My Pokemon Ranch

"A nice addition if you have Pokemon Diamond or Pearl on the DS"

My Pokemon Ranch is a game were you have to help a person named Hayley achieve her life long dream of having a big ranch filled with Pokemon, to do this both you and her work together to expand the ranch, this game is mostly Pokemon Channel/Pokemon Snap but there are a few elements that seperate it from those games, I'll go in more detail below.

When you first get the game Hayley brings a Pokemon to your ranch, after visiting the ranch she'll ask you what kind of Pokemon she should bring the next day, she'll keep doing this and you can also help her by uploading your own Pokemon from your DS to the Wii.

Your ranch starts off really small, she usually sets peaks for a certain amount of Pokemon you must have before the ranch expands, so say you get the game and she brings a few pokemon every day, she'll say "let's keep adding pokemon to the ranch until we get X amount of pokemon"; once it gets to X amount the ranch expands, the more it expands the more space you have for your Mii's and Pokemon.

It's pretty much Pokemon Snap with a little bit of Pokemon Channel thrown in the mix, you take pictures of Pokemon, sometimes your Mii's and Hayley will interact with each other, it's always random what they'll do but it can be different.

Once you get enough pokemon to the ranch, you'll be able to have gift boxes delivered to it, these range from various objects that they can interact with (the pokemon and Mii's); such as a leader flag, stinky ball, poke pendelum, poke microphone, the poke rocket, or a pitfall etc, it's always random of what gift will be delivered to your ranch so it's best to check all gift boxes.

Theres also a group of Mii's that go to your ranch every so often that ask you to visit their ranches, this group is the Club Look-See and they'll appear and then take you to their ranch were you can get inspiration for your ranch, this is good if you want to get pokemon snapshots that your ranch doesn't have yet.

My favorite part of the game is the interactivity with the Nintendo DS version of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, you deposit a few pokemon from the PC in the games, then you choose connect to DS on the menu in MPR, then your Wii will interact over WiFi to your DS and you can deposit pokemon to the ranch, sometimes Hayley will ask you for specific pokemon, these are posted on the BBS in the ranch.

After you complete her challenge a special event will happen, I won't spoil what it is, but after you get the pokemon she asked for something cool will happen.

This game is pretty fun even if it seems basic on paper, it's 1,000 Nintendo points which is about $10, I'd say get this game if you have the points because of the interactivity with the DS, and the random things that occur in the ranch, it's a pretty decent WiiWare title that you should check out.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/09

Game Release: My Pokemon Ranch (US, 06/09/08)