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Perfect Pokemon
02.15.03 / 01:14AM / Joe
 Although I'm sweating with anticipation over Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire, I must confess the slightest disappointment over the initial batch of screenshots. The battle scenes still look empty, and the world still looks like Game Boy Color. I guess I was expecting something a little more SNES-looking. But I suppose Pokemon really doesn't require an amazing graphical look, since the attraction is in the depth of the game itself.
Which got me thinking, what would the Perfect Pokemon game be like? Well, it'd have to mimic the world as presented in the cartoon, comics, movies and previous games as closely as possible: a journey across several lands to capture and train pokemon. Here's my feature list, as imagined for the Nintendo GameCube.
- When you begin, you select the continent you want to start in, and your starting pokemon is chosen accordingly (Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander for Kanto; Chikorita, Totodile, Cyndaquil for Johto). Your character can be graphically customized and named.
- Poke Balls are cheap (cheaper than the previous Game Boy games, anyway), so you have lots of opportunities to catch wild pokemon. You can carry more than 6 captured pokemon at a time (perhaps 12-15, without having to switch them around with an old Bill's PC), but you can't take them all into a battle. Before any battle begins, you have to select 3-6 pokemon, based on that battle's requirements.
- Battles will be a fully animated fight, where the pokemon can actually touch each other! Your interface for attack selection and options is a pokedex HUD. Both your character and your opponent will be visible at the edge of the battle, as well as any spectators and local atmosphere. If available, you can remove the onscreen HUD and use your GBA to choose attacks and items.
- Your GBA can be your complete pokegear/pokedex... letting you browse your items, get info on a new species, and other functions. And it plays sound samples like the cartoon's Dexter.
- Offline multiplayer. Up to 4 people can play in the same game, exploring together and fighting each other for practice. If the players decide to split up, the game goes to splitscreen. Status for all 4 players is saved simultaneously, so if P3 decides never to play again, his character stagnates at the last save point. (Like when Brock left the show briefly.)
- Each city with have an online terminal for trading, chatting and appointment-only battling via an internet connection. Although the bulk of the game is offline, you can use the terminals to enter Pokemon chat rooms and arrange to "meet" real-world players at the nearby Gym for battling or trading.
- Once you make it through your continent's eight gyms and get all the badges, you can go online for the championships. Entering Victory Road requires an internet connection, and here the game becomes like a small MMORPG. The grounds are swimming with trainers and pokemon, for trading, chatting and practicing. You can compete in various tournaments of different levels and rules, all against real players. Every week, the game holds a championship tournament, with an 8-player ladder. Obviously a million of these will be going on at the same time, but the only one you hear about is the one you enter. The winner here wins the right to go back into the single player game to tackle the Elite Four and the Grand Master. Tourney losers have to try again next week.
- Since not everybody will have an internet connection, the offline portion will have to be beefy and vibrant. Lots of ongoing and randomly-generated side quests, and a storyline that culminates with the eighth gym badge. Once you finish the 8 Gyms of your home continent, you can travel to the other continent to go after those 8 Gyms.
- Everything is in real-time. Year-round real-time. Weather effects. Appointments. Holidays. Parades. Traffic. Swarming seasons. Certain pokemon can only be found under certain conditions.
- Your character is saved to your memory card, and you can take him to a pal's house and enter his game just like any multiplayer character.
- Connecting the Game Boy Advance allows you to travel to a bonus section of the map: an additional mini-continent (like an expanded Whirl Islands or Cinnabar Islands) where you can train and explore a la Animal Crossing's Animal Island. However, if your character goes to the GBA, you won't be able to play on the GameCube until he comes back. Nintendo needs to find a way to stop the duplication cheat so people don't double their characters, items and pokemon.
- If you save in the wilderness, your character automatically sets up a little camp. In a city, you have to save inside a Pokemon Center or a friendly rest house.
- Full voice samples and cartoon sounds for the pokemon. No more of those terrible electronic screech sounds.
- You have the option to carry all your pokemon inside their Poke Balls, or have one or two walk alongside you (subject to restrictions. You won't be able to get a Charizard to follow you inside a small building, and a Magikarp won't be able to walk after you on land.)
- A predetermined number of pokemon species will be completely unavailable to you, until you go online for the first time. Then the game will randomly include a select few of the missing monsters, and make them appear whenever you are in a session that was online at one point. You will not be able to find those pokemon unless you are online, although you can always get them through trading with other players.
- Victory Road will also present MMORPG "world events," like the appearance of the Legendary Birds or whatever.
As for the graphical style, I would present it in the Ocarina of Time format: low floating camera behind your character in the wilderness sections, but fixed camera angles for in-town locations. Battles offer more dramatic angles and effects... and replay options for stadium fights. 3D figures modeled after the Ken Suginori style.
Nintendo seems simply afraid to create a Pokemon game with RPG depth for their TV consoles. The Stadium games were boring. Puzzle League was great, for a Tetris clone. Snap was the only N64 Pokemon game that really stood out as unique and worthwhile (not including the all-encompassing Smash Bros series.) For a while, there was going to be a Mario Party-type game spotlighting the world of Pokemon, but it was cancelled. With the Gamecube's slow online start, a deep and detailed implementation of the GB Pokemon RPG model would be a Killer App for Cube owners. |
