60%Emulated

Pokémon Yellow has the joyful simplicity of other Gen 1 games, with improved sprites and color usage. Its visuals are such a treat from Red which I played last month, and it's more challenging than the other Pokémon games of this generation. Gym leaders and the Elite Four have some semblance of an AI working against you, and they're also plainly stronger, making it more difficult to steamroll through without grinding. For the new challenge, visuals, and novelty of Pikachu following you around, I want to say this is a better experience than Red and Blue, but it has its own unique drawbacks. Jessie and James being shoehorned in for anime fans is sometimes fun, for example, but feels shoehorned in for anime fans. But the biggest gameplay change is Pikachu.

Pikachu is a damage sponge in this game, and for the first half and throughout the Elite Four he was fainting nonstop. I didn't want to store him in the PC and use a different Pokémon, as it would feel antithetical to playing this in the first place, so part of the challenge of this game comes from handicapping yourself with a weaker team. It isn't the most enjoyable because of that, but it's fun that a game over a decade before Heartgold and Soulsilver had another character following you around.

That being said, colliding with Pikachu can be frustrating, especially in tight spaces like the Vermilion City Gym. It doesn't tarnish the entire experience, but for a game that requires precise movement to solve top-down puzzles, Pikachu's presence can be a nuisance in and out of battle.

80%Game Boy

One of the classics. Doesn't hold up as well today but still worth playing. Mixes elements of Red and Blue to feel like the definitive edition of the generation.

80%Game Boy

Nota oficial: 83,9

100%Game Boy

Thr game that started it all

90%Nintendo 3DS

POKEMON CHAMPION:
ISHI - Golem
KOBI - Snorlax
KAGE - Gengar
SABAT - Scyther
OKORI - Primeape
EMBRYUNO - Mew

SPECIAL CAPTURES:
Kabutops
Aerodactyl
Articuno
Zapdos
Moltres
Snorlax x2
Ditto
Mew Glitch
Mewtwo Masterball

85%Game Boy

Great game. Definitely a step up over Red and Blue. Getting all three starters and a Pikachu is a dream come true. Getting to walk around and interact with Pikachu was also awesome. The sprite improvements. Getting to battle Jesse and James. Man. This game was the shit. Still has that gen 1 clunkiness and business, but it's still really really fun.

60%Game Boy

Pokémon Yellow is a masterclass of making a product to fit your audience. '90s Pokémon-obsessed kids were absolutely floored by not only getting to play a game based off of the hottest new series in Red and Blue, but now Yellow lets you start with Pikachu, get all three starter Pokémon, and fight Jessie and James, just like Ash! As unnecessary as the "third game" phenomenon is, if it does get done, they should do something like this where it adds significantly to the original experience and offers a new twist on familiar territory.

That said, while Pokémon Yellow does a lot of things right, unfortunately it still suffers from the infamous "Gen 1 jank", defined by obtuse UI, some spaghetti code, and general slowness. For instance, using an HM in this generation requires you to go into your party, select the Pokémon with the move you'd like to use, and then select the move. That's each and every time you want to Surf, use Strength, Cut, Flash, Fly, requires a handful of steps that bogs down the pacing when you're going through a puzzle-heavy area.

On top of that, despite Lorelai's burning desire, I don't think Ice Beam should be super effective on my Charizard, but Yellow begs to differ. There are a lot of oddities with the type chart here, another notable one being that Psychic, instead of being weak against Ghost moves, is immune to them. Critical hits are also based on your speed stat, Wrap disables you until it wears off at which point they can just stunlock you with it if they're faster, and I'm sure there's plenty of other quirks I didn't personally come across. These aren't game-breaking, and the game was still fun, but they did have an impact. That said, this was also the first generation of Pokémon games, and all of these issues were fixed in subsequent releases, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Honestly, Pokémon Yellow is a fun glimpse into the beginning of the Pokémon games and still holds up fairly well. If you like Pokémon, there's no reason to think this wouldn't tickle your pickle. Are there better games? Sure. But thinking of it as more of a historical piece lends to my enjoyment personally, and it's always fun to see how far the franchise has come.

100%Game Boy

A great version that loosely follows the anime, it's essentially gen 1 with a few tweaks here and there and a few mini games included around pikachu as a bonus. Plus hearing Pikachu say pika on the gameboy colour is a nice treat overall I enjoyed this.

80%Nintendo 3DS

Completed my second game in my Pokemon game marathon (Yellow)

I started a Pokemon game marathon in July and I have finished my second play through! This time I played through Yellow!

It was my very first time playing through Yellow and it was definitely a fresh breath of air coming off Red. The color definitely made the difference as well as the updated sprites!

Pokédex: 63 caught

Time spent: 22:59

I decided to copy Red’s team from the Pokemon Adventures manga and this is how it went!

My team:

Pika the Pikachu Lvl 42

Gyara the Gyarados Lvl 43

Saur the Venusaur Lvl 46

Snor the Snorlax Lvl 47

Poli the Poliwrath Lvl 47

Aero the Aerodactyl Lvl 42

The MVP of my team was Snor the Snorlax!

Altogether pretty enjoyable play through and I’m extremely excited to make the jump to a Gen 3 game and play Leafgreen! It’s going to be a great fresh breath of air when I get to play in a world without wrap multi turn hit moves, or the crit to speed connection, or the lack of moves! I’ll be back for the next one!

7/16/24 - 8/5/24

40%Emulated

Pretty Much The Same Game As Prior, But Pikachu's Interactions & The Updated Sprites Boost It Up From Red/Blue/Green Slightly

85%PlayStation 2

Played pirated on PS2, long life to piracy S2
it was really cute and cool to see Pikachu walking with you through the map

100%Game Boy

The first ever video game that I ever played. How can I not give this a perfect 10. Literally defined my personality of loving this medium, loving Pokemon, loving this art form. I watched the first movie after this game and had so much emotions man.

100%Game Boy

The perfect gen 1 experience. Oozing with character and fun, much more so than Red and Blue.

70%Emulated

It's my 1st time playing a pokemon game from start to finish. Before that I did play a few pokemon clones (Temtem, Seralim).
This feels like a skeleton of the game. No unique landscapes rly, just grassland areas, caves, water. You tell apart towns by the overall color tones and signs. The item storage is small, its annoying how you have to switch the pokemon storage boxes overwise they quickly get full. Nidoking is pretty op and broken. I liked using pikachu too. I overall found this game pretty easy although I did hit the wall towards the end with elite 4, had to grind a bit more. Having exp all on was annoying, so much text to go through after each battle. The story? Felt like no story. It kind of mirrored the ash ketchum setting, had team rocket, gary. I still enjoyed my time with it, and I dont regret picking this game up.

I mainly played with pikachu (starter), nidoking, and pigeotto.

80%Game Boy Color

Now very outdated, but I had a lot of fun with this as a child. First game where a pokemon visibly walked with you.

50%Game Boy

Mudaram o plot de Red e Blue para adicionar a história do Anime neste jogo. Não mudou nada.

80%Game Boy

I remembered Kanto being very clunky and unbalanced compared to its Gen 3 remake, but it surprisingly still holds up very well (even the starter is endgame potential, which was probably the first and only time that's happened).. except for Dragon and Ghost types, they're just completely useless

60%Nintendo 3DS

Esse jogo envelheceu mal demais, mas é óbvio que para a época era um jogo absurdo. Eu joguei pelo virtual console, então é a versão original do GBC, sem nenhuma melhoria. Na época meu 3DS era bloqueado e eu não tinha dinheiro para outro Pokémon, foi meu segundo Pokémon jogado num portátil, após o Pokémon Sun.

80%Game Boy

This year, after revisiting all three Gen 1 variations (Yellow on GB, FireRed on GBA, and Let's Go on Switch), I have decided that FireRed is likely the definitive version of Gen 1. While everything about the first generation of Pokemon on Game Boy was an instant classic and I will forever love the Gym Leader battle theme, Pokemon has changed for the better in many ways. The original, however, has many fun quirks that are enjoyable such as Psychic being an unchecked type and Special double dipping for both Sp. Defense and Sp. Attack making items like X Special very strong. I thoroughly enjoy the original Pokemon games and I had no qualms with wanting to replay Yellow. I doubt it is the last time I revisit these classics.

100%Nintendo 3DS

They really don’t make Pokémon games like this anymore!

70%Game Boy

Pokémon Yellow is a fantastic game, though it doesn't differ much from its generation counterparts, Red and Blue. Following the anime series, you start with Pikachu and can collect all the other starters during your journey. You also encounter Team Rocket periodically. Despite these differences, the core gameplay remains largely the same as in Red and Blue. Nevertheless, Pokémon Yellow is a classic, evoking nostalgia despite its age and numerous bugs - It's still enjoyable to play through.

70%Emulated

amazing, but i know all the story cause previously playing Fire Red, maybe someday gonna play it again

90%Game Boy Color

This is where the story started (Not mine, Pokemon's)

Played on my BittBoy PocketGo

70%Game Boy

Most of this applies to Red and Blue as well. (I guess Green too)

The first set of Pokemon games are still the best-selling entries in the series. They released at the best possible time for the perfect console. Did they age well? Not really. If you're playing Gen 1 nowadays you might as well play FireRed, because not only is it better, it has more content. Gen 1 is really buggy and has a lot of odd issues that were fixed in later gens, like the move Wrap being a deathtrap, or Psychic-types being broken with no counters, or the numerous amount of bugs. These games were great for the time, and still are good, but very, very dated.

Score: 82

70%Game Boy

Karen stole my yellow Gameboy Color and Pokemon Yellow!

65%Game Boy

Review
This was the first time I ever consumed anything from the Pokémon franchise, so in a sense I had an experience that was close to what the original players had in the mid- to late-1990s. Also notice that ]Pokemon Yellow is basically a reskinned (and slightly improved) version of the original Pokémon Green and Red released in Japan as the very first Pokémon product, so those original players also didn't have any reference from anime or anything.

Anyway, from this no-nostalgia perspective of mine, I'd say this game is not bad, but not good either. As most of the early-ish RPGs, this didn't age too well and here's the main issue with game really. (The biggest difference between me and the OG Pokémon players is that I am spoiled by more than 25 years of evolution in game design.)

So, in order to succeed in the game, it seems you need to either spend a lot of time grinding, or a lot of time studying wikis to figure out a "perfect," well-balanced team of Pokémon, what attacks (or "moves") they should learn, and what Pokémon is best to use against the Pokémon your opponent is using. I personally did a small-to-moderate amount of studying and lot of grinding.

I shamelessly used emulator features (chiefly fast-forward and rewind) for these grinding sessions. This is a two-edged sword: it makes grinding bearable, but it also distances me away from some of the more interesting game mechanics, which is the interplay between different types of Pokémon. I also checked walkthroughs and maps online when I was not feeling like wandering randomly to figure out what to do next.

Other, smaller annoyances are having to go to a computer to change my Pokémon lineup and having to walk long distances between places that I have already visited before. (Later on there's a form of "quick travel" in the shape of the "Fly" move that some Pokómon can learn.)

But this is all in the "didn't age well" category. Outside of that, my main gripe is with the story, or pretty much the pack thereof. I mean, alright, this is a story of coming to age, but it is a pretty plain and bland one, in my opinion.

What about the good parts? Well, this has the classic RPG loop: kill foes to get better stuff that will allow you to kill bigger foes. Well, you don't really kill Pokémon (they just "faint")... but I digress: this is a loop that works well and is quite addictive. On top of that, they added all this "monster collecting" mechanic, which is the kind of thing that also works well with many people (me included). And combat is kinda cool, too. (Though, as I said, I skipped most of the intricacies of combat by cheating with the emulator.)

So, all-in-all, it was nice to finally play a Pokémon game, even if I didn't find the experience itself that good. I sure intend to try some of the newer games someday. Not soon, but someday.

Useless comments
* As I am sure many others have already pointed out, the premise of this whole franchise is terrible: you hunt cute wild animals and then make them fight with others. And I was further shocked (and not by Pikachu!) to learn that there was a "safari' portion of the game in which you throw stones at wild Pokémon to make them easier to catch!
* I find the whole setting a bit funny, because everything there is about Pokémon. Bookshelves? "Crammed full of Pokemon books!" Shops? Only Pokémon-related items! Talk with some random person on the street? "Something, something Pokémon!" I know, I know, that's by design and, no, I don't think it would be better if it was more true to life. Still, funny.

100%Game Boy

Great classic!

85%Game Boy

Un jeu que j'avais dévoré étant petit. La première génération de Pokémon est magistrale, tout est là pour faire le succès de la licence que l'on connait aujourd'hui.

50%Nintendo 3DS

Pikachu

80%Game Boy

Joguei na época que saiu, tenho o cartucho até, não peguei todos os pokemons, apenas finalizei a história.

100%Game Boy

O primeiro pokémon que zerei

90%Game Boy

Let me evolve Pikachu, you cowards!

75%Game Boy Color

7.5

50%Game Boy

this game isnt fantastic or anything, it definitely doesnt hold up in the test of time, but big pika follows you around the entire time so that part rocks.

50%Nintendo 3DS

For its time a decent game with a nicely challenging difficulty curve, but suffers from practically all the same glitches and unbalanced mechanics as Red/Blue. Other than improving the Pokémon sprites and some small resemblances to the anime, not enough was changed from R/B.

100%Nintendo 3DS

9/10 Great

Pros: Great simple battle system. No grinding necessary if you play smart. Very fun for 20 minutes or 4 hours.

Cons: Very easy if you understand type effectiveness. Flash is the stupidest HM. Very simple compared to later games in the series. You have to buy multiple games to get to 100% completion. The way Poke Marts work is really annoying in the first gen.

Overall: This game is pure nostalgia. This is probably the first game I was ever obsessed with.

80%Game Boy Color

Same Rules apply as to Pokemon Red and Blue - Cannot have same team as either previous game.
Started with Pikachu (did not use in previous games for a reason) Here is the team: Pikachu Lv 60, Butterfree Lv 55, Clefable Lv 40, Prmeape Lv 35, Nidoking Lv 29 and Gariados Lv 25

This game was a little harder than I remember Red and Blue being from last year, but I am so happy it is over because the Elite 4 was beyond frustrating (Lance). Moving on to Gen 2, which I own, but I have never played so my copy of Gold is next!

70%Nintendo 3DS

7.5/10

40%Mobile

boring

30%Game Boy

Só joguei pq gostei do Pokemon Ruby, não gostei desse.

80%Nintendo 3DS

Story: 6'5/10
World Design: 8'5/10
Art: 8/10
Gameplay: 8'5/10
Optimization: 8/10

90%Game Boy

I beat Red Version as a kid -- heck, I pumped 100 hours into Red Version because I believed a myth about the boat sailing away and bringing secret Pokemon or something crazy from the earliest Internet days -- but I got burned out halfway through Yellow Version and eventually grew out of Pokemon until X & Y came out years later.

There's something really special about the original games. The newer titles I've tried (X/Y, Alpha/Omega, Sun/Moon) have all felt like cakewalks where I just held down forward and pressed A for 30-40 hours without any thought or strategy, but the originals are *hard* at points. You have to strategize -- maybe sometimes it's around the gameplay's issues, but still! -- and spend your rewards carefully. Money is hard to come by. There's no (good) experience share. You have to juggle your party and choose them carefully. Going after the legendaries is brutally expensive on resourrces and taxing when it comes to getting your anxiety pumping.

They're also incredibly simple and straightforward despite that. All you do is fight everyone else and try to win. That's it. I love it.

100%Nintendo 3DS

Still holds up as an incredible game!

90%Nintendo 3DS

I thoroughly enjoyed playing through this again. This was the 2nd GBC game I ever owned, and it was a real treat playing it on a nice illuminated screen all these years later with my 2DS XL. I used my old 3DS to trade with myself to complete the Pokedex. I recommend this for anyone who is a fan of retro Pokemon games!

60%Game Boy Color

The game is decent despite the story not being anything more than an excuse to make a game.

30%Nintendo 3DS

Sure, it's a better way to experience Kanto than Red or Blue but it's still not great. Maybe play Let's Go, Pikachu or Eevee if you have a craving.

90%Nintendo 3DS

Can't beat the original Pokemon games and Its so cute that Pikachu follows you around.

100%Game Boy

Just a great version of a great game. They fixed every single pokemon battle sprite to better match the anime.

100%Game Boy Advance

First and favorite pokemon game.

90%Game Boy Advance

Pikachu love....