I have to admit it. I have been horribly, horribly remiss in my duties. For years they've been telling me and I never listened:

"Gotta catch 'em all!"

"Gotta catch 'em all!"

And yet, until now, I had yet to catch a single one. So imagine my surprise when a parcel from PGC's importer shows up at my door with Pokemon Emerald inside. "What?" I scoffed. "Catch Pokemon myself? I buy my Pokemon pre-caught at the supermarket!" But no, here they were, asking me to go out and mingle with the savages who catch them all.

Now, having never played a Pokemon game before, I'm not entirely sure what's new, what's changed, or what's better about this game. However, none of that really matters, because the graphics, the sound effects, the music, even the controls are all secondary to the overwhelming urge to posess every single Pokemon that this game is supposed to inspire in you.

And the weird thing is that it does! I've been swamped with exams lately and I still find time to bag a new Pokemon or two every day. I've only got two badges and I feel markedly inadequate. When an NPC in this game whips out a Pokemon at a higher level than mine, it brings back memories of gym showers in 8th grade. This game has been sculpted, refined and polished to the point that while anyone who briefly dabbled in catchin' when Red/Blue came out could recognize it as the same game, it's somehow purer, more crystalline, a tried and true formula reduced to its single imperative:

THE FIRST AND ONLY COMMANDMENT: THOU SHALT CATCH THEM ALL

If this isn't appealing to some primal urge within you, then buddy, I don't know what's wrong. But Pokemon Emerald just might be part of the solution.