Throughout this gaming blogs lifespan I’ve only played the PS1 and the Xbox for Retro Reviews. Yet I hadn’t touched the console that I spent years pining for as a child, the GameCube! The GameCube brightened my childhood with classics such as Sonic Adventure, Billy Hatcher and Super Mario Sunshine. But for my first foray for Retro Reviews, I went for Pokemon Colosseum.

I’ve always been a Pokemon guy, I hate turn based combat these days but I’ll always tolerate it for the Pokemon series.

Growing up with the Yellow, Crystal, FireRed and Ruby editions of the game and eventually throwing myself into Diamond, Black and X editions as a teen, I’ve practically been a lifelong fan of the series.

One game that I didn’t manage to finish as a dumb kid was this classic for the GameCube, a game thats visuals blew my mind for its time period.

I mean, who had seen 3D Pokemon before? Not sprites but actual 3D models!

So join me as I head back to the Orre region and take down those Shadow Pokemon.

The Plot

We start off with explosions in a suspicious lab and our titular character Wes snagging a snagging machine from his former group Team Snagem (yes yes very clever). He then escapes on his cool motorcycle with your starter Pokemon Umbreon & Espeon in the sidecar.

We then find ourselves in our first area, the Outskirt Stand. Here we’re caught up on the news of Team Snagem being robbed on the TV. We also take part in our first battle to rescue our sidekick for the rest of the game, Rui.

Rui tells us of a plot by a gang of nefarious trainers named Cipher. A plot to gather Shadow Pokemon (Pokemon that have been treated badly to the point of their hearts closing).

These are extra powerful Pokemon that you will encounter throughout the remainder of the game and are the only catchable Pokemon in the game.

So off we set to take Cipher down!

World Design

The Orre region is a pretty desolate place. With the exceptions of a few little nice villages, the majority of the locations in game are run down and full of criminals.

What I loved most about the world design is that no two locations look the same. They’re all very unique in appearance and have music to perfectly fit the setting.

Like any Pokemon game, each location has NPCs and buildings to interactive with throughout that will help guide you through the story.

Pokemon: Gotta Catch Em All

Gotta catch em all! If they’re shadow Pokemon.

Unlike it’s handheld predecessors, Pokemon Colosseum doesn’t allow you to just walk through blades of grass and encounter Pokemon.

All battles in game will be against trainers and the only Pokemon that you can catch are Shadow Pokemon from other trainers.

It makes sense for the plot, but it also means your options for your party are gonna be very limited.

My final party for the end game was:

• Umbreon
• Espeon
• Meganium
• Mantine
• Ampharos
• Magcargo

The legendary beast Pokemon Entei, Raikou and Suicune are available to catch from some of the bosses in game. They’ll appear as Shadow Pokemon and are an absolute nightmare to catch.

All Shadow Pokemon have a move called Shadow Rush, which causes recoil damage. Can you see where I’m going with this? Trying to catch one of these Legendary Pokemon with low health and their low catch rate while they continuously try to kill themselves!

Just a nightmare.

I did manage to catch them, but I don’t use legendaries in Pokemon games so it was a waste of my time really. I did it for bragging rights.

Battle System

The battles are just like any other Pokemon game, but they’re with 3D models instead of sprites.

So the move animations were really cool for their time!

Even though you never physically see Pokemon attack each other in game due to the quick camera cuts, the animations were game changing for the time period.

Of course we’ve since seen newer Pokemon games do it all far better, you can’t deny how awesome it looked in Pokemon Colosseum.

Battles are 2v2 and whilst visually impressive for the first so many hours, you’ll soon find yourself wishing you could skip the summoning animations of 4 Pokemon in every battle.

The main gripe with lack of random encounters is that all grinding is done in trainer battles. So you’ll find yourself entering Colosseum tournaments and fighting your way through Mt Battle to level up Pokemon. These are fun competitions and I enjoyed them a lot, you’ll win cash prizes for buying SO MANY revives and also TMs to teach your Pokemon some cool new moves.

I did that for about 16 hours of my 24 hour playthrough, at which point I couldn’t wait for the game to end.

Shadow Pokemon

Did I mention that Shadow Pokemon don’t level up until you cure them? Did I also mention that they don’t unlock other moves than Shadow Rush unless you regularly use them in battle?

Once a Shadow Pokemons heart gauge is completely empty you can take them to a shrine where their hearts can be opened again. If you have an item called a Time Flute, you can use this to summon Celebi who will cure any Shadow Pokemon regardless of the heart gauge status.

Honestly they’re a nightmare until you’re able to open their hearts again. Once this is done they will of course receive all EXP and moves learned from battles prior but it’s a bit of a slog until then.

Rui – The Ultimate Annoyance

Let’s talk about Rui, the companion.

Why must she stand in the way when I’m trying to leave a room? Why must she have an animation to tell you there’s a shadow Pokemon amongst us?

The following mechanic was well done in Pokemon Yellow with Pikachu so how did they mess it up years later?

It gave me flashbacks to X-Men Legends when my teammates would block the doorways!

Battle Mode

Aside from the story, there is another game mode called Battle Mode. As you could have guessed it, this focuses more on the battling element rather than any plot driven gameplay.

In Battle Mode, you have Colosseum Battle which is a higher difficulty Mt Battle scenario in which you can unlock the legendary Ho-Oh if you have snagged all Shadow Pokemon in the story mode.

You can also obtain Poke Coupons from winning battles that can be spent on prizes such as TMs and other battle items.

The other mode is Battle Now, which is your straightforward quick battle mode that you’ll find in any fighting game. You can either play against a friend or against the CPU with the option of four difficulties.

Final Thoughts on Pokemon Colosseum

Overall thoughts time!

Story is boilerplate Pokemon, protagonist takes down villainous crime syndicate. Never gets old! This time without defeating the Elite Four, but also replaced with a mountain of 100 trainers to battle against.

I only made it to 80 before deciding to just finish the game.

As a kid I remember being mesmerised by the 3D graphics and animations, I also had the patience of a saint back then clearly. Adult me was also mesmerised for a small while, before I wanted to speed things up so that I could progress!

Towards the final six hours of Pokemon Colosseum I was done with turn based combat and just wanted the game to come to an end, which isn’t the best thought when playing a game.

I think I’ll be giving myself a break from turn based combat for a while!

Retro Grade – C

Check out our other Retro Reviews of games like Metal Gear Solid, X-Men Legends and Spyro The Dragon!

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