Pokemon Box: Ruby and Sapphire

"Doesn't really add anything new, but its useful for Pokémon addicts"

First of all, Pokemon Box is not a game. It's a utility. So don't expect much. The only 'real' additions for your Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire games are eggs which hatch to fairly common Pokemon with a move they wouldn't have normally. That's all. Don't worry, it's not all bad. But first, you won't find it in pretty much all game shops, so how do you get it?

The game is pretty easy to acquire. If you're in Europe, you can get it from www.nintendo-europe.com for 4000 stars. If you've been saving for a long time without spending you should have enough, and at the time of writing there are still some left, which are disappearing very very slowly. If you're in the US, it's now available from the Pokemon Centre website for $19.99.

Now for the good. It allows you to store 1500 Pokemon. You won't be filling it up any time soon. It takes up 59 blocks of memory, but you get a memory card 59 free, so it won't steal any of the precious space from your regular card. You can use all the Box features from Ruby and Sapphire, but the boxes in this are twice the size, and you can take photos in game using Z, to use as your Box background. One very useful addition is picking up and moving multiple Pokemon.

Whereas on Ruby and Sapphire you would have to meticulously move Pokemon from box to box one by one, now you can pick up the contents of even an entire box to move to another. You just hold down A to drag a box around the Pokemon you want, and you pick them ALL up. This is really pretty useful when you want to mass store say, 40 useless Staryu. Don't ask.

Apart from Box mode, you can also play Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire on your TV without the need of a Game Boy Player. Just as you would expect, the only downside is that it takes longer to save (it has to first connect to your GBA, then save...it gets boring.). Not much else to say here except you can take pictures with Z here too to use as box backgrounds. Which is nice. I'm thinking of that magical moment when you catch Rayquaza after four hours, or your free egg hatches. Speaking of which...

When you start up Box, you get one free egg. After filling up a box, you get another. These eggs hatch to Pokemon with moves they wouldn't normally have, nothing spectacular. Fill up all 1500 spaces and you'll get a surfing Pichu. The surfing Pikachu from the N64 Stadium finally makes it's return...but I wouldn't like to try filling up all those boxes...

Overall, if you miss this, you won't be missing anything special. However, as it's so easy to attain, it's a nice way to play Pokemon without a GB Player, and to store those excess Staryu or whatever you randomly decided to catch in bulk. And it'll work with Fire Red and Leaf Green too, which is nice. One final feature is the ability to show your Pokemon as trophies in Box mode. I haven't been bothered to make my own designs, but wait at the title screen and you can see some fantastic ones made by the designers. A very good utility that makes the easy Box system from Ruby and Sapphire even easier. If you're a Poke Nut, consider it. If not, I don't know why you're reading this review.

Graphics - 9
The same pretty Ruby/Sapphire graphics, with some interesting and bright colours splashed throughout. A very cool presentation on the title screen and menus, but the rest is just from Ruby and Sapphire.

Sound - 8
Again, most of the sound is from Ruby and Sapphire, but there's a nice remixed version of the Ruby/Sapphire title screen music when you start it up.

Overall
This defies a numerical rating. It's very good at what it does, but it doesn't offer much and it's not really a game. Get it if you want a nice addition to your Ruby/Sapphire game and you have nothing to lose. If you decide to miss it, you won't be missing much.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/04