so I kept going back to them every now and then. And then, in the early 2010s, I decided to go for an actual complete Pokédex. I had felt discouraged at the thought of doing so, largely because of a particularly difficult Pokémon to find called Feebas. But upon getting lucky and finding a Feebas in 2013 casually looking for one while watching the Red Sox’ playoff run that October, I realized that it was actually very doable and I wanted to take the plunge. And so, I did eventually catch ‘em all! Minus a couple real-life-event-exclusive Pokémon, that is…though I do have the means to get them now if I want to.

You might notice that I don’t have Sapphire or LeafGreen listed as essentials here. Believe it or not, I’ve never owned Sapphire in any form. This is partly because it’s possible to complete the Generation 3 Pokédex 100% without it. I do own a LeafGreen cartridge, which is required for catching the Slowpoke family, but I didn’t feel like that’s enough reason for me to include it in the post. 

As I finally gave these games the play time they deserve, I came to appreciate them a whole lot. They really are wonderfully-made Pokémon adventures, and Emerald in particular represents a prime example of a quality Pokémon game and shows a level of effort and care that we don’t really see with the series’ modern releases anymore. I would highly recommend them if you’re interested in Pokémon…though I have to point out that these games, despite being very common, now command very high prices on the secondary market due to absurdly high demand. So it’s up to you to figure out if and how you want to go about playing these games. 

As for me, a longtime fan of the series, these games are quintessential essentials, wonderful examples of classic Pokémon. They’re a critical hit!