I am Generation 1’s strongest soldier.

- Small limited inventory makes you actually consider every item you pick up and I think that’s neat. Putting this one at the start to filter anyone who can’t stand the idea of someone defending gen 1 inventory management. But if you actually go through and check what items you need and what ones you don’t every so often you won’t often cap out on bag space and you’ll probably make a good bit of money from all the vitamins and TMs and other random stuff you don’t really need. It’s just another aspect of preparation, and it makes sense for prep to be important when setting out on an adventure.

- The region layout is fun, there’s just enough freedom to let you poke around in places where you don’t really belong. It’s probably a bit awkward to navigate for someone getting into it for the first time, but on the other hand the lack of explicit guidance or scripted events benefit the sense of freedom - both in the literal exploration of the region (though it is a little more railroaded than I remember early on), and thematically in allowing it to feel like your own journey (something I find important in a Pokemon game, where the core mechanic of catching and teambuilding leans heavily into individuality).

- The region thematically is probably the most compelling. It’s incredibly ‘raw’ - putting its warts fully on display and having 10 year old kids freely wander around in it all. Future games have your protagonist take on moustache-twirling supervillains whose plans are varying degrees of nonsense, whereas Team Rocket acts and operates very much how Yakuza organisations might do (limited knowledge of this admittedly), with parallels to real life such as the Game Corner acting as both a front for their operations as well as mirroring the legal loopholes real-life pachinko parlours use to evade gambling laws (social commentary, in *my* Pokemon game??). There’s so many cute, weird and uncomfortable little details there to pick up on that sell the workings of the region, no matter how weird, with a joyful yet disarming honesty. (One of the less serious, more entertaining things I picked up on was that the Fighting Dojo lost its gym status because they got the shit kicked out of them by the Psychic gym which, like, yeah of course they did! It’s funny, but it’s also an interesting look into how the world actually functions.)

- The game has the purest and most unfiltered vision of a 'complete' Pokemon experience. Filling the dex is heavily encouraged/mandatory (you wouldn’t use a map for Rock Tunnel, would you…….), though admittedly not handled with the most elegance, and in-game trades are much more frequent than later games, as well as being more desirable - there’s a good few Pokemon that are otherwise unobtainable, and in Yellow in particular you can just get a Machamp from an in-game trade! Though exploration and battling are clearly at the forefront, it puts much more emphasis on these other elements of Pokemon that would end up being eroded away over time. (Admittedly features like the GTS and Wonder Trade help keep trading alive, though those two definitely have their own issues)

- Barren movesets and HMs come together in a really strange way. Moveslots have the least value out of any Pokemon game in most cases because most of your options just aren’t that good, so you’ll be sticking to your few good ones. This makes HMs easier than ever to slot onto your team! You can have a slot taken by Flash or Cut or even Dig or Teleport for the whole game and you probably won’t feel it all that much! Not to mention that half the mandatory HMs - Surf and Strength - are actually just really good moves (more than half if you’re not using Flash, but you WOULDN’T use a map for Rock Tunnel, WOULD you???).

- When Pikachu faints it makes the most horrifying blood-curdling scream that a GB could ever produce and I think that’s awesome

Sure there are more than enough valid criticisms of these games and I still can’t blame anyone for not liking them. Someone in the 8th gym used tackle on me. Tackle! Like I don’t mind the limited movesets that much but I think that’s a bit excessive. But I think they tend to get weirdly overhated nowadays and for reasons that don’t really make much sense? Either complaining about very specific quirks and glitches (‘The AI is so bad!!’, I yell, as I intentionally send out a poison type to make Lorelei’s Dewgong spam Rest), or comparing them to later entries when they are not those later entries (limited movesets being a big one, I won’t fight tooth and nail to defend them but they really don’t feel as bad as you’d expect coming from, like, Gen 4 onwards). And I think there’s a lot of value in these silly little games that’s easy to overlook.

One of the hardest Pokemon games no doubt.
(If you don't intentionally search for how to cheese the hell out of this game)

So many training arcs with different Pokemon, but still all late game gyms were out leveling me. Kind of poetic how you can't evolve your Pikachu and Gary ends up evolving his Eevee, the main character (you) values the bonds vs Gary that values strength and nothing else. It was a fun twist to have the following Pikachu without getting to choose, truly an unique Pokemon game experience. I also noticed there was possible to store items inside the PC after 20 hours into the game, I tossed so many items because of that - ahhhhhhhhh ...

I can’t really remember what compelled me to replay gen 1 again but I just wanted to finally say I beat the Yellow version. I always played Red/Blue and even one time the Green version but never Yellow. So this one will be a short one as I don’t have much to say for this one since what hasn’t been said about this game, I was already pushing it with stuff like FF, now it’s getting ridiculous. It also should be noted I used a hack that makes the player character Yellow from the Pokemon Adventures Manga because I wanted to use my irl name and not be a male trainer. Plus Yellow is the best pokemon girl, she’s so amazing in the manga!

This game tries to kind of be like the Anime with how Pikachu follows you. I never really thought till now how this would be the first of this kind of feature, something a few later games would go and improve on. Though the game still mostly plays like previous versions which is fine. I do like finding differences like Jessie & James being members you have to fight, some important battles having new teams and even different locations for pokemon. It felt like this was the best version to get a good varied team but I could be wrong. Going back to Jessie & James, I felt they could have had one more battle maybe in the last Gym because they kind of just leave with no fanfare.

I’ve always been that kind of person to actually like this game, it’s definitely bias though. I will say however that maybe other games improve this but I swear the variety of types you fight is so poor in this game sometimes. I always knew this was a problem specifically with team rocket but I feel even after that it’s kind of bad and it’s hard to use some types because of it. Otherwise this went about as well as the usual playthrough. I also never realized HMs are not as bad in this game as I remember but man I still miss how the newer games do it so much.

Now without further ado, here is the team that helped me through the adventure!

Flippy (Pikachu) was the first member and while I normally don’t use starters cause I find it boring, I had to make an exception. He didn’t really get to shine too much in the last quarter of the game but it was nice having him tail along during the journey. I still like Raichu more though sorry.
Pin (Nidoqueen) was the second member and was kind of out of nowhere. I just saw a Nidoran female and was like eh why not. She was pretty helpful for a while but by the last session, I felt I wasn’t using her much sadly. I think I could have given her better moves in hindsight cause earthquake carried her hard.
MILES (Mr. Mime) was the third member and he was a trade mon. You can get one from an NPC and he is the token psychic type. Psychic types are broken so you know he was useful for a majority of the game and other psychic types could have filled the role. Still neat to use one. Though why is he named MILES? Is it a reference to something? Also why do I see that name and think Miles Morales, I haven’t even watched Spiderverse!
Bloom (Vileplume) was the fourth member and did an alright job. Sadly this game is very easy so the strategy I had with Bloom just never really got to shine much which is a shame. Bloom did make a very talented Petal Dancer though so maybe I’ll hook them up a dancing gig in the future.
Ripper (Hitmonlee) was the fifth member and I feel kind of bad for one reason. You see I had a Primeape before him named Tuckle and I just wanted Hitmonlee more so I felt bad ditching him. At least he was pretty fun to use and felt refreshing to actually beat the crap out of normal types for once. Also thanks to this game being buggy, the jump kick moves only do 1 hp of recoil if they miss. I probably would have picked Hitmonchan if they were actually able to benefit from punch moves which they can’t. Still a cool mon.
Sarah (Lapras) was the sixth and final member and it kind of came out of nowhere too. I was going to use Kabutops but then I remembered I never used Lapras either and I’m glad I did. She was really fun to train up and have her defeat so many opponents. I’m surprised I’ve never used one till now and it’s becoming a favorite for me not gonna lie. Great end to the team!

Well that was Pokemon Yellow and it was still a very nice experience as it always is. This game still has my favorite OST in the series and god the ending song makes me want to cry. I could have done some other stuff like get Mewtwo but I am lazy. I don’t think this is a game people should play nowadays outside of learning the origins of the series but I will still always enjoy it for what it is. Not sure if I’ll ever return to this game again but if I never do, I’m glad I got to close it off with this playthrough of my first time finishing this version.

Pokémon was counterculture.

It's hard to believe that now, given what Pokémon has become, but the original Pokémon games were made by an indie team of nerds who wanted to make a different Dragon Quest in their own image. So much of that heritage and identity is baked into the first Generation's design. We take it for granted now, since subsequent generations tend to ape Gen 1's template and are almost unto their own as a genre, but if you know what to look for, you can see all the hallmarks of it. Little things like the near-future setting instead of high fantasy, legendary Pokémon as your jRPG superbosses, Voltorb/Electrode being cyberpunk Mimics, the Game Corner as an evolution of Dragon Quest's casinos, deliberate monster design consideration for how boss encounters are paced out (Onix is a scary early boss that becomes a standard encounter in mid-game and essentially a trash mob by the end), etc. I tend not to think of later Pokémon in this way, but that's the main image I have for Gen 1.

Pokémon Yellow, specifically, feels like the first core game for the series made as a mainstream phenomenon rather than a product of counterculture. You could make arguments for the Japanese Blue Version or the International Red/Blue Versions, but the way I see it - Japanese Blue was a surprised thanks from Game Freak for Red/Green's success, and Red/Blue were experiments to see if the success could be replicated outside of Japan. Yellow was made because the series was successful enough to warrant a TV show, and that TV show became a separate phenomenon. Yellow exists in an interesting place, then - it's a trendy response to the success and is thus the first mainline Pokémon game designed to be a Pokémon game rather than an RPG. At the same time, it couldn't change that much of its Gen 1 template, so it still retains those counterculture artifacts. Gen 2 as a whole would experience this as well, given the timing of its dev cycle, but it's perhaps at its most pronounced with Yellow, where the sleek new sprites and expansive Pikachu friendship mechanics exist side-by-side with the grungy counterculture design that made Gen 1 what it was.

I've always had sort of an odd relationship with Gen 1 Pokémon. I was into the anime from day 1 and collected the cards, but I didn't own any (non-PC) video games until the start of Gen 3. I got Crystal first, then Sapphire and Yellow in pretty rapid succession, so a lot of my experiences with the first three generations' core games were formed around the same time. Of those, Yellow held my attention the least, but more because it wasn't the new hotness than anything. A lot of my appreciation for the first generation's games have come after the fact, as people growing up with the titles have gotten old enough to articulate what made them so interesting and so different. I always liked Yellow, I just didn't get it until later on.

Later than this particular playthrough, even; I mostly have modern PokéTubers to thank for my current respect for Gen 1. But I will say this playthrough was a turning point for me. I revisited Yellow for the first time in years for an early Designing For video. I'd long before abandoned my Yellow playthrough and had contented myself with clearing Blue as my first-gen playthrough. But my friends needed B-roll footage, and I was happy to oblige. I had until that point been someone who loaded up on power moves and brute forced my way through every encounter (in Sapphire, I taught my Kyogre Sheer Cold and kept it as a regular part of its moveset), but I decided to give status moves a go this time. Largely because movesets are so limited, and you're starved for options otherwise. Sure enough, I found myself leaning into 'em. I remember being proud of myself for beating the Champion's Jolteon in a close fight because I tried using Thunder Wave rather than just trying to overpower it! Maybe a silly thing in retrospect, but it felt like a grew a bit then.

There's a stereotype for the kind of person who holds onto Gen 1 as the only valid generation. I get annoyed by that - even ignoring that my favorite Pokémon generation was yet to come, I detest such thought-terminating viewpoints - but it's also a pet peeve to see folks who act like any sort of Gen 1 favoritism is someone being/catering to "Gen Wunners". Like I said at the beginning, early Pokémon was counterculture in ways that the phenomenon has never been able to replicate. I can completely understand someone preferring to hold onto that.

36:18 horas de jogo nesse clássico aqui, num emulador chinês portátil. A experiência foi boa, mas o fato de eu ter demorado quase 5 meses pra terminar não é o melhor indicativo do mundo.

Pokémon Yellow num (quase) gameboy color é uma experiência divertida e é ótimo pra jogar no carro quando você está voltando do trabalho ou esperando algo. De 20 em 20 minutos você vai avançando e se distraindo.

Infelizmente, como ele tem pouco texto, acho que só dá pra de fato aproveitar uma história se você estiver assistindo o desenho junto, mas quem liga pra história num game velho de Pokémon?

No quesito jogabilidade, esse aqui tem menos golpes que o Emerald que eu joguei logo antes, mas ainda há variedade.

O endgame te pune até um pouco por não grindar bastante e a Elite dos Quatro é até desafiadora, se não fosse meu estoque de item de cura provavelmente não teria feito na first try.

Me desafiei usando um time só com Pokemon que combinassem com a miniatura da tela de visualização do time, então foi Pikachu, Clefable, Nidoking, Victrebell, Dewgong e Pidgeot. O comecinho até foi mais complexo, mas do terceiro ginásio pra frente tirei de letra.

Gostosinho pra quem gosta de Pokemon, as cores são bonitas e os sprites charmosos. Entretanto, meio lento se você não for acostumado com a franquia ou com jogo velho.

Não há motivo para visitar esse aqui a não ser nostalgia, pois Fire Red, Leaf Green e Let's go Eevee & Pikachu são versões mais completas, mas acho que NADA barra esses jogos da primeira geração se você quiser se sentir uma criança de novo, especialmente se assim como eu você jogava nos gameboys emprestados por que era um moleque pobre.

PS: ter que trocar a BOX quando ela enche de pokemon é MUITO frustrante, no meu aftergame eu fui atrás do Mewtwo e não consegui pegar por que A BOX ESTAVA CHEIA, fiquei muito bolado. É um detalhe que atrapalha muito. Não é como o storage de itens que é pequeno e você fica jogando coisa fora pra caber, por que isso aumenta até a dificuldade e exige uma preparação, a BOX de pokémon é só um estorvo mesmo.

Gen 1 is a mess of glitches and terrible type balancing, bad move pools, annoying HMs, and a pretty steep spike to the level curve going from the final gym to the Elite Four. However, I still just love the entire experience so much, especially how open Kanto feels to the player, all of the strangely dark things that never really appeared in the franchise again that are just sprinkled throughout this otherwise really simplistic and childis story, and trying out new weird teams every playthrough (Pikachu, Nidoqueen, Farfetch'd, Hypno, Dewgong, and Ninetales this playthrough, by the way.)

Honestly prefer the weird sprite work from Red and Blue over Yellow's more refined ones, but otherwise a game I really can't find too many things I don't like about it.

Knowledge of game design is a curse, akin to having the flavor of steak forever ruined by the awareness of The Matrix programming you to like it, and you can probably count in one hand the games that predate that red pill moment when gaming language forever became familiar and predictable to you. Pokemon Yellow was fortunately one of those games for me, a joyous moment of my childhood where my whole life existed inside a small square screen that could fit inside my pocket and whose 2D 8-bit walls felt as far away from my grasp as my imagination and curiosity were willing to go.

Picking it up nowadays, more than 20 years since that precious moment of my life where I gladly devoted myself to it, the feeling is a bittersweet one. With its secrets, surprises and discoveries now obsolete, the rudimentary gameplay fails to engage, and its combat is one of mindless grind and broken mechanics that are only challenged by the occasional difficulty spike, once a compelling puzzle to be solved as kid, now serving only to expose the game’s more blatant weaknesses.

Its magic wasn’t totally lost on me just yet, however. The sudden color pallet changes when arriving at a new area, the simplest of chiptunes that were instantly recognizable on note one, the kinesthetic pleasure of speeding through its routes with a newly acquired bike and its cheerful theme, and the occasional excitement at the sight of a personal favorite, managed to sustain my interest throughout its primitive JRPG nature, as it quickly took a backseat to the core allure and fun that made this the biggest franchise of all time, one that never fails to leave you in a state of impending suspense as you watch your pokeball twitch its way into a new catch or fill you with excitement as you witness your personalized team finally evolve after your hard effort, regardless if you already know what it will turn into or not.

Reviewing Pokemon Yellow in a vacuum is nonetheless a fruitless endeavor, considering so much of its purpose and qualities are tied to the social aspect that was so crucial to the Pokemon mania of the 90s, leaving the game itself in an incomplete state whose true experience is forever inaccessible to the ones who are unfortunate to not have lived through those magical years. Think of it as trying to relive the early days of your favorite MMO, it’s just not possible, is it? Nostalgia is a double-edged sword, and it’s no truer than in Pokemon Yellow’s case. Still, climbing the ranks through every Gym and surviving the Elite Four gauntlet so you can slap the grin off the face of Blue with your ever trustworthy Pikachu remains a satisfying throwback to a time when I would gladly listen to fake rumors on how to catch Mew from dumb kids at school.

Memory Lane time!

When I was a much younger Goddess, I ended up getting in serious trouble, they took my TV, SNES and N64 away and my Gameboy for doing a bad in school. A couple months later, it was Halloween. I was dressed as a Power Ranger, walking to house to house to get that good ol' candy (back when Halloween was a huge event and get candy by the pound, lol).
I got to a certain house and the couple came out and said that I was the 100th trick or treater, and they gave me a box in my bag. What was it that they gave me? It was the Special Pikachu Edition Gameboy with Pokemon Yellow. That system was awesome, being blue and yellow and having a Pikachu graphic on the corners of the screen. It's one of the more fond memories I have of my childhood.
With that being said, reviewing Yellow ends up with me being a little nostalgic for it. It's basically Pokemon Blue but with some elements of the Anime. Your starter being Pikachu was, for me, awesome. He followed you around and you can even check how he feels, and he talks in this! And Team Rocket's Jessie and James were also in this game, and i loved that as well. Other than that it's that classic Pokemon game that you know and love.
Gameplay is still solid but very basic in the modern times. The difficulty could range here and there but as long as yo fight every trainer you come across it shouldn't be too hard. The music will always be the major highlight here, some of the best video game songs in general stem from the 1st generation. Even the graphics are pretty good for the time, and since it's on Gameboy, the colors of the towns change as you walk through them, it was pretty novel at the time for me.
It's a basic Pokemon game that has Pikachu up front and center for everyone to see, and that's okay. Nostalgia does hold this up for me and you can probably see why. I DID play this somewhat recently on the 3DS, thinking i wasn't gonna enjoy it as much but honestly, it's still a good time.
Definitely a must play for me, do it for the Pika!

Pretty fun as a nice challenge, as some who knows FireRed like the back of their hand, to go back to this one and try and beat it with all the first generation’s weird quirks, oddities, and limitations. Was worried I was going to need a lot of grinding, but my champion rival was a pretty easy feat, with limited healing items, to boot! Also just serves as a fun challenge because you have to account for Pikachu, a little guy with low HP and defense whose only real perks are its amazing speed and that it learns Thunderbolt naturally. I kept him leveled ahead of all the other teammates more and more as enemies became stronger and the little rodent held its own the whole way. ‘Red, Blue, and Yellow Versions’ are miracles in so many ways, and I feel like people like to dog on them, now, because it’s easy to look back at ‘Red Version’, in particular and go “wow, that game is ugly as shit and barely runs,” but isn’t that just the magic of game programming? Honestly felt like the 3DS version kinda had some porting bumps that made the game act odd (probably a result of tweaking some flashing lights and sprites when they ported this). I mean, at the end of the day I’m pretty proud of myself for actually going ahead and beating a Generation 1 game for the first time. Liked my team a lot, too, I don’t know how I keep finding ways to make the Kanto Pokédex interesting. Shout out to Fearow, the underdog MVP of my league run.

please... dont complete the entire pokedex, even with the 151 patch
its miserable and you'll hate yourself


fun game tho 7/10