.png){kind=logo}
I was just an innocent child when my dad got me a bunch of PlayStation 1 games that included Pokémon. While I could've guessed it was a bootleg game as soon as I saw it, I knew back in the early 2000s there were Pokémon games for home consoles, despite having only played portable titles like Pokémon Red and Crystal. Maybe it was a real game like Pokémon Stadium? But it wasn't.
I remember that the PS1 disc stayed in my console just long enough to leave an eternal mark in my memory, that of a trash whack-a-mole Pokémon game so cursed its developers should be in jail not for copyright infringement, but for creative crime. I played it for such a short time that until today, over 20 years later, I was sure it was just a fever dream and that I had never played this monstrosity. Until I finally found Pokémon Crazy Hit 2.
The game's video footage is exactly as I recall when I played it: no music, no catching or combat, and no fun. Pokémon pop out of holes in the ground just like in Whack-a-Mole, and you have to throw your Pokéball and hit them on the head to score points and move on to the next stage. And this simple mechanic reveals all the layers of chaos and absurdity that only a bootleg game can have.
All Pokémon are terribly drawn. The Pikachu that pops up on the title screen has a belly only a 70-year-old man with a 12-pack-a-day habit for 50 years could match. Eevee's eyes clearly show it had too much Red Bull. And if you think Mega Dragonite sucks, oh boy... Wait until you see its faceless version in Crazy Hit.
The bizarre non-Pokémon in the loading and continue screens are something else. One looks like Pikachu wearing a motorcycle helmet, a variant worth of Pokémon GO; but the stick man from the continue screen, broken in half and with a sad cloud face, is just a random abomination.
The developers didn't even try to make the whack-a-mole gameplay more convincing or in line with the original Pokémon. There is no capture animation when the Pokéball hits a Pokémon, and these poor creatures just make a sad face when hit, then retreat to their holes. Maybe all these Pokémon are already owned by other trainers, and that's why you can't catch them? We'll never know.
The worst part is that the game is unforgiving, according to the BootlegGames Wiki. The difficulty is so high that beating the first stage should be impossible with a DualShock, which is probably one of the many reasons I dropped the game as a kid. I didn't have the peripheral that was supposed to come with it, so I never had a chance to see the later stages. The creator of the only video I found on Pokémon Crazy Hit 2 didn't have much luck either.
Imagine how many copyright infringement lawsuits Nintendo would send these devs today. Nintendo has already proven that no creator is too small to get served, with some of their lawsuits including fan creators of Mario games and of over 500 other small games.
All in all, this bootleg Pokémon game makes Palword and TemTem look like completely original ideas. The funniest part is that Crazy Hit 2 implies Crazy Hit 1 exists, and I don't plan to ever play it.
The post My childhood’s biggest gaming fever dream is real—even if Nintendo wishes it wasn’t appeared first on Destructoid.
Stay tuned thanks for visiting
0 Comments