Keitai Denjuu Telefang

"Pro: Awesome quotes. Con: Lacks a monster named "Jenny"."

"Pokemon Diamond" was a bootleg gamed released alongside the equally bootleg "Pokemon Jade" a few years back, following the success of the non-bootleg Pokemon Gold and Silver. There was a bit of a feud on eBay about whether it was allowed by their rules to sell these games or not, but other than that, they never really made any impact.

My first experience with Pokemon Diamond was when my friend informed me that his friend had been sent it as a gift from their brother in China (you heard me). He told me "It's Pokemon, but different. Like, you use a cellphone to call the Pokemon. And the people swear."

I was understandably confused. Fast forward to present time. I've now played Pokemon Diamond (AKA Keitai Denjuu Telefang, the non-bootleg name, which I believe means Mobile Electric Monster Telefang), and I'm possibly even more confused than I was before.

I lie awake at nights envious of the simpler days before I had played Pokemon Diamond. Because once you play it, there's no turning back. It consumes your very soul.

...Okay, so maybe it isn't THAT different from the real Pokemon games.

The story is completely ridiculous. There are apparently two worlds - the human world, and the electric monster's world. These worlds are connected by a "link tree". However, to contact the electric monster's world you must have a coveted electronic called a D Shoot.

I have no idea.

Of course, your character has one of these D Shoots, and thus happens to be teleported to the electric monster's world, along with your friend, Sungki. Did I mention your character is named Mr. Bek? Not even Bek. Mr. Bek. This is quite possibly the greatest name for any protagonist ever.

Mr. Bek is the helpful type, although he's also kind of a badass. He wants to make friends with the electric monsters, as you would expect from a game in the "capture creatures" genre, but he's anything but nice to the bad guys of the game, threatening to push them off ledges and so forth. I also think he's either gay or bisexual (I only point this out because video games need more gay protagonists), as he makes some questionable comments about Miyor (the quintessential rival). Mr. Bek alone is worth playing this game. He's that awesome.

Back to the story, Mr. Bek and Sungki are transported to the electric monster's world, where they meet Musa, a turtle monster. Kuribute joins you (he's an armadillo/hedgehog thing) and you're asked to wake Netaro, the village's water collector, who has been... put to sleep, I think, by Nejiro, his brother.

The "translation" of this game is REALLY bad. And REALLY funny. But mostly it makes the plot even more confusing. Thus leading to me lying awake at night pondering (are you pondering what I'm pondering?), and the lack of sleep clouds my judgment, which makes me want to continue playing Pokemon Diamond, and thus, like Pac-Man, it is a vicious circle.

Only about 5 minutes in, you'll discover that Nejiro is actually on your side, and that the real enemy is an evil gang known as the Kakuzako, who seem to be lead by Tasabuku, who wants to...become a woman. I really hope that's a translation error.

From then on, you travel from village to village via antenna trees, in order to help them solve their problems. It's not the best plot, but it'll do. Along the way, you meet a full cast of questionable characters, some of which are monsters, and some of which are humans. You get stronger by defeating electric monsters in random battles and getting their phone numbers. You can then call up to two of them before battle and they'll help you... providing they don't get lost on the way to you. I'm not even kidding.

I must again point out how utterly hilarious this game is. There's a character named Communic. Now, I assume that this was supposed to be "Communicator" or some such thing, and was stopped because of the GBC character limit (8 characters), but that doesn't make it any less funny. Imagine having the name Communic in elementary school.

Honestly, that last paragraph was just setting you up for this following bombshell: You know how, in the real Pokemon games, you were trying to become a Pokemon Master? The greatest Pokemon Trainer of all time?

In this game, you're trying to become the best cellphone battler... However, these master cellphone battlers have their own title. You're trying to become... a Mildew T!

I'll run that by you again: Mildew T. What the HELL? I don't say this often about video games, but I have NO IDEA what they were going for here.

...

MILDEW T.

...Moving on...

Outside of battle, this is your standard LoZ/Pokemon/etc overhead roaming game. You enter houses that seemed much smaller from the outside, find caves, cut grass, and get into random encounters. It's pretty boring. Most areas are very simple and linear, and there are only a few "trainer" battles.

It's in battle that the game gets really great. When you get into a battle, you'll have three options: Attack, escape, and position. I have no idea what position does, so we'll overlook that. Escape should be obvious, but "Attack" really means "Start the battle". Selecting it gives you a list of your cellphone numbers, and you can choose, depending on the difficulty of the battle, one or two monsters to call to help you. (Or zero, but that's up to you. If you don't call anyone, the game sadly replies "Didn't call mate!")

You're then provided with your battle screen. This is your standard "In the bottom left corner... weighing in at 67 pounds... Kuribute! And in the top right corner... at 82 pounds... Kesi!" battle, with the obvious Attack/Escape options. At the very bottom of the screen is the progress of the monsters you called, in any. There will be a bar next their icon showing how close they are to joining you for the battle. If you enemy called any monsters, you'll see their bars as well.

However, only a few monsters show up immediately, and of the ones that don't, there's a good chance they'll get lost or distracted on the way. We'll return to the "other monsters" part a moment, as you're usually stuck with Kuribute for a while.

You'll have a selection of attacks, as will your opponent. There are critical hits, weakness, resistance, and so forth. The Pokemon influence shows here, as it is a very similar battle system, if watered down a bit. So you attack, your opponent attacks, you attack... Etc. Normally you can win by spamming a single attack over and over, such as Dive (which I believe is Telefang's equivalent of Tackle). Your enemies, for the most part, are pathetically weak.

It's the dialogue that makes the battles epic, as messages like "For the smart opponent, damage increase!" and "KURIBU attack DIVE!" appear on screen. Most monsters' names are shortened in battle, so Kuribute becomes Kuribu. That wasn't a typo.

So, assuming he monsters you called actually show up. You'll now be in command of several monsters in what seems to be an active time battle system, but really isn't. As far as I can tell, it's really more like the game says "Hi, I'm going to randomly swap out your monsters as often as possible in order to screw up your strategy".

The battle system does have two cool concepts, though. One is attacking freely. Occasionally your monster won't care what you want to do and decide to aggro the opponent. This isn't an unusual concept for games, but it is quite awesome when your monster decides you're a n00b and takes command of the battle.

The best concept, however, is attacking any opponent. In 3 vs. 3 battles, things can get quite hectic, as you can target the weakest link of your opponent's team, even if they're not currently "active". Your opponent, however, can do the same to you. In a way, this really evens out 1 vs 3/3 vs 1 battles, as you can target their strongest monster while their weakest one is active, to avoid having to deal with the strongest one head on.

Graphics and sound are very average for a GBC game. Nothing that will wow you. However, the art direction on some of the monsters is quite cool. Nejiro especially is awesome looking.

So, the game is completely average on all fronts - story, gameplay, graphics, and sound. So what pushed this up to a six out of ten as opposed to a five or less? Sheer fun factor. This is like a B movie of the video game world. It's so enjoyable because it's so bad. Gotta call 'em all.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/01/06