(NOTE: This review is a discussion of the Pokemon Mini's library in totality rather than just a single game, I picked the Togepi's Great Adventure page in particular to put this on cuz it's my favorite one and I'm not gonna log all of these lol)

Nostalgia can be found for virtually every handheld released from the heavy hitters after a certain point but there's a corner in this space that's not fondly reminisced on nearly as much, that being the 90s and early 2000s standalone single-game LCD handhelds. Sure, people have plenty of nostalgia for tamagotchi, but that's more nostalgia for tamagotchi rather than the format of the devices themselves, although that can still play a part through the association. I'd say the same for how we view the Game and Watch, it usually gets segmented into its own bubble. Generally, though, this type of handheld arguably has more of a negative connotation a lot of the time--the Tiger Electronics of the world, the devices that are just portable chess or whatever, every company ripping each other off, many of these are still cool in their own way but they've also been largely viewed as disposable, a forgotten side step while all the juggernauts were moving on to greener pastures, you can play chess on your smartphone alongside a million other games now after all.

Which makes the Pokemon Mini odd, because it's... not doing that. It's a 2001 cartridge system and manufactured by Nintendo? And also has nearly a dozen purchasable games instead of only whatever's built in?? Is this perhaps some secret kino that we've all been missing out o--nah not really. It is, however, extremely fascinating and I honestly love it, it certainly deserves to be more than throwaway trivia video fodder.

Ironic to say, because let's rip the band-aid off now: half of the library is mini-game collections. Bad mini-game collections. The goal of one mini-game in Pokemon Party is to frantically shake the machine as many times as possible until it tells you not to. Another mini-game in the same collection is Simon Says. One game in Puzzle Collection Volume 1 is a slow tile sliding puzzle. The games in the Pichu Bros. collection are... Fuck, I already can't remember. (Except the skateboarding one because who doesn't wanna see Pichu absolutely shredding it)

So yeah, unfortunately validating the stigma that plagued the worst of devices like these. More disappointing than that though is how little these games actually have to do with Pokemon. There's a mode in Puzzle Collection Vol. 1 that is, funnily enough, an entirely different sliding tile puzzle about rewiring electric circuits. When you complete the puzzle, it shows a picture of a random Pokemon. The character in question has nothing to do with the puzzle, they're just a totally unrelated mon slapped on to vaguely tie it to the series (There's actually two other modes in Puzzle Collection Volume 2 that are guilty of this exact same thing, by the way). This is the energy that most of the titles in this library give off, even the good ones can't escape from feeling like a waste of this universe's potential. Even the one that's a literal tamagotchi simulator!! Did you know that the mini's card game, Pokemon Zany Cards, has absolutely nothing to do with the rich pool of ideas you could take from the TCG and is instead a bunch of disconnected playing card games with Pokemon on the cards, including straight up friggin solitaire?

Yet, there are other entries in this line-up that feel surprisingly fleshed out and like there was a desire to do more than repeating what everyone else was doing. Pokemon Pinball mini runs with the premise of designing a pinball game with only a single flipper, an experiment that I'm unsure I could say totally panned out but they certainly try to squeeze everything they could get out of it, it's quite beefy considering for most of the games on this system you can exhaust everything worth seeing in like, 20 minutes tops.

Pokemon Race mini seems like a standard race to the finish sidescroller but there's a surprising amount of depth in its movement, even complete with some advanced tech to learn with training courses built to test your mastery of the mechanics. Pokemon Tetris is this weird ass Mario Party looney tunes take on Tetris where you can flip pieces to mirror them whenever you want meaning that alongside the usual rotation options on top of this you'll effectively always have the correct piece for the situation, balanced by how the Pokemon catching mechanic works only when clearing 4 lines at once; any less doesn't do anything, but with such a big advantage in your favor that shouldn't be a concern unless you've messed up. Also there's 5 block Tetrominoes, as bonkers as it should be.

This all leads in to me saying that Togepi's Great Adventure is genuinely amazing. A top-down ball rolling game with shockingly good physics, an opening world that introduces one new mechanic after another with no brakes until the real game starts and you get to see all these unique gimmicks mashed together in some beautifully evil combinations. It's only a single level away from having 200 stages here holy shit. Some of these overlap and feel like filler, sure, but there's still plenty of creative scenarios on display and the challenge only ramps up further and further as you progress, with the last level before the final boss in particular being absurdly unhinged despite actually being one of the simplest stages in the package. If there's anything from the Pokemon Mini library you should play, it's this one. (This system's super easy to emulate, by the way.)

I don't know how much else there is to say about this oddity. The system's shockingly a bit more advanced than you'd expect having rumble, a simple motion function, etc., I could mention that there's a pretty sick homebrew scene, but otherwise damningly this is about all I can muster. A handheld that shot for the stars and didn't get even a fraction of the way to where it could've been, but it's something I also can't really get out of my head either. A remnant of an era long past, for better or for worse. It's kinda hard to recommend this to the Pokemon mega fans specifically but for anyone wanting something a bit weird and out there, there's worse ways to spend a couple afternoons than rearranging puzzle pieces to make a picture of Gengar and then going "holy shit it's Gengar".