Gotta catch'em all. Gonna love it all! Pokemon Silver is a great sequel and well worth checking out.
The story continues three years from where the original left off. Team Rocket split up, but now they're back together again to cause more havoc with their Pokemon. Your hero is on a quest to complete the Pokemon League and complete the Poke' Dex for professor Oak. Within a few minutes you get to pick your first Pokemon. You pick from a little cute grass Pokemon Chikorita, a fire mouse Cyndaquil and an amusing crocodile called Totodile.
If you've played another Pokemon game you'll find no surprises here. you travel from town to town battling other trainers and Team Rocket goons along the way. During your travles through forests, oceans and caves you will find wild Pokemon which can be caught by weakening them and throwing Poke' Balls at them. In the various towns and cities there will be gym leaders, of which you have to defeat all eight before you can enter the Pokemon league. Each gym specialises in a different type of Pokemon. For example Faulkner of Violet City uses flying Pokemon and Whitney of GoldenRod uses normal Pokemon. The fighting uses a turn based system and certain types have strengths and weaknesses against other types.
To travel through certain areas in the game, your Pokemon will need to know a move from a HM. For example you will need to learn Surf to cross the ocean. TMs can also be used to teach Pokemon moves and they can also learn moves by levelling up. Since you can only have four attacks per Pokemon, research what moves they can learn to help avoid screwing up their attack combinations.
This game did introduce some new gimmicks to red and blue. The biggest one being the day and night system. The game uses a real time clock and some Pokemon will only be available during the day and others only at night. Though waiting until night just to get a certain Pokemon can be a pain, overall it was a very good addition. Berries were also introduced. Pokemon can hold these berries and use them in battle in a pinch - they can give them back HP, cure status conditions ect. A breeding system was also introduced. This allowed you to breed Pokemon to get new undiscovered Pokemon such as Pichu or Cleffa.
So what's the differance between the gold and silver versions. Well not much. SOME of the Pokemon you get are differant. In Gold you can get Spinarak, but in Silver it was replaced with Ledyba. Other differences are minimal. you can get both version's mascots in both versions. I lean more towards the Silver version, because that's the one I played first. But at the end of the day they're the same game. There is also a special edition remake - Pokemon Crystal, but I haven't played it so I can't say what the differences are. The game also had a re release on the DS under the names Heart Gold and Soul Silver.
Unfortunately you'll be lucky to find a working copy of the game these days. The game kept track of time with a little battery. When the battery runs out, the save data is lost and you can't save the game. You can replace the battery like I did, but trust me it's hard! The batteries are little circle ones - the sort you get in Tamagotchies. Though with the release of Heart Gold and Soul Silver you could just get them. You could emulate the game I guess, but I don't recommend it. This doesn't down grade the game's score since it is a fault with the technology, not the actual game.
Graphically the graphics are much better than the original red and blue versions. For one thing, the game is in full colour. the colours are bright and solid and look nice. The back sprites of the Pokemon are now easy to make out and don't look like a pixely mess.
The music is good for the most part. But one tune that is amazing is the champion battle theme. It's so atmospheric and really adds to the tension as you watch hyper beams hit your Pokemon and you're just sitting there hoping that you survive.
So Pokemon Silver was a great sequel to the original. The additional content which opens up after completing the main story will add more to the game's lifespan. Even after the additional adventure, it's a lot of fun to go back and collect and raise any Pokemon you missed. Finding a working copy may be hard these days, but it certainly was good while it lasted. However Poke Heart Gold and Sould Silver versions should be able to compensate for this.