- This article is about Pocket Monster II. For other games with a similar title, see Pocket Monsters.
Pocket Monster II is a bootleg platform game for the Sega Mega Drive loosely based on the Pokémon franchise. It is a direct sequel to Pocket Monster.
Overview[]
This game shows significant improvements over the original in both the artwork and audio, though the former is still mostly taken from other games and the game still retains all the previous glitches from the original game in addition to a new one. The music is mostly remade from the Japanese Pokémon TV series, with songs including the original Japanese opening theme (Stage 1 and Stage 4) and the song Hyakugojyuichi, originally intended to be the ending theme of the Japanese pilot, as the boss theme in the game.
This game is incredibly short overall, as it only contains four levels with a sole final boss at the end of the final one. However, the length of the game comes in punishing slightly careless actions with a very large amount of leaps of faith and overall blind jumps, in combination with the lack of checkpoints. Also, despite the game having very few stages, they are incredibly long, making gameplay tedious. With levels being very large and the screen estate not accommodating this, it is very easy for the player to fall down bottomless pits and lose lives if they do not have the layouts memorized. However, the plentiful extra life pickups, which regenerate upon death, prevent the player from getting a Game Over too soon. The four levels themselves are also incredibly generic. They have no names, but their themes are the following: forest, canyon/valley, castle, and power plant. The only one of the four levels with a specific mechanic is the third, with a button-activated door.
Controls[]
The game has the player control Pikachu, who moves with the control pad and jumps with the C button. Unlike in Pocket Monster, Pikachu cannot use a screen-wide electric attack. Instead, it can toss Poké Balls with the B button when they are collected, which can kill enemies when they come in contact with them. Unfortunately, the Poké Balls are rather useless due to their short range and the fact that the player can lose all of their Poké Balls when they get hit.
Music[]
| Name | Description | Source | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title Theme / Ending Theme Nyaasu no Uta (Meowth's Song) |
Was reused in the Mega Drive version of Pokémon Stadium. | Japanese second ending theme for Pocket Monsters anime. | [1] |
| Stage 1 / Stage 4 Mezase Pokémon Master (Aim to be a Pokémon Master) |
Japanese first opening theme for Pocket Monsters anime. | [2] | |
| Stage 2 / Boss - Weezing Hyaku-Gojuu-Ichi (One Hundred Fifty-One) |
Japanese first ending theme for Pocket Monsters anime. | [3] | |
| Stage 3 Oyasumi, Boku no Pikachu (Goodnight, My Pikachu) |
A song for Pocket Monsters anime. | [4] | |
| Unused Track #1 Rocket-Dan Yo Eien Ni (Team Rocket, Forever) |
Was used in the Mega Drive version of Pokémon Stadium. | A song for Pocket Monsters anime. | [5] |
| Unused Track #2 Lucky Lucky |
Same as above | A song for Pocket Monsters anime. | [6] |
| Unused Track #3 | Same as above | [7] |
Glitches[]
- Pikachu can only control the height of its jump while standing perfectly still, making it incredibly difficult to dodge certain enemies while progressing through the stage.
- On that same note, Pikachu can jump down from vertically moving platforms (moving up) if it jumps too low.
- The aforementioned moving platforms can sometimes disappear if they are by the edge of the screen, due to objects being programmed to disappear if they scroll off screen.
- Pikachu can jump again after jumping on a Pokémon, which also applies to whenever Pikachu is damaged.
- When a Poké Ball is tossed and on-screen, it moves as Pikachu does. This doesn't apply if Pikachu is standing still.
- Sometimes, when the player attempts to throw a Poké Ball at an enemy, the game freezes. This behavior seems to happen both on emulators and on real hardware.
Trivia[]
- Some compositions of music tracks from this game would also be used in the unlicensed Game Boy Color game Fengkuang Dafuweng (aka Crazy Richman / Crazy Monopoly), developed and published by Vast Fame in the year 2000. Namely, the renditions of Nyaasu no Uta and Oyasumi, Boku no Pikachu are used in the aforementioned game for in-game music and on the title screen respectively. The manual for the game credits Yishen Liao (廖益伸) for composing the music[1], suggesting that he also composed at least some of the songs for Pocket Monster II.
- Several graphics for the levels in are taken from various other games: the background of the first stage is taken from The Misadventures of Flink; the level graphics from the second stage seem to be taken from Mega Man X's (SNES) Sting Chameleon stage; the third stage's graphics are taken from the first section of the Polterpink level in Pink Goes to Hollywood (as is the layout of the level itself) and the graphics from the fourth stage are taken from the SNES version of Sparkster.
- While some of the enemies encountered are Pokémon, such as Charmander, Oddish and Weedle, some of the other enemies are taken from a variety of Mega Drive games including Mega Bomberman, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Magical Taluluto (the latter, fittingly, was developed by Game Freak, the creators of Pokémon).
- The title screen Pikachu with his back turned is adapted from the cover of the second Japanese volume of The Electric Tale of Pikachu (or Electric Tale! Pikachu), an official Pokémon manga. Curiously, the Famicom version of Pocket Monster uses artwork based on the English cover of the same volume.
Gallery[]
Video[]
See also[]
- Pocket Monster (Famicom), a platforming game loosely based on Pokémon that features Pikachu as the playable character
- Pocket Monsters Crystal, a platforming game for the Game Boy Color starring Chikorita
- Pocket Monsters Pikachu Stadium, a turn-based fighting game loosely based on Pokémon developed by Good Life for the Game Boy Color
- Pokémon Gold Silver, a platforming game for the SNES starring Chikorita and Totodile as the playable characters