Might as well face it, you're addicted to Pokemon...
Flash forward to present day. My now 10 yr old wants a new GC game at GameStop, so I buy her (not knowing that I was about to blow a big wad of money on related games and fling myself merrily into eternal damnation) Pokemon Coliseum. …She, in a word, loves this game. So I then buy her (falling further into the trap) a copy of Sapphire that she can plug in to Coliseum and catch even more of the little bast@#$s. Well, I see that Sapphire can (like blue/red/yellow) can trade with Ruby, so I, in a fit of parental bonding, decide to buy Ruby as well. I figure that I can play along with her and help her by giving her some of my Pokemon if she ever needs them.
I am a bad daddy... Not only have I firmly passed her up in my game (I’ve beaten it, she has three badges), I flat out refuse to give her any of my “Elite Six” that I’ve beaten the game with. I actually, to belabor the point, will refuse to give her any of my Pokemon unless she has one of equal value to trade me. I am such an a$$.
This, friends and neighbors, is called Pokem-itus (not to be confused with Poke-in-my-ass-is, which can be caught in any local Federal prison). I feel the need, when playing this game to “Catch ‘em All!” And the ability to give your Pokemon different moves, breed them into more powerful cuties, and the fun of trying to find that one elusive Pokemon you need to fill out your Pokedex is so addictive. If this game could be crumbled up and heated on the back of a spoon, I’d be freebasing Pikachu and Geodude all day long.
The graphics, which haven’t changed overly much from one game to the next, are good. Nothing terribly exciting to write home about, no 3D rendered movies here to catch your eye. The sound as well is nothing to write home about. After a while I tended to turn down the volume and listen to different music, because the little tunes are replayed over, and over, and over again. The story doesn’t have anything new or exciting in it, no love interests are ever introduced (though if you play as a boy, your rival/friend will be a girl and vice versa; nothing ever comes out of this little tidbit). One interesting bit of the story is that if you play Ruby, then the evil team will be Team Magma, who are trying to expand the landmasses of the continent; if you’re playing Sapphire then your nemesis will be Team Aqua, who are trying to expand the world’s oceans. And in Ruby, Team Aqua will help you in your adventure, and in Sapphire Team Magma will help you. Pretty cute, nothing major.
The entire point of this game though, and the reason kids are dropping out of school at such early ages, is to catch, evolve, breed, or trade your Pokemon until you have an entire Pokedex (kinda like an encyclopedia of all the Pokemon you’ve seen or caught) filled with useless information that no one, especially the friends and loved ones of a 32 yr. old man, will ever care about. I don’t care how cool you are, or how “lucky” you get, you can not sound like a bada$$ while explaining that you have to be really nice and loving to your Golbat so it will evolve. If you’re lucky, your buddies will only kick you butt. If you’re unlucky, they will kick your butt and take your money and keys.
So, to be perfectly fair, this game is really just an expansion onto the ideas of the original series. Yes, new things are added like Contests where you have to pose and strut your Pokemon to draw crowd attention, or PokeBlocks, which are kinda like candy for your Pokemon that will bump up stats for said contests. But my personal draw here was that I had to “Catch ‘em All,” and if I had to step on my daughters back on the way to finishing that list, well you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. “Yes dear, daddy loves you, but if you don’t give me that Pichu I swear to God I will destroy you!”