Intelligent Systems, you beautiful bastards. The spritework here is absolutely insane, just so gorgeous here, some amazing portraits of the Johto gym leaders, along with a very cute sprite of the Gold & Silver protagonist. This is a great, great spin-off; not just one of those old spin-offs that take an IP’s name and slaps it on a puzzle game, this feels like an actual Pokémon game. A great companion to Gold & Silver versions, too, the way it highlights its starters and baby evolutions. It was just a real treat, and considering the console version of this is more of a Pokémon anime game instead of a Pokémon game, this is definitely the one to play. Between this and the Zelda ‘Oracle’ games, it’s really spectacular what some folks were able to do with the spritework on such limiting hardware. Like, this might be one of the best looking Pokémon games ever.