Welcome to a Review - well, what did you expect? Today, we're doing a horrifically disappointing game known as Pokemon Channel. I'm somewhat of a Pokemon fan, so I had good expectations about this new game. Unluckily, this game turned out just like Hey You, Pikachu, completely and utterly pathetic. Not only that, this game was also a complete waste of time. I wouldn't normally say that about a Pokemon game, but in this case, I'm inclined to.

System: GameCube
Genre: RPG
Players: 1

The categories are (once again): story/plot, music, graphics, gameplay (which I am splitting into several parts), Fun Factor!, replay value, difficulty, length, and overall.

I'm grading the game in letter grades from A+ to F, with A+ being the best and F being the worst.

Don't be amazed if A+ doesn't even amount to any of the scores.

STORY/PLOT: ~~{D-}~~

What was the point of this game, anyway?! Okay, here's the facts. <<sarcasm=on>> You're minding your own business and such, when... oh no! Professor Oak pops out of nowhere and makes you watch television. What is the reward for this amazing feat? Gain 30 coins? Obtain a rare badge? (Sorry, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is still on my mind). Nope. Instead, you get to send a review to him about how you liked it! YES! Now you can rant to him about how awful it was! But noooooo, you can't do THAT either; sending a report to him is basically saving the game. Phooey. (Well, at least you get a free TV). <<sarcasm=off>>

Let's continue. Okay, anyway... The show he makes you watch is called Pichu Bros Anime: 1. It is pretty uninteresting (mostly because all they do for about half the segment is play the theme song), but it shouldn't be so completely monotonous (uh oh... I'm running out of adjectives to describe "boring"!) so as to lull you to sleep. Once you finish watching the show, you'll file a report (and no, like I said before, you CAN'T rant on how bad it was) and send it to him. Unless you're a complete idiot, you'll figure out how to master the art of pressing buttons in order to change channels (ooh... fascinating!). And, once you finish... you hear a noise! Uh oh! Is it the boogeyman? Is it a distant cousin? Nope, it's worse... it's PIKACHU!

The worst part of the story is that you have to spend every waking moment with Pikachu, my least favorite Pokemon out of all 386 (excluding Munchlax). There is hardly a purpose for keeping Pikachu, because all he does is mess with your television or be an ugly pain and say "Pika-Pika" all day long. Where is the fun in that?! To make a long story short, the plot is that you have to keep playing the game in order to gain channels. Woohoo, whoop-dee-doo, what a load of fun. The best part is, you accomplished absolutely nothing!

Phew. Okay, sorry... I was a bit "into it" there.

To sum everything up... the story/plot is pointless.

The End

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... Just kidding.

MUSIC: ~~{C-}~~

The music, quite frankly, was lackluster (there we go, another adjective for "boring"). It was fairly okay at times, but very repetitive at others. Pokemon was never known for its music, and this is not an exception. This score would've gotten a fairly satisfactory C+ or B-, BUT, Pikachu's horrendously irritating sound effects provoked me to decrease its rating. Don't think this is just a matter of my hatred for Pikachu... those "Pika" noises are a genuine pain.

GRAPHICS: ~~{C}~~

Ugh. Not even the graphics are good. Back on the Nintendo 64, Hey You, Pikachu's graphics were outstandingly good, at least for N64 standards. Unfortunately, the graphics, since then, have not improved one single bit. The graphics are just as good/bad as any other GameCube game, if not a bit worse. If you've played Hey You, Pikachu, then you should know what the graphics are going to look like in Pokemon Channel. And trust me, comparing an N64 game's graphics to a GameCube game's graphics is pretty sadistic.

That makes THREE scores so far that are unsatisfactory. How much worse can Pokemon Channel possibly get?

GAMEPLAY

Worse. Much, much, worse. I'm going to split this category into three parts: Environments, Channels, and Overall. Environments are basically the places outside of the television, Channels are the television channels (duh...), and Overall is the average of those two. If you hope to see an amazing comeback after a trio of bad scores, don't get your hopes too high...

CHANNELS (I'm also splitting these into several channels)

-- Anime Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 --  ~~{B-}~~

Well, these were okay. #1 and #5 were fairly useless because they practically sang a song for half the episodes, but they weren't a total waste. #2, #3 and #4 were actually fairly decent, but nothing you wouldn't expect from a Pokemon cartoon. The only reason I gave it such a high score (B- IS a high score for Pokemon Channel, thank you very much) is because it features Magby, my favorite Pokemon. Hey, who said these scores were unbiased? I'm not spoiling what happens in them, so find out for yourself.

--Art Channel-- ~~{C}~~

At one point in the game, you get sort of a drawing board, on which you get to color paintings that you see on television. The paintings will be criticized by Smeargle, who is not a very tough critic. He thinks all of your work is spectacular... I bet you could simply draw a picture of a rock and he'd call it a "true masterpiece". This channel is pretty useless, but isn't terribly awful, hence the good score. (Heh... "good".)

--Egg Channel-- ~~{D+}~~

This channel is really awful, horrendous and... BORING! (There, I said it!) Though it's not the worst channel by a long shot, the boring things rule out the nonboring (is that a word?) things, thus decreasing its score. What you have to do is guess which Pokemon is in an egg. You get four choices. Usually, the first time around it's easy, and as you play it more often it gets tougher. If I were you, I'd just avoid this channel altogether.

--Fitness Channel-- ~~{D-}~~

Even more useless than the egg channel, it's the fitness channel! A Smoochum pops up and starts doing... exercise. Ooookay. That's pretty much the point of the channel... to do exercise. I guess you can do the exercises if you want, but be warned... do not, I repeat, do NOT do it in public. The only thing about this utterly useless channel that kept it from falling into an F is that it's hilarious to see Pikachu degrade itself by doing laughable jumping jacks. Even a semi-jock like me won't appreciate the awfulness of this channel. Remind me to avoid this channel.

--Fortune Channel-- ~~{D}~~

Welcome to yet another worthless channel: the Fortune Channel! You get to pick from a few fortune cookies and when you get one, Chansey reads your fortune, and... that's it. Yep. Nothing else, except maybe a commercial break. Sounds fascinating, I know. I'm not sure if the fortunes affect the game, but it seems equally boring whether you get the fortunes or not (yes, I feel evil today).

--News Channel-- ~~{C}~~

This channel is, once again, worthless. BUT, unlike the other channels, it isn't COMPLETELY worthless. You can get some semi-useful information from this channel, such as where to get items and the like. Otherwise, it's just useless information about events that didn't even happen. Let's see, what else... oh, yes! Sometimes, Psyduck (the host) falls asleep during a broadcast. Great job, Psyduck! Your channel will get outstanding ratings because of the concept of seeing you fall asleep and drool on national television.

--Quiz Channel 1: Wobbuffet Quiz-- ~~{C+}~~

Wobbuffet Quiz is one of the better channels. It's not exactly a super-fun experience, though, because all you do is watch three other Pokemon compete to try to answer questions correctly. To pass the time, I choose my favorite out of the three Pokemon contestants and root for them. Uh... yeah. Occasionally, you'll be able to answer questions and get money as well, but... and I ask this once again... what's the point?

--Quiz Channel 2: Odd One Out-- ~~{C-}~~

I'm giving this one a lower score than the other one because, quite frankly, it isn't as fun. Wobbuffet Quiz isn't fun to begin with, so what did you expect? There are a group of Pokemon, and you have to guess whether the amount of Pokemon is even or odd. It's timed, though, and the longer you take to guess, the less money you make. Fascinating.

--Ranking Channel-- ~~{C}~~

Apart from being a completely worthless waste of time, this channel is acceptable enough. A Smoochum is going to come out and take surveys from random Pokemon and add the results up. It also tells you a bit about your personal rankings. Why listen to rankings? No idea. You can survive through it, but the color scheme (read: PINK) is a bit blinding. There's so much pink on that channel, it's not even funny. Let's move on.

--Relaxation Channel-- ~~{F}~~

This-is-the-worst-channel-ever-invented-and-don't-you-dare-ever-go-to-it! This is the most ridiculously pointless, idiotic, BORING channel ever made! You watch a few Mareep jump over a fence. The end. Yes, I'm serious. That's all. You may think, "well, that's not so bad!" But it is. Sometimes, there are hundreds and HUNDREDS of Mareep! There's no point in this channel. If you ever come near it, change it immediately, even if you end up changing to the Fitness or Fortune channels. Just... avoid it. Forever. Avoid it more than all of the other channels put together. Pretend it doesn't exist. It SHOULDN'T exist!

--Report Channel-- ~~{D-}~~

When it came to useless channels, this one was a close second to the Relaxation Channel. You send a report to Professor Oak, overwriting your save file. Tell me, how can SAVING THE GAME possibly be a channel? I guess it's necessary, but why do you have to watch TV in order to save the game? Please ignore this channel until you absolutely HAVE to save the game. Thank you.

--Shopping Channel-- ~~{B-}~~

Um, yeah. What you do here is spend your hard-earned cash on random items. You can buy some on immediate delivery, but most of them take a while to obtain. This channel is survivable, but it isn't the most exciting. There isn't really anything wrong with it besides boredom, so go nuts. I did lower the score because Pikachu sometimes clicks buttons and makes you buy things you don't want. That Pikachu is the densest creature I have ever had the misfortune to meet. As an added bonus (if you want to call it that), you can visit new areas by buying Bus Passes. Um, congrats.

--Weather Channel-- ~~{C-}~~

This channel is boring, tedious, monotonous, lullaby-like, etc. You get to watch Slowpoke walk around for about a month and then decide what the weather is. Pro: you get to find out the weather in an area. Con: this channel is extremely boring, surpassed only by the Relaxation Channel. I guess that evens it out at about a C-.

ENVIRONMENTS (areas you can visit)

--Your Room-- ~~{A-}~

OH MY DAD! An "A" score?! Unbelievable! The only reason I even bothered giving this score above "C" is because your room is the foundation of the game. As strange as it may seem, you have plenty of things to do in your room. You can paint, watch TV, play mini-games (explained later), communicate with Pikachu (but who'd want to?), etcetera. This is probably the only environment worth more than a half hour of your time, which is saying something.

--Backyard-- ~~{D+}~~

Can you say "useless"? You can only do a few things here, such as plant stuff, pick up weeds, and chat with some nearby Grass Pokemon. That's about it. You can go to Springleaf Field from here, but it doesn't really add to it as much as it subtracts from it. The only reason that the backyard didn't score an F is because it's very easy to get to. What did you expect?

--Springleaf Field-- ~~{D-}~~

Springleaf Field is even worse than the backyard. You can play ball with Pikachu, which is a 3 out of 10 on the fun scale (but you can get it to like you), and also talk with some Pokemon. You can also search for a four leaf clover with Pikachu, which is more of a waste of time than anything. Yep. That's it. Whoop-dee-doo.

--Viridian Forest-- ~~{C-}~~

Viridian Forest is one of the areas that you can visit once you buy a Bus Pass from Shop 'n' Squirtle (the Shopping Channel). You can do a few things here, such as make Pikachu eat/thundershock mushrooms (a waste of time), listen to a concert (a waste of time, but you can survive it), get interviewed by a Magnemite and show up on TV (a waste of time, especially if you're a Pikachu hater like me), and meet new Pokemon. You can also visit Camp Starlight from here. By the way, why would you bother going to yet another useless area when you're already IN a useless area? Okay, okay, I'll stop the mocking sarcasm.

Maybe.

--Camp Starlight-- ~~{C+}~~

Although this place has fewer activities than Viridian Forest, some of them are genuinely survivable. For example, on clear nights, you can see Pokemon constellations that seem to be incredibly well done for such a completely ignorant game. Other than that, you can meet quite a few Pokemon (you can see four of them every day) and, once you beat the game, you can see a video of the Pichu Bros. Anime. This area, in my opinion, could've been a lot better... and, as a matter of fact, it could've been rated an A or B if it didn't have so few activities. Sorry for the very low amount of sarcasm in this paragraph, but I feel pity for this area as opposed to sarcasm.

--Cobalt Cove-- ~~{C}~~

This area is mostly a waste of time. You can choose to do four things. Number one, you can play tic-tac-toe with Pikachu, and trust me, it's really fun to beat him/her/it over and over and over (no sarcasm here). Number two, you can watch Pikachu try to swim to Faraway Island and fail miserably (hah!). Number three, you can talk to a few Pokemon. Number four, you can go to the Secret Cove and watch Pikachu fish (and trust me, it's extremely difficult to stay awake in this horrifically dull spectacle). The only reason I gave this area such a high score is because you can watch Pikachu nearly drown in the ocean AND you can defeat him in a game of tic-tac-toe. How fun!

--Secret Cove-- ~~{D}~~

Um, woah. This place is quite uninteresting. I'm trying to be really polite here, you know... okay fine, I'll say it out loud. IT'S BORING! You can watch Pikachu fish and... that's it. I gave it some extra points because you can meet a lot of Pokemon by fishing, but it isn't exactly the most thrilling process. Avoid this place unless you enjoy being bored every waking moment of your life.

--Snowfall Mountain-- ~~{B-}~~

This place is actually fairly decent. You can do a variety of uninteresting things in here. (Okay, that may have been a little harsh, but it's the sad truth). Let's see... you can search in an igloo that doesn't belong to you, you can build a horrible snowman of Pikachu (of all Pokemon!), and you can listen to Jigglypuff and Kecleon sing together (it may be a waste of time, but they sing so badly that it's quite hilarious). Not only that... you can also visit the Ruins of Truth (once you get far enough in the game).

--Ruins of Truth-- ~~{C}~~

This place makes a really sad attempt at emulating a dark, spooky cave. In order to beat this laughably fake cavern you have to light two lamps (oh my DAD!), answer a random trivia question (the horror!), and get a Pichu Bros. Anime 5 Disc (how can you ever survive?!). Not even the toughest gamers can endure such a death-defying event of doom. Well, I guess it isn't TOO bad, but really, isn't there ANYTHING in this game that's actually decently difficult?

OVERALL (only for gameplay): ~~{C-}~~

Well, overall, the gameplay is fairly bad. For about 75% of the cases, the reason that gameplay got a lower score was because of the boredom/uselessness that some of the channels/areas provided. Gameplay was never a great deal of awesomeness in Hey You, Pikachu, and it isn't a great deal of awesomeness in Pokemon Channel either. I basically explained why I decreased the score so much above, so I'll just move on to the next section in hopes that it'll give a ray of hope in Pokemon Channel's future.

FUN FACTOR!: ~~{D}~~

Poor, poor Pokemon Channel. Fun Factor is one of the worst parts of this game, which is saying something. There is hardly any fun value at all. There are a few interesting/amusing moments in Pokemon Channel's (very short) life, but otherwise, it's quite a boring deal overall. You can see why Fun Factor is a D due to the enormous rants that I gave off on the gameplay section, but I'm going easy on it. If I were in a worse mood, I'd give it a flat-out "F" to get it over with, but I'm feeling pretty lenient with the extreme boredom that this game provides.

In fact, the only reason the game actually DID get above an "F" is because you can play mini-games in this game. There is an item called the Pokemon Mini which you can get at the beginning of the game. Once you get it, you can play mini-games on it by buying games on the Shop 'n' Squirtle channel. Some of these games are decent fun. Unfortunately, there is a limit to the games, and some of them aren't too fun. Also, since these games are such a small part of Pokemon Channel, I can't really increase the Fun Factor! score too much because of them.

REPLAY VALUE: ~~{D-}~~

None! Nada! Zero! Zip! Zilch! Bupkis! Nyet! There is really no reason to keep playing Pokemon Channel, what with the extreme boredom that it provides. The only thing that saved this score from dropping into an "F" is that you can collect all of the Nice Cards. Despite that, there's really no point in replaying the game, because it's like replaying a very boring commercial. I don't have to explain myself on all the boring points of the game, because I did I pretty good job of that back in the gameplay section.

DIFFICULTY: ~~{F}~~

This is the final straw. I'm giving this score a flat-out "F", because it deserves it. Just WHAT was the difficult part of this game? It was definitely not the Ruins of Truth. If you consider the Ruins of Truth difficult, you either (a.) don't know anything about Pokemon or (b.) are just an awful overall gamer. Sorry to those of you who DO think it was hard, but it's the truth. There is NOTHING in this game that is difficult, except maybe trying to stay awake during the Relaxation Channel (or ANY channel for that matter).

LENGTH: ~~{F}~~

Yes, another "F"! Technically, this game takes about a week to beat, but if you cheat by forwarding the time on your GameCube clock, you can beat it in a single day. There are a few side quests, but they don't improve the length of this game. It probably took me more time to write this Review than it did to beat this pathetically short (and boring) game.

OVERALL: ~*~*~*~*~* {D} ~*~*~*~*~*~*

Let's just say that Pokemon Channel is a decent enough game for Pokemon fans, though it just doesn't fulfill anything. The plot is hardly worked out... there really wasn't much of a point. It wouldn't be a big surprise if Nintendo and Ambrella and all those others that made this game just admitted to us, "We thought of the ideas to this game while watching an extremely boring dog food commercial!" Pokemon Channel is even less rewarding than Hey You, Pikachu, which was at least slightly more palatable when it came to the idea of the game. Even for $30, Pokemon Channel is still a pretty bad deal. Rent it... you can beat it in a single day, so I don't recommend you rent it for any longer than three days.

Quote of the Game: "PIKA, PIKA!!!" ~Pikachu while drowning on Cobalt Sea.

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