Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5468 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Nintendo
• Model: 45496737764
• Released on: 2006-11-10
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Game Boy Advance
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.25" h x 5.00" w x 5.00" l, .18 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
One day you awake to find that you’ve been turned into a Pokémon and the land around you is being destroyed by natural disasters. It’s up to you to explore dungeons filled with wild monsters and uncover your true destiny and purpose in a game where you get to "be" a Pokémon.

The lowdown:
Rather than being one of the core role-playing games in the Pokémon series this is a spin-off based on ChunSoft’s long running (in Japan at least) Mystery Dungeon series. The basic idea is that you enter a random generated dungeon and defeat all the wild Pokémon you find within it. Most of the standbys of the Pokémon world also make an appearance, including Technical Machines that enable you to lean new abilities, resistances and weakness to different elemental attacks. You can’t capture wild Pokémon but you can recruit them to your team, which adds something to your strategic options. Admittedly the game can get repetitive, but there’s generally enough to see and do until the "real" Pokémon sequels come out sometime next year.

Most exciting moment:
The combat is a clever mix between real-time and turn-based combat, with wild Pokémon moving about the dungeon at the same time as you. You can have four Pokémon in your team at once, with the computer controlling the other three, and each can have four attacks or abilities each. If you’re sensible you’ll put together a varied team so you’ve got an attack ready for whatever enemy comes your way.

Since you ask:
As with most Pokémon titles there are two versions of the game, in this case one for the DS and one for the GBA. They’re both essentially the same, except with different distributions of Pokémon in each. The DS does have a couple of extra options though, as well as an easier to use touch screen interface.

The bottom line:
Not the deepest Pokémon game ever but you’ll still find yourself wanting to catch ‘em all. - HARRISON DENT

Customer Reviews

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is awseome
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is very different to every other pokemon game, because in every other game you are a human who captures and battles with pokemon. In this you are a pokemon and make pokemon friends. You wake up one morning as a pokemon and then build a rescue team. Still pokemon join you if you have a place for them to live. What I like most about this game is that in the game all 300 and some thing pokemon appear. Also I always had to have torchic, treeko or mudkip at the start of my emerald and ruby. But in this, finally I get the chance to be totodile and cyndyquill. At the beginning you take a quiz deciding wich pokemon you are. Then you can choose a partner out of the Kanto, Johto and Hoenn starters. It is a very good game and you go against Zapdos (the first legendary you go against), quite early in the game. I would say that it's the best pokemon game ever.

I love this game!
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red is certainly a change from the original Pokemon games, and also as good. I love it to bits! The graphics are decent, and it's really cute seeing those tiny little sprites on screen. In a world where you are a Pokemon you actually get to see other Pokemon talk and interact with you and each other, their emotions and you can get people to join you on your adventure. This is a truely cute little game that Pokemon fans are sure to love!

Something a little different
"Well, just imagine you're lying there, and you wake up... and you're a Pokémon!"
"Hmm, sounds interesting..."
"And get this! The world is ending!"

That sums up how I think this game was pitched.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is an interesting game. Very enjoyable with many of our old favourites (I ended up Charmander, my very first starter when I forst played Pokémon Blue) and some newer ones scattered here and there (I got excited to see Absol later on in the game). However, while the gameplay is all neww and exciting, and it seems Pokémon live in a civilised society after all... it just seems that little bit, well, dark.

Basically, the world is being thrown into an apocalypse, something we don't learn until roughly the middle of the game. You, the protagonist, and your new friend must level up, fighting off bad guys and bullies and wild Pokémon who hate you for seemingly no reason, until eventually you can solve why this is all happening and put a stop to it.

Despite the chilling thought of the world ending if you screw up (which is, of course, not possible. It's a game, after all), this is a very enjoyable adventure, almost like a Pokémon episode gone wonderfully wrong, and not only are you the trainer - you're the Pokémon as well. Not just senseless violence anymore! Now you have a reason to fight!

Kids will love it because, well, it's Pokémon, right? Adults would probably love it, fan or not, since it's challenging.

Ok, so you don't catch and train Pokémon now. But you do recruit and train together.

It's a very spiritual type of game. There's purpose other than to be the best. You're part of a rescue team and you have responsibility. Think Spider-Man if he became an actual spider (or Spinarak as the case may be).

However the rescue missions can get repetitive and it can be very frustrating if your client faints while you're trying to guide them through a Pokémon infested cave. And if you faint, you lose a lot of your money and LOADS of items. Very frustrating if your last Blowback Orb was being kept just in case and you lost it due to fainting at the hands of a Ditto in the guise of Lairon.

Overall it's a fun game, kept me up all night at first. Now it just sits on my bookshelf while I go back to Pokémon Silver.