Pokemon Pinball (Game Boy Color)

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Pokemon Pinball
(Game Boy Color)

Released:
Japan: April 14, 1999

A pinball game?

Yep, Pokemon's been made into just about every type of game you can imagine (except maybe racing...hmmm...). The pinballs are actually different types of Monster Balls. You can get a Monster Ball, Great Ball, Ultra Ball, and a Master Ball, depending on how many points you've racked up. To catch pokemon, you must ricochet your ball either on a Madatsubomi or a Parushien to make its silouette appear. Then, you have two minutes to either hit three Biriridama (red table) or three Shellder (blue table) repeatedly until the word "Catch" ("Get" in the Japansese version) appears. Hit the pokemon one more time and it's yours! You can later evolve your pokemon, either naturally or with a stone by going into Evolution Mode. The challenge comes in getting all the pokemon, turning a simple game of pinball into a scavenger hunt that will occupy you for hours.

Pikachu Getto de Chu!

The game has two tables, a red one and a blue one. Like the original Game Boy games, some can only be caught on the red table and some only on the blue. When you begin playing, you choose an area on the map to search for pokemon. Areas such as Tokiwa Forest, the Safari Zone, Cycling Road, Hanada City, etc. house different pokemon, and some areas are only available on one of the two tables. Masara Town and its pokemon are only on the Red Table, and Mt. Moon and its pokemon are only on the Blue Table. But all 150 pokemon are there. In addition, there are four bonus stages: a Deigda stage, a Gengaa stage, a Nyasu stage, and a Pauwau stage.

Red and blue tables

One neat feature of this game is that it takes advantage of the Game Boy Color. The graphics are colorful and clean, and the music is nice. There's even a version of "Mezase Pokemon Master" (non-vocal, of course)! The other music includes neat Los Vegas-like music, making you feel like you're in a casino. The sound effects include the usual bells and whistles, but you also get to hear all the monsters' Game Boy cries and Ikue Ohtani's Pikachu.

Another neat feature is the built-in Rumble Pack. Whenever you hit anything, the pak makes the whole Game Boy vibrate. It's a small shock, though, and it's not enough to make the whole screen blur, so that's good. The pak requires one AA battery (that's included). You can also print out your high scores using the Game Boy Printer-why you'd want to, I don't know.

The game's been out for a while now and can still be found in any store selling video games. Since you can't ususally rent Game Boy games, the only way to play this game is to buy it. Go ahead. You won't be sorry.

Top Left: The rumble pack included with the game. Top Right: The GBC rumbling!

Yay! Mini-games are fun!

Just like in the regular games, Pinball has a Pokemon Zukan.

The US box.

Pocket Monsters was not created by me. It was created by Satoshi Tajiri and the crew at TV-Tokyo. Pokemon is (c) Game Freak, Nintendo, 4Kids Productions, Hasbro, Bandai, and a ton of other companies. When you have a popular anime like Pokemon, lots of people own it so it's impossible to list every company who owns a piece of Pokemon. No infringement of copyrights is meant by the creation of the web site. All images were gotten from official websites (Nintendo, TV-Tokyo, etc.) unless otherwise noted (I don't steal images from other sites!).