Pokémon Colosseum is a role-playing video game developed by Genius Sonority and published by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for the GameCube. A spin-off of the Pokémon series, it was released on November 21, 2003, in Japan, March 22, 2004, in North America and May 14, 2004, in Europe. Unlike previous titles' random encounters with Pokémon, Colosseum allows the player to steal ("snag") the Pokémon of other Pokémon Trainers. The game also features single-player and multiplayer battle modes.

Set in the desert region of Orre, the player controls Wes, a former member of Team Snagem. Throughout the game, Wes rescues "Shadow Pokémon"—Pokémon who have had their hearts darkened by Team Cipher, an antagonistic organization—via snagging. Rui, a non-player character, serves as Wes's sidekick and identifies Shadow Pokémon.

Pokémon Colosseum was exhibited at E3 2003 and featured Pokémon models ported from the Nintendo 64's Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Stadium 2. North American pre-orders included a bonus disc that allows the player to download the Pokémon Jirachi on the Game Boy Advance titles Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire while Japanese bonus discs featured similar downloads for Celebi and Pikachu. Upon release, the game was a critical and commercial success, with praise directed at its graphics and music. It sold 1.15 million copies in the United States and 656,270 in Japan. Pokémon, Colosseum Sold a total of 2.41 million copies worldwide. A successor, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, released for the GameCube in 2005. Pokémon Colosseum will be made available on the Nintendo Switch 2 through the Nintendo Classics service.

Gameplay

right|thumb|The main character's [[Sceptile and Metagross battle against the opponent's Taillow and Hoothoot on Mt. Battle, a common setting for battles.]]

Pokémon Colosseum is a 3D role-playing game viewed from a third-person perspective.

Unlike most Pokémon games, Colosseum does not feature random encounters. The player begins the game with two Pokémon. More are obtained throughout the game by "Snagging" them from other Trainers using Poké Balls of various strengths. Only specifically designated "Shadow Pokémon", whose hearts have been artificially closed, can be Snagged.

Each of the player's Shadow Pokémon has a purple gauge that gradually drains through actions such as entering battle. Once the gauge is empty, the player may "Purify" the Pokémon by bringing him or her to Celebi's shrine in Agate Village, or by using a rare "Time Flute" item. Purifying Shadow Pokémon is desirable because while in that status, they will often disobey the player, they cannot gain experience points, and their moves are at first restricted to "Shadow Rush". Additionally, Shadow Pokémon will sporadically enter "Hyper Mode" state during battle, causing them to disobey the player character or attack themselves until the condition is alleviated by selecting the "Call" battle command.

Characters

The game's player protagonist is by default named , but as with most Pokémon games, the player can change his name. Wes's Starter Pokémon are Espeon and Umbreon, two fox-like Pokémon who start at level 25 and 26, respectively. Additionally, shortly after the game begins, the player meets the game's partner character, Rui; she accompanies Wes on his journey, and uses her ability to see Shadow Pokémon to help combat the efforts of the game's villains. , a criminal organization that uses "Snag Machine" technology to capture Pokémon owned by trainers as if they were wild, serves as an antagonistic entity in the game, of whom Wes is a former member. However, shortly after the game's start, is revealed to be the main antagonistic force, having partnered with Team Snagem to steal Pokémon from Trainers, corrupt them into Shadow Pokémon, and distribute them throughout Cipher and the Orre Region. The organization employs many grunt workers, as well as four administrators: disco-loving , the ill-tempered enforcer, , the idol of The Under, , and the scientist who created Shadow Pokémon, .

Story

The game begins with a cold open in which Wes infiltrates Team Snagem's hideout and steals their portable Snag Machine before leaving the organization, blowing up their hideout as he escapes. Passing through the Outskirt Stand, a dilapidated train engine in the middle of the desert that has been converted into a shop, Wes proceeds to the oasis-like Phenac City and sees two men named Folly and Trudly dragging a sack. After defeating them in battle, Wes opens the sack to find Rui, a girl who was kidnapped because she witnessed an unusually violent Pokémon that exuded a black aura visible only to her. They meet the mayor, Es Cade, and report the incident, and while Es Cade expresses skepticism over Rui's claim, he promises to launch an investigation. Upon leaving Es Cade's, Team Snagem grunts find Wes and Rui and reveal to Rui that Wes once worked for Team Snagem as a snagger, a specialist in Pokémon thievery. Shortly after defeating one of the grunts, Wes and Rui encounter Folly and Trudly in Es Cade's house and meets their boss, Miror B., who quickly leaves. Trudly battles Wes with the unusual Pokémon Rui saw before. Rui urges Wes to snag it from Trudly, and after he does so, she asks him to join forces with her in finding and snagging the remaining Pokémon with black auras (later named Shadow Pokémon), which he continues to do throughout their journey.

After leaving Phenac, Wes visits Pyrite Town, where Rui was kidnapped. In Pyrite, Wes and Rui find that Shadow Pokémon are being openly distributed to winners of the town's Colosseum tournament by Miror B., who is part of a secret criminal organization known as Cipher. The local police force is powerless to stop the practice, so Wes and Rui see Duking, an influential man in Pyrite who runs the Colosseum. However, Miror B. has kidnapped Duking's Pokémon as a hostage, so Duking asks Wes to enter the next tournament and infiltrate Miror B.'s operation. Wes enters the Colosseum challenge and wins, but he is recognized once he is escorted inside Cipher's Pyrite building. Wes and Rui then battle their way through the building and the maze-like Pyrite Cave set in the cliff face behind it. Eventually, they battle and defeat Miror B. and free Duking's Pokémon, ousting Miror B. from Pyrite. A team of kids working in Duking's house introduce themselves as members of an anti-Cipher news network, known as the Kids Grid, who pledge their help to Wes and Rui.

Leaving Pyrite, Wes and Rui travel to Agate Village, a mountain village home to many retired trainers, including Rui's grandparents. After being introduced to Rui's grandfather Eagun, Wes stops a group of Cipher agents from destroying the Relic Stone, a shrine protected by Celebi that can purify Shadow Pokémon and return them to their former state. Shortly after, Wes receives an e-mail from Duking saying that Mt. Battle, a battling facility built above a volcano, is under attack by Cipher, so Wes and Rui leave to resolve the crisis. After defeating the Cipher admin Dakim, who raided Mt. Battle to steal an item related to the Relic Stone, Wes and Rui returned to Pyrite Town after being e-mailed about the capture of two of Miror B.'s henchmen. Using a key lifted from the henchmen, Wes and Rui gain access to The Under, an underground city beneath Pyrite.

The new concept for Pokémon Colosseum was influenced by RPGs such as Final Fantasy VII and Persona 2 over the Pokémon mold. When asked in an interview with Prima Games why the gameplay of Colosseum did not mirror that of the handheld Pokémon games, Pokémon director Junichi Masuda explained: "How players communicate with each other has been key to the Pokémon games – it is the backbone of all Pokémon game designs. I feel that the handheld systems work better than the home-based consoles. It's certainly possible to come up with concepts for home-based consoles, but we might then have to change the core of the game."

left|thumb|The city of [[Phoenix, Arizona (pictured in 2011), was primarily used as the basis for the Orre region.]]

The transition to 3D also brought new graphical changes. Wes was designed to look "hazy" and about 17 years old. Genius Sonority ported most of the models and animations of first- and second-generation Pokémon from Stadium and Stadium 2. Upon completion of development, Colosseum received a rating of "E" (Everyone) from the Entertainment Software Rating Board, "All Ages" from Computer Entertainment Rating Organization, and "3+" from Pan European Game Information. The game was released on November 21, 2003, in Japan; March 22, 2004, in North America, and May 14, 2004, in Europe.

Nintendo also published supplementary media to unlock additional content. Pre-ordered copies of the game came with a bonus disc that contains trailers for the game and the film Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker. The North American disc also contains the exclusive Pokémon Jirachi that can be downloaded to the player's copy of Ruby or Sapphire. The Japanese release contains a downloadable Celebi instead and requires a completed save file of Pokémon Colosseum. The disc also updates the software in Ruby and Sapphire to remove a "berry glitch" discovered in 2003. Despite public anticipation the Bonus Disc was not released in PAL territories, prompting Nintendo to issue an official apology. However a Jirachi was later included in the PAL version of the game Pokémon Channel. In Japan, scannable cards for the Nintendo e-Reader were available for purchase that featured additional trainers to battle and capture Shadow Pokémon.

Reception

Critical response

Pokémon Colosseum was generally well-received upon release, with respective scores of 73/100 and 73.46% from aggregators Metacritic and GameRankings. Allgame staff writer Scott Alan Marriott gave the game three and a half stars out of five, although he did not review the game with more depth. During the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Pokémon Colosseum for "Console Children's Game of the Year".

Critics praised Colosseum as the first true 3D role-playing installment in the Pokémon series and for its darker tone. Gamers Hell reviewer John K. called it "certainly a step in the right direction to a good 3D Pokémon game", although he felt that the limited number of Pokémon and lack of a true overworld detracted from the experience. IGN staff writer Craig Harris said that the adaptation of the Pokémon RPG formula to the 3D zeitgeist "does a decent enough job" and is "a bit more linear and straightforward".

The new 3D graphics received mixed remarks. Harris called the game "[g]raphically ... a mixed bag", praising the visual style of the game's Pokémon but criticizing the "poorly modeled and animated, angular" style of the Trainers. GameZones review took a more positive stance, saying that "[a]nimations are brief but impressive; each attack move is more elaborate and more extravagant on the 'Cube." Nimensio Rivera of the San Diego Union-Tribune praised the game for its gameplay, graphics and replay value, but criticized its sound, specifically its soundtrack which was described as “Saturday morning-ish.”

GameZone compared the overall town design and environments to those of the landmark Final Fantasy VII.

In 2006, Nintendo Power listed Colosseum as the 121st greatest video game to appear on a Nintendo console.

Sales

Three weeks before its release, pre-orders of Pokémon Colosseum made it the best-selling game on Amazon.com. In the game's first week of release in the United Kingdom, it boosted the GameCube's market share from 16% to 32%. It was the best-selling GameCube game of May 2004, and fourteenth among all consoles. In 2005, the game was certified as part of Nintendo's Player's Choice line in North America, representing at least 250,000 copies sold. and 656,270 in Japan. It is the best-selling RPG for the GameCube.

Legacy

Pokémon Colosseum spawned a high-profile tournament in the United Kingdom entitled "Pokémon Colosseum Battlemaster 2004". The first round of battles was held at Toys "R" Us locations, with later battles taking place in movie theaters. Across Europe, the game was bundled with GameCube consoles shortly after its release. Special editions of this set also included a copy of Pokémon Box: Ruby and Sapphire—a game that allows players to organize and store up to 1,500 Pokémon from their games—as well as a memory card and a Game Boy Advance–GameCube link cable.

A manga adaptation of Colosseums plot was printed in 2004 issues of the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comic and titled . The game was followed by a 2005 sequel entitled Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. Set in Orre five years after Colosseum, it features a new protagonist snagging Shadow Pokémon from Team Cipher. Shadow Lugia is the game's mascot, and serves as an antagonist whom the player can snag. The game alludes to Wes, Rui, and The Under, though they do not appear.

Sequel

See also

  • Pokémon Battle Revolution

Notes

References

  • at Nintendo.com ( of the at the Internet Archive)