TYF Column: What We’ve Been Playing July ’16

Ryan Gibbs has been playing “Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen”

GameBoy Advance

The success of Pokemon Go has sparked an interest to replay the old Pokemon games I grew up on. While Red and Blue are super nostalgic, there’s quite a few issues with them that make the games a little less fun in hindsight and those problems would ultimately be fixed in later generations.

That’s why whenever I get the itch to play the first generation Pokemon games, I usually choose the Game Boy Advance remakes FireRed and LeafGreen. These games add all of the fixes and additions to play that were introduced in subsequent games – holding items, abilities, lack of weird glitch stuff, etc. – while still providing the same story and game experience.

I’ve sunk quite a bit of time into the games this past month and it’s really wonderful that they’ve held up so well. The games were already the best part of the Pokemon franchise and they remain exceptional, fun and challenging RPGs.

My only real complaint right now is that the game exclusive Pokemon are different from the originals, and two of my favorites – Slowpoke and Psyduck – are exclusive to one game or the other.

Game Boy Advance games are fairly cheap to collect, and you’re likely to find either FireRed or LeafGreen for a fair price at any good used game store. If you do, they’re work picking up.