"Welcome to the world of Pokémon!"

Welcome, indeed. In 1995, two games hit Japanese store shelves; Pocket Monsters Red Version, and Pocket Monsters Green Version. These games, which were all about collecting, trading, and battling 150 different monsters, launched a phenomon in Japan that is nearly without compare. And so, Nintendo and Game Freak knew it had to be shared with the rest of the world.

Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version were finally released in the US of A in 1998. "But Callie!" You may be asking. "Why are they called Red and Blue? Shouldn't they be Red and Green?" Well, allow me to explain; Red and Green were really glitchy games, so a new version, called Blue was released that fixed up some of the glitches and improved the graphics, specifically the quality of the sprites. The American Red and Blue versions were based on these games, thus the name.

Now, with all that out of the way, let's actually talk about the games!

THE STORY

The story is simple, in that really isn't much of one. You're a ten-year old boy (actually, you're eleven according the manual, but we'll go with ten because it's more iconic) and you get your first Pokémon from Professor Oak. You collect and battle more Pokémon, all while taking on the eight gym leaders, the nefarious Team Rocket, and your rival, Blue/Green/Gary/Douchewad, and learning about teamship, friendwork, and the heart of the cards. The game has a sort of self-made story; it's more about your experiences with your Pokémon than any real plot, which is kinda neat. Story gets a 5/10.

THE GAMEPLAY

Pokémon's gameplay is decipively simple; it's all based around a big game of rock-paper-scissors, where, instead of having three choices, you have 15, each with different strengths and weaknesses. To add to that, there are more factors in combat; the stats of your Pokémon and your opponent's, status conditions like Poison, random factors like critical hits (although they're not random here; they're based on the speed stat). Speaking of stats, there are four in this game: Attack, which determines how much damage you'll do with physical attacks like Mega Kick or Brick Break. Defense, with determines how much damage you'll take from physical attacks. Speed, which determines which Pokémon will go first in a battle. Lastly, Special, which not only determines how much damage you'll do with Special moves like Ice Beam or Psychic, but also how much you'll take from said moves. These stats will be split in to Special Attack and Special Defense in the next games, but for now this is all we got. The gameplay is definitely really fun, and while it's rather primitive compared to later games, it still manages to be fun in it's simplicity. 9/10

DIFFICULTY AND LENGTH

These games aren't super hard, but they ain't easy, either. You'll likely have to grind a decent bit if you wanna stand a real chance (of course, I beat the final boss with a team around Lv. 45 or so, but it sure wasn't easy). Thankfully, the game throws lots of opponents at you before it's level spikes. So, it's pretty moderate difficulty-wise. 8/10

Red and Blue aren't long games if you're just going straight through; you could probably beat them in one sitting if you really want to. There's really no post-game either, except for catching 'em all, which, assuming you have both versions and two Game Boys, won't take you all that long. 6/10

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

The graphics are pretty good for a Game Boy game. Some of the sprites are kinda weird (lookin' at you, Exeggutor) but otherwise it looks pretty good. The music is also classic for a good reason. The tunes here are great; my favorites are the S.S. Anne music, the Vermillion City music, the Gym Leader battle theme, the infamous Lavender Town theme, and the Champion battle music. 9/10

FINAL

Red and Blue are great games, and while they show their age a little, they're still fun to play.

RATING: 8/10