First Impressions: Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire

How do you begin a remake of a cherished childhood memory? How do you change an old 2D game into a new, 3D one, without losing the magic that made the game good in the first place? These are the challenges that Pokémon ORAS faced and, judging by their opening sequence, they may have succeeded. But why, you might ask? Read on to find out... (But be warned as there are spoilers).
The game starts with the iconic intro from the original Ruby and Sapphire with the water dripping from the leaf, the bikes, Latios and Latias and, finally, your trainer... Oh the memories. This is great in two ways: one it brings back the nostalgia of the originals and, two, it shows you how different the new games are from the originals. But that's not even close to how well the next bit is done.

I was expecting a new cinematic cutscene to start the game off, like in X and Y, but, instead, you get a video of Professor Birch introducing himself to you in full 2D mode! In fact, the entire picture shrinks to the size of a Gameboy and, I must confess, I started to panic, thinking that this was just going to be an emulator of the originals (not that that would be bad, of course). But then the screen starts to pan out and you're watching the inside of a 3D moving truck from a first-person perspective. And it turns out that your, as yet unseen, character was holding a Gameboy like object (which is actually the new Pokénav) and was watching the old intro! For me, this was a perfect introduction to what appears to be another brilliant iteration into the Pokémon series.

And that's even without talking about all of the new features such as the DexNav (which will make training for the World Championship next year, a lot easier as well as filling up the Pokédex). I'm already 2 hours in (would be further but I've been super busy lately) and I've not even beaten the first gym yet! And this isn't because I'm slow and rubbish (I'd hope that after about 10 years, I'd have picked up a thing or two) but because I'm just enjoying all of the new features and all the call backs to the old games. An example of this would be with the DexNav again, as, on the bottom screen, it shows a small picture of the area of your in, with graphics ripped straight from the old games! It's small little touches like this that will make this game so great and have made the franchise so brilliant for all these years! The fact that the only thing missing is trainer customisation has to show something!

Goodbye for now, Harry