Shadow Queen Style Giygas Style Togepi Style Boney Style Printer Icon Printer Friendly

Home Page > Pokemon : Hey You, Pikachu! - The Red Blimp

Hey You, Pikachu!

Hey You, Pikachu! is a game that most will remember for yelling at the adorable, sunshine-colored rat to get the onion and groaning in frustration when he got the sweet potato instead. The game was the only one released in North America that made use of the Nintendo 64's voice recognition technology. The game was advertised in the Pokémon movies with commercials about a chubby boy who abandons his dog to give monosyllabic commands to a video game character instead. It was very touching at the time, with the boy's happiness being clear and Pikachu's emotions crisp as Doritos, and it was nominated for an Academy Award (well, it had to be good since I bet this was an influential factor in the game's 'popularity' among children). Unfortunately, most of us didn't have as much success as the boy when it came to talking to Pikachu.

The premise of the game was simple. It was a first person perspective from which you saw items. The items that could be moved and stuff had a little hand-cursor appear over them when you looked around the room. If you got close enough to an item, a hand would replace the cursor and you could hold the item and then throw it, keep it, or put it in your bag. You can't do much by yourself, so you are given a Poxedex that has a microphone function which allows you to speak to the Pokemon of the world (well, really, it was just Pikachu since your message was contained within a bubble that always headed straight for the rodent). You would give a command, and Pikachu would follow it. For example, if you wanted Pikachu to pick up a carrot, you would "point" to the carrot and say, in your best American accent, "carrot". If the microphone picked up your voice well enough and your pronunciation was right, your muddled message would be understood by Pikachu and he would go to the carrot. The adventure doesn't stop there, though. Pikachu has a mind of his own, and so he may either pick up the carrot, thunderbolt it, or eat it. You can command Pikachu to do tasks such as "dance" and "dig here".

Now, once you perfect your inflections, you can start on your amazing adventure to do stuff with Pikachu. There were various adventures on which you could go. For example, one well-remembered adventure was one in which you had to help Bulbasaur collect items for a recipe. It show you three items that you had to get, and you had to get them in order. Once you got your directions, you could go to the place. Here, you had to get the three items. Let's say that you had to collect onions, carrots, and potatoes. You would find an onion, call Pikachu, then say "onion". Pikachu would pick it up and ask you if you want Magnemite to take it to Bulbasaur. If you said yes, Magnemite would come, take it, and there, you can't get it back. If you say no, Pikachu might put it down, and he might eat it. If you got the wrong item and say "no" to Magnemite and Pikachu eats it, you may be out of luck - sometimes, there is only just one of the item you need. In addition, if you say yes and the item was the wrong one or the wrong order, the recipe will be screwed up and you fail the task. If you find the three ingredients and give them in order before the sun sets, then Pikachu gets to eat Bulbasaur's delicious feast and gets points. If not, Pikachu will make a disgusted face. This sort of precision is particularly annoying here where one wrong move screws up the rest of the task.

The early stages of the game are terrible. You can only look at Pikachu. If Pikachu goes somewhere, you look in that direction, no matter what you do. Exploration is practically impossible. After the first stages, you can move on to a different area where you can move wherever you like. This area is a lot more fun because you can switch to different "views" and move independently of Pikachu. The tasks are harder, as well, and some new areas can be unlocked. Once you've done a fair amount of work, you can move even further into a much more difficult area where messing up means messing up (basically, Bulbasaur's recipes become the epitome of annoying). Messing around, picking stuff up, and talking to Pokemon is oddly fun.