Pokemon Gold & Silver
I don’t think I’ve ever bought into the hype for something more than I did for Gold & Silver. If you were in the age range to get super excited about Pokemon in 1999 and 2000 it was kind of impossible not to. I remember, before the game was even out, reading this third party walkthrough guide to the game that tried its darnedest to translate the Japanese version of the game – out nearly a year before it finally came to America – just to have a taste of it.
I got Pokemon Silver the day it came out, and for the life of me I can’t remember what combination of “I’ll never ask for anything again” lies and buttering up and salesman begging that convinced my parents to do this. They never bought us major purchases like this in the middle of the year. And yet, on October 15, 2000, I had the biggest game of the year, and I pretty much played it non-stop.
More so than any other of the Pokemon products I devoured between 1998 and 2001, these games stick the largest in my mind. They were fantastic, imaginative RPGs that provided a large amount of strategy, inventiveness and replay (if you were willing to erase your game save with that level 89 Slowbro). The Gold and Silver games were the pinnacle of this, polishing the roughness of the first generation with intriguing new game mechanics. The real-time system was pretty novel for the era, and the game world was impressively sprawling for a handheld game. The games (and their DS remakes) remain engaging and playable 15 years later. The Heartgold and Soulsilver remakes from a few years ago are just as great, integrating all the best gameplay mechanics from subsequent generations and ultimately making for a very satisfying update.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what my favorite Pokemon are, they were – and remain – Slowbro and Ampharos. I always had both on my G/S teams. Heracross was also a favorite, but I used that one less frequently.- Ryan Gibbs
Advertisement
