Not seen any mention of the new Pok?mon games on the forum so far (could be because Pok?'s aimed at under 10s, but m'eh 
) so I'll post my first impressions. I only got Sapphire yesterday from Tronix - would have had it sooner, but I wasn't in when the postie called.
The first thing that struck me was the sticky controls. They haven't changed at all from the GB versions - you still move a tile at a time - but the scrolling's now a lot smoother and the sprites don't float about like they did on the GB version. And you can run with the B button, which is a welcome addition.
The graphics are generally pretty good too, well in battle at least. The Pok?mon have a "hand painted" look about them there plus each has a different icon in the menus. The map graphics however look exactly like the GB versions, but in 256 colours. And I'm sure I've seen those tree tiles used in another game. There's a nice "reflection" effect when you walk near water though (makes clever use of the GBA sprite flipping, resizing and alpha blending at least).
The actual interfaces and all that seem pretty complex so far. I didn't use everything in previous pokemon outings, but here there's about a million different stats screens to peruse and I don't have a clue what they all mean. Even after I RTFM. Also, in red/blue you had yer basic fire, water, ice types.. here they've got ghost and dark and other weirdo ones - it's certainly gong to take a lot of playing to get it all sussed.
Basically then, this is the same Pok?mon game as always, but for GBA. If you got sick of an earlier version, I doubt this has enough new stuff to convince you it's worthwhile. If you finished Red/Blue/Gold/Silver though, then this is probably exactly what you wanted... Oh, I was a bit put off when I saw "a good level of reading is needed to enjoy this game" on the box - d'you think it's aimed at a different age bracket to me?
Quirky, aged 25
) so I'll post my first impressions. I only got Sapphire yesterday from Tronix - would have had it sooner, but I wasn't in when the postie called.The first thing that struck me was the sticky controls. They haven't changed at all from the GB versions - you still move a tile at a time - but the scrolling's now a lot smoother and the sprites don't float about like they did on the GB version. And you can run with the B button, which is a welcome addition.
The graphics are generally pretty good too, well in battle at least. The Pok?mon have a "hand painted" look about them there plus each has a different icon in the menus. The map graphics however look exactly like the GB versions, but in 256 colours. And I'm sure I've seen those tree tiles used in another game. There's a nice "reflection" effect when you walk near water though (makes clever use of the GBA sprite flipping, resizing and alpha blending at least).
The actual interfaces and all that seem pretty complex so far. I didn't use everything in previous pokemon outings, but here there's about a million different stats screens to peruse and I don't have a clue what they all mean. Even after I RTFM. Also, in red/blue you had yer basic fire, water, ice types.. here they've got ghost and dark and other weirdo ones - it's certainly gong to take a lot of playing to get it all sussed.
Basically then, this is the same Pok?mon game as always, but for GBA. If you got sick of an earlier version, I doubt this has enough new stuff to convince you it's worthwhile. If you finished Red/Blue/Gold/Silver though, then this is probably exactly what you wanted... Oh, I was a bit put off when I saw "a good level of reading is needed to enjoy this game" on the box - d'you think it's aimed at a different age bracket to me?
Quirky, aged 25
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