Pokemon Red was truly the start of something big.
If you have never played a Pokemon game before, there is no better place for you to get caught up. You play as a lone trainer looking to become the ultimate Pokemon Trainer across the land. With the help of Professor Oak and the Pokedex, you are going to catch every Pokemon you can and win every battle and beat every trainer you run across.
Pokemon Red is extremely accessible, even for those who don't normally like RPG's. There are towns with Pokecenters and Pokemarts where you can buy items and heal your pokemon. In between towns, there's grass where you will get attacked by wild Pokemon as well as trainers looking for a fight. You need to raise the level of your 6 pokemon team so you can take on the Gym leaders of each town and eventually, the Elite four.
How do you level up your Pokemon? Go into battle of course! There are many different types of pokemon: fire, water, ground, rock, psychic, ghost, bug, grass, flying, fighting, normal, electric, dragon, and poison. Each type has strengths and weakness against other types. For example, fire types are effective against grass and bug pokemon but are weak against water and rock pokemon. You need to balance out your team with different types to give you an edge in battle. Each pokemon has four different moves at hand and can earn more by leveling up or learning TM's/HM's. The gameplay is turn based and there are different kinds of attacks that can be used. Some can lower stats of the opponent, raise the stats of your pokemon, poison the opponent or put the opponent to sleep, and standard attacks that just deal damage.
The gameplay is so addictive, you'll forget the visuals and audio which can barely even be called visuals really, since everything is red. Once you start playing, and start catching and raising your pokemon, you won't wont to stop. There is also tons of value and replayability here as you can choose to start off with 3 different pokemon.
Pokemon Red isn't remembered for state-of-the-art graphics and sound, but because it's crazy addictive and deep, yet extremely accessible for new players to the genre. 13 years on and the Pokemon franchise lives on.
Overall- 9