On Pokémon Crystal
Created: 2024-10-27 (12:00:00) — Modified: 2025-05-26 (20:20:48)Status: in progress
I got my original Gameboy Colour cartridge of Pokémon Crystal secondhand from a strange hybrid retro games and used books store. The shelves were dark timber. Interposed between musty paperbacks, the plastic cartridges and glossy cardboard boxes seemed so out of place. It’s not the kind of juxtaposition I’ve seen in any retro games store since.
I spent most of the next year, wherever we happened to be, inhabiting Crystal instead. I’ve still got that copy of the game, but the battery is long dead.
Of all the iterations of Pokémon games that I’ve since played, Cystal is the one I keep returning to, the closest the series has ever come to an ideal version for me. This is because it is atypical, compared to what came both before and after, in how comfortable it is being aimless and meandering.
I don’t mean it’s poorly designed. The mechanics, the way you progress through its setting, are really well thought out. The game is still a lot of fun, twenty years on. It’s aimless and meandering in its plot, in its pacing, and in it setting. Crystal is so… tranquil.
There is no inciting event to kick off your adventure, other than receiving your Pokémon from Professor Elm, and your Pokédex from Professor Oak. There is no rolling narrative to pull you across the Johto region, although you do frustrate a scattered Team Rocket’s plans a few times and teach your rival that caring about Pokémon is good, actually. There’s no world-ending threat or grand villain. Everything feels so laidback.
Past a certain point, you’ll have taught your Pokémon enough hidden moves to roam freely across most of Johto. You can look for Pokémon, or battles, or participate in daily and weekly events. All sorts of things are happening at different times and on specific days, which the game telegraphs to a greater or lesser extent. The bug-catching contest, you’ll learn, happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays. the lucky number channel game, you can attempt every day. But finding Lapras in Union Cave, only on Fridays and only if you descend to its deepest subfloor. There are depths this game won’t tell you are there, will let you discover for yourself, potentially years down the line, possibly never.
Crystal is atypical because it’s not structured around a narrative, it’s structured around a space, a living world. You progress through Crystal by just… inhabiting it. The mechanics expect you to check in regularly. Different Pokémon appear at different times. Some characters will only challenge you to battles at night. Others, if you get their numbers, will call for a rematch. In time, you’ll level up enough to take on the next gym, find another hidden move that opens up more of the world. Meandering around in Johto is exactly how you’re supposed to progress!
I’m not sure if any other Pokémon game has nailed this loop so well, letting you jump in, fuck around a bit, progress a little bit, do your dailies and jump back out.
To be honest, Pokémon battles don’t really much appeal to me in themselves. I’ve tried to teach myself about effort values and type matchups and it’s never stuck. I mash through the text boxes without reading when my critter levels up. I wouldn’t be able to tell you if my best boy’s stats are good or bad. Pokémon has always been appealing for me as a virtual pet thing, first, and a role playing game second. Here’s a series with, by this point, over one thousand beasts to befriend and go exploring the world with. I can’t bring myself to care for the maths of it all.
That said, in Crystal, most things still resolve down to battling. I think what makes it different though is the way these encounters are framed. You’re not just catching Pokémon to fill out the dex, you’re taking part in a bug-catching contest! You’re teaching your shithead rival that love beats raw power, every time! You’re in the depths of Union Cave or the Whirl Islands, following up on a rumour, a bit of legend. The battles don’t feel like ends in themselves, they feel like excuses to explore the world, capstones to you learning a little more about it. This is more interesting to me than being forced to slog through them because a poorly-written narrative demanded it of you.
Also, it was the first Pokémon game to let you be a girl and that’s pretty good in my opinion. Ten stars.
References
- Reed, Em, 2019, Do Your Dailies, online
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