"Only Pokemon fans will really appreciate this."

No point in hiding it. Yes, I was once a Pokemon fan. However, that part of me has long since died, and now I'm able to realize just how bad some Pokemon games were. Hey You, Pikachu is one of those bad games. It could be like the Virtual Boy: a failed experiment at trying something innovative. However, I think it's more on the lines of trying to use something new when really not too much effort was put into it. Keep reading and you'll see what I mean.

GAMEPLAY: 12/40
Gameplay here got very repetitive. You had a first person view of Pikachu as you gave him orders to do things on screen. In other words, you were *supposedly* interacting with Pikachu. Unfortunately, Pikachu listens to your commands about as much as my dog when she sneaks her way out of her leash. Basically, Pikachu completely IGNORES YOU! This lost the gameplay a lot of points, mostly because this is what you do the entire game. Now, you use the microphone as the controller for most of the game, and you use it to play the mini games. These put the "mini" back in "mini games", because they are extremely short and very simple. One involves you trying to find ingredients for Bulbasaur's picnic in the woods. Another involves Pikachu fishing until night fall. The games are pretty simple, but they're made difficult by the microphone and the unresponsive, famous yellow rodent. What's worse is that the game gets repetitive extremely fast, and once you get all the mini games, there's nothing about them to make them more interesting. Oh yes, occasionally you'll be interrupted by Pikachu running away and you have to go find him. Yawwwwwwwwn. Let's talk about the graphics.

GRAPHICS: 12/15
The graphics in this game aren't terrible, but they're no Final Fantasy X CG scene, either. Pikachu looks well animated and looks pretty nice for N64 standards, which is good, because he's the most important aspect of the game. You encounter a few other pokemon along the way, and they also look pretty nice. The part that lost some points in the backgrounds. Some of the backgrounds look pretty plain and kind of blocky. They just got plain boring. Fortunately, the graphics aren't too bad, which helps the game out in the long run.

SOUND: 2/15
I played this game when I was still a young pokemon fan, and I didn't like the sound effects and music then, I still wouldn't like them now. The background music is plain a repetitive. It gets extremely annoying having to listen to it over and over, especially since the music isn't even that good to begin with. There also aren't a heck of a lot of sound effects, but there is one that you hear a lot throughout the game: peeka-peeeeeee! peeka! You have to listen to Pikachu a lot of the game, which will also get pretty annoying. The other sound effects just weren't too good, nor was the background music.

LENGTH: 1/10
I know this game can last forever and there is no real end to it, but I'm grading the length on how long it will take you to unlock all the levels. In case you couldn't guess, it doesn't take long at all. Most people will probably be able to unlock all the locations in one sitting. Put simply, it's a short game.

Total Score: 27/80
Averaged Score: 3.3 (rounds down to 3)

Bear in mind, I'm not giving this game a bad score because I don't like Pokemon; I'm giving this game a bad score because it was a bad game. Nintendo may have tried to be innovative and do something new with the microphone, and if that was their objective, then I'm sorry Nintendo but this doesn't cut it.

BUY OR RENT
Can you still rent N64 games anymore? Didn't think so. If you're still a pokemon fan and you don't mind repetitive gameplay and an unresponsive Pikachu to look over, then rent this game. By the time you have to give it back to your friend or store, you'll have done everything you can.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/06