this game has a fascinating gameplay loop, either you can't lead the flock and cry as they fail to maneuver anything short of an automated mario maker stage or you're the dipshit in turn who can't construct anything

being of the latter variety this is what the sequence of events in an average playthrough looks like every once in a blue moon

1. involuntarily made shaman

2. proceed to try to link two planks together (they will not link)

3. switch to balloons (they flew away)

4. blast everyone out of the map with cannonballs

5. receive eight unanimous death threats in chat

6. uninstall game

the french still got it

love it to bits but also why is this game so weirdly imposing for what on paper sounds like a super chill concept

one the one hand you have oak with the passive hook that consists of "take some pics of pokemon as they frollick in their natural habitat, help me with my research" which quickly morphs into

"oh but it's on rails hop onto my rickety transportation module of questionable origin and go pelt the little shits with pester balls, they like apples oh ok here HAVE ALL THE APPLES x 100 drown them in the fucking apples I have for you today NOW CENTER THE SHOTS HNGGGGG UNACCEPTABLE DO IT AGAIN BITCH

BLOW UP THE ELECTRODE AND GIVE ME PERFECT SYMMETRY WHEN YOU COMPOSE THE SHOT OF THE BLAST"

and then somewhere along the way we ran out of places to visit so now we're revisiting all the old levels taking photos of optical illusions to then fight mew in a shadow realm with a bubble that's impervious to cameras or some shit but shhhh is ok just bask in the magnificence of the moment

certainly didn't help that I had the german version which only excuberated the terrifying nature of Oak's rants and I later found this was a common mistake for a lot of PAL region residents who had parents that mistakenly bought it for them as kids because it was poorly labeled

as a catch the fruit player any opinion I hold on this game can immediately be discarded

quality fodder for degens who have and will never know the touch of a woman but felt chronic masturbation was not speeding up their nerve damage beyond the rookie numbers they were seeing at the time

all in all the skill ceiling is so high you'll find the only barrier the top ranking players are unable to surmount is the reinforced fencing at their nearest elementary school

pikachu pioneered reaction channels before youtube even existed

I feel like a lot of people got this for the shiny Jirachi link up functionality to the GBA with Ruby/Sapphire but the whole idea of essentially beta testing Oak's weird broadcasting phase was surprisingly novel to me

a lot of these channels felt like watching friends without the laugh track with the lengthy pauses but the interactive functionality made it a lot more engaging than if they had just overlayed a bunch of real episode footage and used it as a cheap workaround to justify the mechanic

the Pichu Bros special was one of the outliers in this respect but I enjoyed the gradual reveal of it as a kid and getting to unlock new channels while decorating the house with impulse purchases made off of that squirtle grift channel

you could also accompany pikachu certain places which made it also a bit of a spiritual successor to Hey You, Pikachu! in a sense

it may not be something that necessarily rocks my socks off nowadays but this game was my shit back then and I'm glad it exists

basically a kamp krusty rehash in video game form, nothing remarkable but still rather subversive conceptually as far as simpsons games goes

really makes proper use of the dystopian color palette of the game boy to fit the thematic

giving this game an extra half star simply because they had the gall to name one of the kids "rebound rodney" to serve as a hint for you to steer the trajectory of your boomerang on the way back to you so that it hits him