Well, I was bound to review this game sooner or later. Pokémon Stadium 1, or should I say Pokémon Stadium 2? I bet you're wondering why I would say that, well back in Japan while this game was still getting worked on there was such a high demand for it that they released a version before the American release of this one Pocket Monsters Stadium. We never got this version here in America (aside from emulation that is), and it was pretty easy to see why. Pocket Monsters Stadium was really buggy and most of the Pokémon looked ridiculous. However, I digress this review is not going to be about Pocket Monsters Stadium, but instead its American counter-part Pokémon Stadium.

When I was a child I never got this game, instead I got Pokémon Stadium 2 it was actually only recently had I acquired this game from a friend who really wasn't that into Pokémon (he also gave me his Pokémon Snap because mine disappeared). So this review shall be pretty thorough, I rated the game an 8.8 I would have given it a solid 10 if there weren't a few problems that I encountered. Don't get me wrong it was a wonderful game and I highly recommend it to all Pokémon fans, whether you are a battle everyone kind of trainer or a casual trainer. The problems that I have with the game a very slim, but here they are:

1. The announcer gets on my nerves! But that is more of a personal reason, some of you may enjoy the announcers company. It's just that he says the same things over and over, often times it doesn't even really make sense. For instance, say you deal a lot of damage to your opponents Pokémon, then the announcer chimes in with "that wasn't very effective" even though your opponents Pokémon is very low on HP because of that one hit.

2. Some of the type advantages and disadvantages do not comply with each other, it is not very often that I ran into this problem but I noticed that every once in a while if you have a Pokémon that has a type advantage over your opponents Pokémon the games disagrees with you. I thought this was odd, since I play strategically and type advantage is kind of important for that.

3. Rentals all having specifically one level, unlike your opponents Pokémon if you have rentals your levels are either 15, 50 or in very rare cases 100 (takes a while to use the level 100s, which makes sense). I know it is kind of a small detail, and if you are handy with rental Pokémon this is not really much of a problem but it just kind of gets to me. I mean why can't some of your party be a level or two higher like your opponents? This would be different however, if one had the gameboy pak for the Nintendo 64 and a copy of Red, Blue or Yellow where your party can be added to the game. Also if you nicknamed your Pokémon in your copy of R/B/Y they appear in green on the game screen.

Those are the only problems I had with the game, and again not really that big a deal. They don't affect that much of the game play. Now if you are not that into battling, or you just want to take a break from the battling system you can play tons of fun mini games that are offered. These are entertaining, and quite enjoyable. Since there are quite a few mini games I'm not going to review them. Now on to the more important part of the review, my actual analysis of the game.

I gave the graphics of this game a 9, because for Nintendo 64 graphics they really were not that bad. Maybe a little bolgy, but they were suppose to look realistic and 3Dish. The game was suppose to convey what these creatures would actually look like in our world and I think that Nintendo did a pretty good job. The sound I gave an 8, the music can be kind of enjoyable the only time I ever got even slightly tired of hearing it was when I put down my controller to take of something and you hear nothing else but the music. Other than that, the sounds the game makes are not bad at all.

The addictiveness of the game I gave a 9, because although I would very much rather play one of the handheld versions of Pokémon this game was still really fun and I can play it for hours if not days at a time. I hardly ever get bored of the game, and if I happen too I just do something else on it (like play a mini game or take on the Gym leaders/Elite Four). I did not rate the story, because well there is no story. You do not traverse the region of Kanto, or any region for that matter in search of wild Pokémon even though you do collect badges and battle trainers and the Elite Four not to mention your Rival. However, the game never once tells you that you have to do all of this so in a sense it is all opinional. You can spend your whole playing mini games or having free battles with your friends or even playing your handheld versions on the big screen (with the gameboy pak that is).

However, for depth I gave the game a 7, because even though there is no story mode or anything like that actually completing the game takes a really long time. To actually and totally complete it you have to beat all eight gym leaders, beat the elite four and your rival, beat all of the cups some more then once to gain all of the trophies and finally beat Mewtwo (who you then gain as a rental Pokémon). All in all, that is pretty time consuming. Which actually brings me to the difficulty, which I rated an 8 because at first it is not that hard once you start but after a few matches things become extremely difficult. There may even be times where you want to smash your controller, or throw the game.

Well that is all I think I have to say about Pokémon Stadium, I do really enjoy this game and play it a lot actually and I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Pokémon. It is fun and can be quite challenging at times. I hope you all, whomever reads this review, becomes interested in the game and enjoyed my opinion of the game. I also hope that if you do play the game that you really enjoy it like I do.

Nice review, it's always nice when users format their reviews nicely and use proper grammar.

How would you compare Pokemon Stadium to Pokemon Stadium 2?

Davideo7 : Thank you, it is very nice to hear that my work is actually good, especially from the owner of the site. How I would compare the two, well they were very similar to each other just mostly different Pokémon considering that Stadium 2 had generation 2 Pokémon in it. The mini-games were a lot different and there were a lot more of them in Stadium 2 than there was 1. The main difference I really noticed though, and I actually really enjoy because it brings out more to the game than just battling is the quiz game that was added. Now players can test their knowledge on trivial Pokémon questions. Overall I think Stadium 2 was just a little better than 1 only because of the quiz game and different Pokémon, that is also a personal opinion because Johto was one of my favorite regions.

Were you able to experience playing Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow on Pokemon Stadium?

Davideo7 : That I only got to experience a handful of times because I never had the gameboy pak, but what I do remember is that there is a feature and it was pretty much the fast forward feature that emulators have, but it made game play a whole lot faster for the 64. I also remember that if you put Yellow in then you could play a mini game of Pikachu surfing, but other than that I can't really remember much else if there even was anything else about it.