The highly successful Pokémon Stadium was less of a stand-alone game and more of a graphical expansion pack made to accompany the best-selling Game Boy Color Pokémon games. The premise was simple: Raise your Pokémon on the handheld and send them into battle in full color 3D against friends or the CPU on your N64. The game certainly had nowhere near the amount of depth available on the Game Boy but made the perfect companion piece for the Pokémon enthusiast who needed everything. This year’s Pokémon Stadium 2, appropriately housed in a gold and silver cartridge, improves upon the original’s formula in nearly every category, although its status as a quality stand-alone game is still questionable.
From the moment you first press start, you are bombarded with options and play modes. Battle now! initiates a quick battle with a random set of Pokémon. The event-battle mode is a two-player battle that lets you configure the rules to your liking. Once again, the focus of Stadium 2 is clearly on the tactical battle elements of Pokémon, eliminating the RPG elements that made the Pokémon series so well rounded.
Those familiar with the first Stadium game will notice that combat has remained essentially unchanged, save for a few welcome menu-based changes and slight graphical tweaks. As before, a group of Pokémon is chosen for each side, ideally balanced enough to challenge any opposing roster. Pokémon perform attacks, dole out punishment, and are called back to the reserves for substitutions, battling until one side has been defeated. Selecting techniques has become significantly easier for those not familiar with every attack in the Game Boy game, thanks to a detailed onscreen summary of move effects and statistics such as type, strength, and accuracy. Awkward moments where players stare at the screen trying to decide whether a metronome, leer, charm, or sunny day would be appropriate can now be avoided, and the game is much friendlier for inexperienced players.
