Where's the Pokemon in this Pokemon? The first thing I should probably make clear about this game is that it is
not an official game. It's an original bootleg, made to look like Pokemon, but not really. It wasn't made by Nintendo and never was supported by them. It's kind of like a hack, but an original game. (Don't quote me on that... This may be a hack of an actual game, though not really done well.)
This game is called
Pokemon 4-in-1, a bootleg game that contains 4 games in all. There is no year marked on it so I'm not sure if it was made before or after Pokemon first came out. Looking at the quality of the images and the Pokemon involved, it looks like it came out some time after gen II, so I'm not sure why the maker decided to put it on the NES. But who knows, there are some good games out there for the NES that people play today, so maybe that's what they though.
So with that said, I still think games need to be good quality, bootleg or not. As for this game, there isn't much hope riding for it. The whole cartridge comes with a total of 4 fairly empty and shallow games. And only one of them is even remotely Pokemon related. Like many other "bootleg" Pokemon games, this one doesn't seem to care what its customers think, so long as they're tricked into a profit. But who knows? Could there be some sort of reward in these games anyways?
Graphics: 5
For the NES, the graphics are actually quite good, but considering that this game was made in the 2000's, it isn't surprising. Thus, it'd be more reasonable to compare the graphics to games of the time period, including Pokemon Gold and Silver. If we do that, then they don't seem as impressive.
All except for maybe one or two of the graphics seem original, though not wholly Pokemon. The menu screen contains a picture of Pikachu which is obviously taken from an official source. In the minigame "Picadance" (see below for my descriptions of the games), there is another picture taken from Pokemon Yellow. Other than that, it seems that the maker took the time to at least draw the graphics. They're not the best looking ever, though, and you can tell pretty easily that it's not close to official. But I do give some credit for trying at least.
One thing that I do have to question are the random little characters that pop up that aren't even close to Pokemon. In the "Pacman" game, you would think that the ghosts would be something like Ghastly or Misdreavus, but they're random blobs that look like a cross between Pacman's ghosts and the eggplants from Ice Climbers. Except these things have arms and legs. And then menu screen has a weird floating green thing too. In the game "Picaclick", the objects are random things, too. The only game with some sort of Pokemon connection is "Picaslot", which I will have to commend somewhat. But really, things like this are actually normal for a bootleg game.
Sound: 5
First, I'd like to get sound effects out of the way as they're the least important. Mainly because there are only two or three actual sound effects in the game: this high pitched beep that means confirm or something similar, and the few various sounds in Pacman.
So secondly, there's the music. The tracks in this game are actually different for each game, which is a plus. Looking at the graphics, I certainly wouldn't have guessed that. It's made on the NES, so it has the NES sounds, so the music isn't anything revolutionary. After a while, the music does start getting annoying though, so it's best not to play this game for extended amounts of time.
The highlight of this game in terms of music would be in the Picadance game. The reason being is that, being a dance game, it should have some catchy music to go with it. However, this becomes both a positive and a negative. The music in the game is catchy for a bit, but after about 30 seconds, you find out that it's just looping the same segment over and over again. So rather than being a full music track, it's just a small clip that keeps playing until the game ends or you fail on purpose just to make it stop. It was disappoint in that I was looking for a rhythm game to play and not just clips of music.
Story: N/A
From some of the game's comments, I could see that people were coming in expecting to play 4 full on Pokemon games. If that were the case, then there would be a story. But since it's not, there really is no point to playing these. Not in terms of story, at least. Unless you want to say something like Pikachu got sucked into this horrible alternate universe and you must play mini-games to free it?
Gameplay: 3
I'm merging both addictiveness and depth into one category, gameplay. But in this case, they're both the same low score anyways. As I've mentioned above, there are 4 games total in the complete package. I'll go through each one by one.
In "Picaclick" (some foreigner must have made this, since all the "Pika's" are spelled with a c instead of a k), you click on groups of similar objects to clear them and get points depending on how many you clear. This game is very similar to Collapse. But there's only one level and only so many moves you can make until the game gets boring. You might enjoy it if you like these puzzle games. I'm a fan of them too, but even this lacked way too much depth to capture my interest for long. I might have enjoyed it more if there was more that was Pokemon related in it, like using types instead of some random objects like the Opera logo and some orange hourglass thing. That Pikachu in the corner is cute though... But there's something off about it... *shudder*
Pikachu's hands... don't do that... It looks like a person now?
The next game is "Pacman". This game doesn't even have the word Pica in it this time. It's exactly what it sounds like, a rip-off of Pacman, except worse. Like Pacman, you go through the stages trying to pick up every piece of yellow dot that you can. Then you move on to the next level... and do it again. That's it. There isn't even any stage changes like the original Pacman game. The game moves much slower than the actual game of Pacman, so instead of some fast-paced strategy game, it just become a slow, monotonous one. When you collect a pellet, a beep plays, but because there are so many of them, you can't hear the music behind it. So trying to jump back and forth between the game music pausing and going and everywhere just gives you a headache. The player you control is a Pikachu head that looks more like a pumpkin with elf ears and headphones. The ghosts, like I described above, aren't even Pokemon related. The "fruit" that you collect isn't Pokemon related either. It looks more like a... I don't even know what it looks like. This is an example of how you can take a good game idea and turn it into a terrible pile of bleh on the ground.
At first glance, this isn't Pokemon... Or is it?
That brings us to "Picaslot". Out of all 4, this game has to be the most boring out of all of them. The game reminds me of the Goldenrod City Game Corner, but don't let that motivate you. The only similarities is that they both feature slots of Pokemon pictures. Other than that, there is no difference, especially in terms of fun. In this game, you start out with 1,000 credits, and it costs 5 to spin. You can't adjust bet or anything; you just get a down-the-line bet for 5 credits. Now, it still wouldn't be so bad like that, but stopping the reels is such a pain. You simply press A, but it takes about 10 seconds for each one to stop completely, so you're sitting there for 10 seconds watching this thing slow down and wondering what you're doing with your life. The pokemon drawn on the reels are probably the most poorly drawn in the game, which is a shame because I could've used something nice to look at instead of stopping reels. It's also disappointing that the credits you collect can't really be used for anything else except for amassing them for no apparent reason. In the end, it really just feels like you're chasing nothing (though that can be said for every game in the pack).
The sheer boredom of this game cannot be conveyed with images.
Last but definitely not the least, we get to "Picadance." This game is actually my favorite out of the bunch. It's a spin-off of Dance Dance Revolution but for the NES. The reason why I believe that this game deserves the most recognition is because it's actually Pokemon-themed this time around. It's like the creator suddenly decided to do something about it for once. In this game, there are three tracks, but only one difficulty. The "notes" are spinning Pokemon that you try to capture with Pokeballs. You just tap the buttons into beat with the music and catch the Pokemon, the same way you would clear the arrows on DDR or the notes on Guitar Hero. You have a bar on the top that represents your health, and when it's all gone, then it's game over. I really like the different take on the game and how creative the idea is. But the whole game had the potential to go farther in general. Firstly, as I said above, the songs are really just repetitive bits of music that are tiring to play to after just a minute. Also, the controls are a bit hard to get used to, and it takes a couple tries to figure out that A and B control the right side while left and down on the D-Pad control the left side. But those controls can easily be changed in the emulator's menu. There's not enough content to make it a good game, but there is a good amount of potential in it. If I were to grade each of these mini-games separately, then this one would surely receive the highest score.
The Pikachu on the bottom doesn't actually dance, despite the name of the game.
Difficulty: 4
The wonderful, or maybe the cursed, thing about this game is that it's so simple that even 5 year olds would get a hang of the game. The one that's probably the most frustrating would be Picadance because of weird controls, followed by Pacman if you don't know how that game works. But other than that, Picaslot is so easy that it's nearly impossible to fail on that, and Picaclick is all about clicking things until you get something good. You don't need strategy in that game if you don't want it, since you can't really "beat" it anyways.
Final Score: 3.9
For a bootleg, the game is good, but for a game, it's just terrible. The limited things that you can do with the game, combined with the lack of care that was used when making the games, just come together to something incomplete and unsatisfying. I would much rather play the actual games than a bootleg anyways. If you really want to play it though, I would suggest staying with the last one I mentioned, and that's about all the fun you'll get out of it.
Overall:
+ Picadance is the start of a good idea that I'd like to see.
- No depth anywhere. 5 minutes with the game and you're bored already.
- The games are unoriginal. None of them are anything we haven't seen yet.
- It's a Pokemon game, so why not make it more Pokemon themed?
Graphics
5 Sound
5 Addictive
3 Depth
3 Difficulty
4
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