Pokemon Yellow Legacy (Game/ROMHack) Review

 

 

This is it; the definitive way to play the start of Pokemon. I say it without a hint of hyperbole, for it is simply true.

 

I've strong memories of Red from being a kid and staring enviously over another kids grey brick Game Boy in the playgrounds. I lived through the rise of Pokemon as a big big thing and watched the movie and the anime and saw Pokemon cards banned twice from my school. It's key to the development of my enjoyment of games but going back multiple times has never replicated quite the feeling of excitement I had playing Pokemon Red years ago. And instead made all the more clear the feeling of how distant the feeling of 'Gotta Catch 'Em All' felt, how it felt no singular Pokemon version was an immersive experience; and as such I never got too deep into the nuance of the games. I never saw the highs and lows of Pokemon's first generation too well.

 

But then, I met someone who I care about a lot who introduced me to Pokemon Yellow Legacy; a romhack based around preserving an experience I'd never truly had and also leaning into the idea of something a games companies ever going to truly lean into when marketing a collection game; a singular encompassing experience. This is essentially, Red, Blue and Yellow combined into one experience. All Pokemon gettable, Pokedex able to be completed. It plays on rumours and ideas that circled the original release of the game and also dances along the idea of preserving, not destroying things that I was unaware of from back in the day. I learned firsthand the tyrannical menace of Tauros, the bull Pokemon that can do anything; as well as the manner in which certain types fall prey singularly to certain attacks. While it sticks again to combining multiple versions to one, it even adds its own experiences as said, based around rumours and thoughts from the original games, swirling around Mew and Professor Oak; it throws in new trainers nodding to those who developed the game that are a singular test of skill.

 

You can run around, you can pick your gender from the start, weaving in the excellent design of Green/Blue from the original art and manga, little touches and titbits that give me a great heaping of joy. But above all that. It's just fun. For me, it might seem simple but while the biggest difficulty is the grind and again, being a romhack alleviates that some, it is Pokemon's first gen; things die in singular moments, some types feel incredibly weak, others incredibly strong and it is at its core, a very basic story. But it's enjoyable, it's fun, it's silly and the experience shared with someone I love was incomparable. I got to enjoy Pokemon again. That's more than enough for me.

 

Image from Backlogged.