Your enjoyment of Pokémon Emerald will depend entirely upon your relationship with the series as a whole. It trod much of the same ground as its GBA brethren, squished the two stories together and rejigged some of the structuring, but was essentially the same. Unfortunately Emerald was not the game to turn it all around instead as an amalgamated companion to Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire it was more of a stopgap between two generations of RPG’s.

To those who grew up on Red and Blue the series seemed tired, making up for a lack of innovation in core design by adding in more and more collectible creatures. By the time Pokémon Emerald came out on the Game Boy Advance the world had been saturated with pocket monsters for nearly ten years. Since the early days of the franchise Nintendo has fanned the fires of fandom with hundreds of pieces of Pokémerchandise but only a few core games. The two Game Boy originals Pokémon Red and Blue set the world alight with tight RPG gameplay that made people both young and old want to be the very best, like no one ever was. That craze was Pokémon: Nintendo’s pocket monster catching/training/battling powerhouse.

In Japan in 1996 a craze started by the turn of the century, it had worked its way around the world capturing the hearts and minds of gamers as easily as a level 3 Rattata is caught in a Master Ball.

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