Did you know that there are actual Pokemon games on the PC outside of the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online? And yes, this is somehow an official licensed Pokemon game, just not developed by The Pokemon Company/Gamefreak/Ambrella. This is what happens when I get really bored waiting for Digimon Survive to get patches and need a break from exercising my brain in Advance Wars 2, and then get morbidly curious after exploring the List of Pokemon video games on Wikipedia, having never heard of this gem before today.

So, this is a Pokemon racing game developed by Valusoft. It consists of 6 race courses with a selection of 20 something odd Pokemon from Gen 3 and before (I of course picked my favorite Pokemon Rayquayza), and your Pokemon automatically moves forward while you steer directly in front of it with the mouse. That's it. Sometimes they'll change the terrain to make it slightly harder to turn or add in collectibles on the race track to speed you up/slow you down, but otherwise, that is the core of the game. It's not particularly hard to beat most of these opponents, since the AI have trouble moving optimally (that is, moving exactly forward in a straight line) and are particularly bad at rounding corners and tight turns, so you can outright beat them without collectibles or powerups, though if you get too good you may have some difficulties avoiding walls and obstacles since the screen will not autoscroll to account for how close you are to the scroll boundaries.. Speaking of which, there are 5 minigames between the 6 races, and clearing the minigames will give you disposable attacks to slow down opponents or personal speed boosts. The minigames are, as I would describe them, "functional;" there's a crossword testing your Pokemon evolution knowledge, there's a domino puzzle game, a Pokemon name word finder, a very shitty Tetris like with stiff controls that requires you to match up certain combinations to progress, and a hit & blow puzzle with Pokemon such as Ash Ketchum and Brock. This is about as dry as Pokemon spinoff games get, and there is only one track playing on loop while the game, even in 2005, has about the same graphical quality as the early days of Newgrounds.

Today, I learned that the worst Pokemon game is not Pokemon Battle Revolution, or Pokemon Channel, or even Pokemon Dash. It's probably this, and this is honestly what I get for feeling the need to clear every Pokemon game I haven't beat before from the 2000s. And knowing how obstinate I am about these kinds of things, there's still more to cover...

Reviewed on Jul 29, 2022


4 Comments


1 year ago

pokemon in roblox is another Pokemon game for pc

1 year ago

drax. it's okay. you don't have to do this buddy

1 year ago

gamers are masochists

1 year ago

Sometimes I too ask myself why I do this to myself