"WHAT?! NO ITEM STORAGE?! Oh, you're lucky this came with so much bonus stuff for a low price....at one point in time."

When the Gamecube first came out, there were rumors about being able to connect your Gameboy Advance to your Gamecube. Well these rumors were true for the most part....except there haven't been many games that can do this at all. Nintendo realizing this decided to milk their easiest cash prize: Pokemon. By splitting up Pokemon Colosseum into three parts instead of keeping it all together like Pokemon Stadium, Nintendo formed a quick and easy way to get two more games that would have GBA-GC connectivity, and suddenly had a way to sell those ten dollar cables.

Pokemon Box is probably the best feature from the classic Pokemon Stadium games (well, at least my favorite anyways). By being able to take action with the insanely large storage space, a person could store ALL of his/her Pokemon into one nice location, start a new game, and then move them all back after meeting a certain requirement, in this case, getting 100 Pokemon recorded into the Pokedex. This idea was PERFECT! Instead of struggling HOURS trying to find a rare Pokemon like Scyther, you could store it on the Gamecube, and then start a new game without worrying about catching one ever again! FRIGGIN' AWESOME!! And with the ability to store up to 1500 Pokemon on one memory card 59, you know for a fact that you can play several games before you ever fill up these boxes. As an added bonus, you get Pokemon eggs at random times during the box filling, and you even get one for connecting to the Cube for the first time!

Unfortunately, my absolute FAVORITE FEATURE about the old Pokemon Stadium was removed: ITEM STORAGE! Here you spend literally MILLIONS in cash on tons of Ultra Balls, and items, and when you start a new game you lose it all. Stadium 2 would hold up to 250 different types of items for both sets of the Pokemon series (that's Red/Blue/Yellow and Gold/Silver/Crystal). This was handy so that you would never have to buy yourself another set of Pokeballs ever again since you could reuse the balls you had from the last game, as well as keep you stocked up on Berries, Potions, and even the expensive and rare TMs. Oh sure, you can store up to 1500 items by giving them to a Pokemon to hold, but that takes way too much time. This is where this game loses points.

As an extra feature so this 'game' doesn't seem like you can only do one thing, Nintendo added in a feature so you could display your Pokemon on a table top, much like the trophy room from Super Smash Bros. Sure it's completely pointless, but if you're friggin' bored you'll go for decorating the room like you want it. Whee. You have several stages that you can set up so you can make quite a few of these display stages to impress your buddies or something since that's about all this is useful for.

Last but not least, you can now play your copy of Ruby or Sapphire on your Gamecube! Too bad this doesn't work for FireRed or LeafGreen, although you can use all four versions on this game to store your Pokemon. Being able to play Ruby or Sapphire on the big screen does seem cool, unless you have the Gameboy Advance player already, in which case it won't matter at all.

So what are these bonus features that were mentioned in the tag line? Well if you order this over Nintendo.com, for twenty dollars you get an AMAZING deal!

-Pokemon Box
-A nice Ruby/Sapphire Memory Card 59 to save this on (it comes empty too, so you can use a memory card of your choice if you want)
-A GAMEBOY ADVANCE GAMECUBE CABLE!!

I was completely shocked as I opened the box and found that I got a bonus cable at no extra cost! It was like finding a ten dollar bill in the parking lot! AWESOME!

So for twenty bucks, you can:

-Store a crapload of Pokemon with Ruby/Sapphire/LeafGreen/FireRed/Emerald
-Start a new game without having to capture them hard to catch Pokemon EVER again
-Store a few of your TMS and rare items, like your Master Ball
-Make a fancy display with all of your favorite Pokemon
-Score a FREE Memory Card and Gameboy Advance Gamecube Cable
-Be able to play Ruby and Sapphire on your TV

The price sure is right! You can get it only in a few locations, but if you do get it, you won't be sorry unless you don't have a Gameboy or a Pokemon game for the before mentioned Gameboy.

Update 2010: Sadly, Nintendo no longer sells this collection on their website, thus forcing you to enter the depths of online auctions and pray you can find something like this under 100 dollars nowadays. While doomed to collectors status, it is still worth picking up if you needed some extra space for your 3rd generation Pokemon while attempting to move them to the 4th while we wait for Nintendo to make us a new storage system that isn't as god awful as My Pokemon Ranch. But with gen 5 on the way, I don't see that happening any time soon. So this might be the only storage system for the next few years to come.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/07/05, Updated 02/26/10

Game Release: Pokemon Box: Ruby and Sapphire (US, 07/12/04)