One of my favourite Pokemon games ever... there, I admitted it.
I mean, we've all seen the whole virtual pet concept. But what everyone wanted back in the day was a virtual Pokemon. And I can probably guess that about 80% of those people wanted a virtual Pikachu.
Case and point? It was a really good idea, in terms of marketing.
Maybe the actual game wasn't as cool as the idea seemed, but it still kept the 8-year-old me amused for hours. I expected Pikachu to be hopelessly oblivious to my commands, but it actually did clearly understand a fair few of them the first time. Sometimes you had to repeat yourself countless times before it understood you, which got frustrating.
Another thing I found interesting was that the more time you spent with Pikachu, the more receptive it became to your voice. Or maybe that was just me..?
The only major criticism I had with this game was the lack of variety in levels and minigames. I think if they added some more, they could probably make a decent sequel to this on the Wii, but I'm not sure if there's enough of a Pokemon hype for it to work again.
Still, this game was an interesting and original idea, and I'm not ashamed to say that even as a young adult, I still find it quite amusing from time to time. XD