Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team (GBA)

Pokemon: Red plays as a Pokemon edition of Chunsoft`s popular Fushigi no Dungeon RPG series.

What would happen if one day you woke up to find out you`ve been turned into a Pokemon? Interact with many different Pokemon on various missions while trying to uncover your true purpose and destiny in this engrossing story of adventure, redemption and, most of all, friendship.

Players can choose a Pokemon, and then choose another Pokemon to be their partner. Numerous Pokemon can become friends with the player and can be called upon to join his or her rescue teams. Assuming the role of a Pokemon, the player converses with other Pokemon for the first time using engaging graphics with various Pokemon expressions.

• For the first time ever, the player is a Pokemon, speaking and interacting with other characters in a world populated only by Pokemon.
• A deep, involving and dramatic story brings the player into a world of Pok mon not seen or experienced before.
• Strategic battles enhance the adventure.
• Randomly generated dungeons make every mission unique.

One day you awake to find that you’ve been turned into a Pokémon and the land around you is being destroyed by natural disasters. It’s up to you to explore dungeons filled with wild monsters and uncover your true destiny and purpose in a game where you get to "be" a Pokémon.

The lowdown:
Rather than being one of the core role-playing games in the Pokémon series this is a spin-off based on ChunSoft’s long running (in Japan at least) Mystery Dungeon series. The basic idea is that you enter a random generated dungeon and defeat all the wild Pokémon you find within it. Most of the standbys of the Pokémon world also make an appearance, including Technical Machines that enable you to lean new abilities, resistances and weakness to different elemental attacks. You can’t capture wild Pokémon but you can recruit them to your team, which adds something to your strategic options. Admittedly the game can get repetitive, but there’s generally enough to see and do until the "real" Pokémon sequels come out sometime next year.

Most exciting moment:
The combat is a clever mix between real-time and turn-based combat, with wild Pokémon moving about the dungeon at the same time as you. You can have four Pokémon in your team at once, with the computer controlling the other three, and each can have four attacks or abilities each. If you’re sensible you’ll put together a varied team so you’ve got an attack ready for whatever enemy comes your way.

Since you ask:
As with most Pokémon titles there are two versions of the game, in this case one for the DS and one for the GBA. They’re both essentially the same, except with different distributions of Pokémon in each. The DS does have a couple of extra options though, as well as an easier to use touch screen interface.

The bottom line:
Not the deepest Pokémon game ever but you’ll still find yourself wanting to catch ‘em all. - HARRISON DENT