Pokemon Stadium

[A Genius]

Pokemon. One of Nintendo's biggest fads. I'd say that this is one of the better Pokemon games, but if you don't have the original Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, don't bother.

I'll start off by saying that these are some of the N64's best graphics. The backgrounds are nothing special, but the Pokemon look great. Quite a few of them look fairly realistic. And several of the death sequences (when a Pokemon is knocked out) are downright funny.

Music is a mixed bag. It still has the memorable Pokemon tunes, but they aren't very high quality. I realize that the N64 can't produce PS1 quality, but I'm sure it can do better than this. As for sounds, I'm just glad that Pikachu is the only Pokemon that says his own name. The other Pokemon have animalistic growls. I like them better.

As far as control goes, you don't need much control for this kind of game. So I won't rate it.

Gameplay is based solely on Pokemon battles here. No clever dungeons or Pokemon cathing here, mate! And when it comes to battles, lets face it. Pokemon isn't that clever. In the games, where you had to get enemy Pokemon down to low health and then throw your Pokeball, it was quite clever. None of that here.

But of course, the cleverest attack ever conceived in an RPG is here. one of the greatest powers ever, the power of Metronome! As you probably know, Metronome does completely random things. It can kill both Pokemon, in can cure all status changes, it can break off half the opponents hit points, who knows what it'll do?

Nevertheless, Metronome doesn't produce endless replay value, and there's no fun in endless Pokemon battles. That's where the original Pokemon games come in. You can play your Pokemon games on Gamecube, or organize your Pokemon and items in a more useful version of the Pokemon PC, or put the Pokemon that you worked to raise in N64 Pokemon battles (this is higly recomended, since rental Pokemon are crap). The best thing however, is the Dodrio Gameboy.

What does it do? The Dodrio gameboy triples the speed of your Pokemon game. And if you have the Bicycle item in the game, you can truly blast off at the speed of light. It also makes the game less of a chore.

So overall, this game is a fair purchase if you own Pokemon R/B/Y. If you don't, then stay away.

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Control: N/A
Gameplay: Without original: 2/10
With original: 7/10
Replay Value: Without original: 2/10
With original: 7/10

Overall: Without original: 5/10
With original: 7.5/10

-A Genius (There are also some Mario Party minigames, but they're mostly just button mashers.)

[Heroine of the Dragon]

The battles got tedious after a while. I used to play the mini-games against friends a lot...

[give me food]

Originally posted by Heroine of the Dragon:
The battles got tedious after a while. I used to play the mini-games against friends a lot...

Indeed.
I love the minigames.