[GBA] Pokémon Orange Islands ~ Champion Drake (by Kalarie, ver 5.7)

Channel:

FamilyTeamGaming

Subscribers:

574

Published on December 15, 2021 4:59:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngqQ6ykDy1Y

Game:

Pokémon Emerald (2004)

Duration: 12:23

108 views

1

Download link: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=402242

The Orange Archipelago is an anime-original location visited by Ash and his friends during the second season of the show. Essentially a filler season while the Generation 2 games got delayed well over 2 years past their original intended release date, the region depicted in it is the only one never to have been officially represented in any of the videogames, captivating the imagination of kids and ROM hackers alike, which have for years attempted to bring the region to life for us to play in and get those elusive 4 badges.

This is far from the first hack to take place in the Orange Islands and I suspect it won't be the last, but, I think it'll be difficult to top this one. This is an extremely impressive hack in scope, execution, presentation and accuracy to the source material. Presented in all-new colorful graphics which really bring the region's tropical nature to life, this hack allows you to visit nearly every single location shown in the season and almost every episode is recreated one form or another faithfully, even if some creative liberties had to obviously be taken to fit the structure of this being a videogame that you play rather than a TV show you watch. For the post game, you even get an in-game recreation of the second movie.

While this hack is excellently made with pretty great attention to detail, it's obvious that the weak link of all of this is the source material. While a game taking place in the Orange Islands is one of those things you'd daydream about during class, I think the second season is also no one's favorite season, and this hack's commitment to accuracy honestly sometimes works against it because of it. Island surfing throughout the region does start to get repetitive and the recreation of some episodes do pretty much devolve into just being a cutscene. This isn't to discredit the author, but I think it's an indicator that the second season doesn't have enough meat on its bones to make a game out of without even heavier intervention of creative liberty to make things flow a little better in a game.

Not thirty minutes before I recorded this video, I had a much cleaner battle against Drake where I basically mopped the floor up with his team, unopposed. In this attempt, the first half of the battle went smoother, but then some rotten RNG rolls made his Dragonite a bit of a nightmare. I keep wanting to beat myself up over not having recorded that attempt instead, but honestly, what even makes a good Pokémon battle against an NPC? While a clean fight looks edgy and cool to some, it's also arguably a bit boring. Meanwhile, a fight where there's a lot of Pokémon fainting left and right arguably looks amateur-ish, but at least it means there is an actual fight to watch. Bah, if you read the description this far, do let me know how you feel in the comments.

This is the last Pokémon video, I swear.

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