Pokémon: Emerald Version [GBA]

More importantly, Pokemon Emerald adds in Wireless Adapter support, an element that made last year's Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen more than simple Game Boy Advance remakes. Emerald's Wireless Adapter support enables better trading with the "newer" Pokemon creatures established in the Ruby/Sapphire series, and also builds up the community aspect with other Pokemon adventurers since players can battle and trade within a "Union Room" of dozens of participants. Unfortunately, Nintendo didn't feel that it was necessary to package the device with the game this time around, which was the real feather in the cap for FireRed and LeafGreen and the absence of Emerald brings down this continuation's value below last year's Pokemon release.

Even as a "director's cut" style repackaging, Pokemon Emerald still retains what makes this series a must-have: it's a fantastic, deep adventure that really deserves to be played at least once. Socially, it's "cool" to hate Pokemon because of its sugary-sweet character design and complete saturation within the gaming industry, but its success isn't just clever marketing; Pokemon is, and has always been, an excellent RPG game on the Game Boy platform, offering an incredible amount strategy within its design. And this should mean something coming from someone like myself who's a self-proclaimed hater of the "random battle" element inherent in Japanese RPG designs; the Pokemon formula utilizes it, but in a much more palatable way by keeping creatures in specific locations. In other words, there's an easy way to avoid fights if you need to.

And with Nintendo's inclusion of the Pokemon series within the company's "connectivity" strategy, everything players do in the Game Boy Advance adventure can be moved to other games, like Pokemon Colosseum on the GameCube and Pokemon Dash on the Nintendo DS...with more on the way. That thirty dollar investment goes a long way with Nintendo's other game systems and Pokemon titles.

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