Pokémon Colosseum

Gotta Save ’em All

JP release: 21st November 2003
NA release: 21st March 2004
EU release: 14th May 2004
Developer: Genius Sonority
Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokémon Company
NGC Magazine Score: 84%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

After the Pokémon Stadium games on the N64, The Pokémon Company thought it was finally time for a proper home console Pokémon RPG game. However, they couldn’t just make a fully-fledged Pokémon game for consoles (presumably out of fear of it affecting people’s views of the handheld games), so we got a more story-focused game with zero wild Pokémon in it. Instead, you have a special machine that turns Pokéballs into “Snag Balls” that can steal Pokémon from other trainers.

The story centred around a older (as in older than a kid) main character after blew up the headquarters of Team Snagem. He bumps into a girl in the process of being kidnapped. She is able to see the auras of Shadow Pokémon – which have had their hearts closed off to increase their potential in battle. You’ll work together to uncover who is behind these Shadow Pokémon and stop their plans for world domination. The story is quite interesting and I liked the characters.

These Shadow Pokémon are a key component of the game. Due to their mistreatment, it makes it “ok” for your character to steal them from their trainers (oddly, the trainers never really care about you taking them). These Pokémon start out with just one shadow move (which also hurts them) and they also can’t level up or evolve. They can also enter a hyper mode which makes them more powerful, but liable to not listen to you. As you use them in battles, call their name to cancel hyper mode and walk around, you’ll purify these Pokémon. Once you’ve done this, you can travel somewhere special to fully heal them, where they will gain all the experience from battles that happened while they were shadow Pokémon.

I really like the visual style of Colosseum. There’s a rustic, western kind of vibe to it. It’s far less clean than what you usually see in Pokémon games and I loved seeing more hand-made signs for established things like Pokémon centres. Unfortunately, you can only fast travel between areas, so you just have a few towns and a bunch of dungeons to explore, but it’s a really nice bunch of locations.

One thing I found strange was the limited number of Pokémon you can capture. There are 48 Pokémon you can snag as Shadow Pokémon, you start of with Umbreon and Espeon (who I expected to be more involved in the story) and a few extras you can gain along the way. There’s also a few bonuses from things like e-Reader cards. This tiny limit is very purposeful, though, and I can’t really understand why. Once you’ve beaten the game, you can transfer Pokémon from the first three generations, so they’re all in the game. You can also use all the Pokémon in the Battle Mode, so it’s just odd that there’s so few in the main game. Perhaps they wanted to highlight that it was a strange area with very few Pokémon?

I found Colosseum to be a rather interesting game, with it only having 2-on-2 Pokémon battles, the interesting mechanics of the Shadow Pokémon and more focus on story. I’m still not a fan of turn-based RPGs, but this game just had a really nice vibe to it.

Fun

Despite our initial misgivings , Colosseum – seen as one game rather than two disparate modes – offers a colossal amount of fun for the hardened enthusiast, and if you consider both GC and GBA Pokémon games as one glorious whole, you’ll be hard pushed to find a more complex, absorbing and engaging title.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #93

Remake or remaster?

A remaster would be great.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Pokémon Colosseum.