Hey You, Pikachu!

"Pokemon is a great gaming series! This is one stinker, though..."

Hey You, Pikachu! It was an innovative idea: Using a mike to talk to the most famous pokemon of all! You and him would be buddies, him amusing you, while you helped him out in his life. I thought this game was going to be fun. It looked like a must for Pokemon fans. Being able to talk to Pikachu with a microphone seemed like it was going to be such a cool idea. Alas, I am sorry to say, that even though I love pokemon, I DIDN'T love this game.

STORY: 4/10
You are a kid and Professor Oak wants you to play with Pikachu. You and the little electric mouse get to do stuff together every day, like go to the forest, the beach, and babysit caterpies. It's not much of a story, but oh well.

CONTROLS: 2/10
The controls are almost non-existant, you can move around, but the only way you can get Pikachu to do anything is to tell him to do it. You can pick up things, but Pikachu will take it out of your hands if he's curious enough about it. Considering that the mike is basically the only way you can control Pikachu, I'm gonna base it on the mike, not the controller's controls. Hence the low score. Commanding with the mike is pure madness!

GRAPHICS: 7/10
Pikachu looks good, and many of the pokemon look good as well. The backgrounds needed a little work, though. The foliage on the trees looks 2 dimensional, and some of the objects you see look like..something, but you don't know what! And when Pikachu draws the needed items to help Bulbasasr make his soup, it looks worse than a baby's scribbling!

SOUND: 5/10
Pikachu says his name over and over, and the other pokemon do as well. I am able to put up with it (In Japanese cartoons, some creatures repeat their names as a form of language - like Yoshi of Super Mario Brothers fame). Some people, on the other hand, will find it annoying. In addition to pokemon talking, there is not much else to really point out, but they DID hire voice actors to do the voices of the pokemon, so I guess that is cool.

MUSIC: 4/10
Not really great, it's sort of like elevator music. Some of it is the same tune remixed, however. You'd expect there'd be more music than a small handful of songs, like a battle theme or something from the game boy games.

GAMEPLAY: 2/10
Oh, boy. Here we go. You talk to Pikachu with a microphone. About 9 out of 10 times, he won't understand what you are saying to him (though he understands you saying "Pika pika" or "pikakapi"). Call him an "electric rat", though, and he'll get upset. There was a quest where I had to help Pikachu gather ingredients for Bulbasaur's soup. Let's say for example the ingredients needed are the following: Onion, Carrot, Celery, and Potato. You have to walk around and find those ingredients. Bulbasaur will show the needed ingredients over his head in a thought bubble while pikachu (badly) draws each of them. You have to memorize the ingredients, because Pika's drawings are hard to decipher. You have to walk around in the forest and gather the ingredients before the day ends. If you pick up incorrect ingredients, or don't succeed in getting all 4 of the needed ones, the soup's going to taste awful and you'll fail the quest! You have to lead Pikachu to each item. Here's a common little scenario that occurs VERY OFTEN, and in which I have grown tired of:
(Pikachu finds a carrot. He shows it to me, seeing if I say "OK" or "No".)
Me: OK!
(Pikachu registers it as No and eats the ingredient instead of sending it to Bulbasaur)
Mind you, there is only ONE of each ingredient in the forest, so if Pikachu eats it, you're screwed.

This is only the beginning. As you progress, you have to help Pikachu babysit Caterpies and feed them leaves when they get hungry (they indicate hunger by turing blue). Pikachu was so slow on the draw, that I had to pick up the leaves myself and place them in front of the hungry caterpillar pokemon. They all evolved into Metapods and Pikachu got a reward for finishing the mission. There's more. Pikachu, in later stages, goes to a beach where he is blindfolded and has to hit a pinata with your help! You can tell him "Turn around!" When his back is facing the Pinata, and he'll just keep walking forward. When he finally DID face it, I told him, "forward" and he did go forward, but he struck at the pinata, when he mistook one my "forward" commands for "hit it!".

CHALLENGE: 1/10
It's insanely hard, but that is NOT what makes a challenge. A challenge is something difficult you can overcome with skill, determination, and luck. Good luck using all three to get Pikachu to do whatever it is he's supposed to do! If someone out there has successfully beaten this game...they must be some sort of god!

REPLAY: 2/10
You'll replay the first couple of times until you realize that it's so hard to do, that it gets boring very quickly.

OVERALL: 3/10
This game is disappointing. The only good thing I can say about this game is...it's better than Seaman. At least Pikachu is not a verbally abusive deformed fish guy. I know I'm a pokemon fan, but I had to be honest...this is possibly the worst Pokemon game I've played. Its horrifc gameplay was too terrible for the cuteness factor to shine through. Sorry, Pikachu!

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/04