Spinoff Spotlight: Poképark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure
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Art by Pissog.
Introduction - Poképark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure
Released in late December 2009 in Japan and throughout 2010 elsewhere, Poképark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure was developed by Creatures Inc. and published under the Nintendo banner. The game, which was initially released exclusively for the Wii, follows the player as they take on the role of a Pikachu that is one day unwillingly transported to the Poképark, a massive island that is home to a large variety of different Pokémon species. The story then follows Pikachu as it attempts to save the Poképark from destruction, reuniting with old friends and dissolving tensions among the residents of the park as they preach friendship to all in a series of events that takes Pikachu from the simple life of the Meadow Zone through more menacing areas, such as the Magma, Haunted, and Granite Zones, prior to ending up at Mew's doorstep once more.
Story
Pikachu's unexpected journey to the Poképark comes at the wish of Mew, which resides in an area above the Poképark known as the Sky Pavilion. At the center of the Sky Pavilion is the Sky Prism, which maintains stability and is essentially a manifestation of all the friendships between the Pokémon of the park. As these friendships weaken due to ongoing tensions between the leaders of the various zones, 14 pieces break off and scatter around the park. This event causes the Sky Pavilion to start slowly sinking down from the sky and towards the Poképark below.
Wanting to prevent the imminent destruction of both the park and the pavilion, Mew has brought Pikachu to the park out of a belief that they are it is the one capable of restoring balance to the park and returning the scattered prism pieces to the pavilion. As fate would have it, each prism piece has ended up at one of the park's fourteen attractions, meaning Pikachu's adventure will take it all the way around the park prior to reuniting with Mew at the pavilion for what is essentially the final boss battle of the game. What is worth noting, however, is that Poképark is a thoroughly upbeat game, with even the battle against Mew actually being a test of friendship in the form of a friendly game of tag.
With there being no villains so much as there are merely Pokémon that don't always see eye-to-eye due to conflicting ideologies, Poképark's overarching themes are those of friendship and joy, and there is beauty to be found in its simplicity.
Gameplay
Taking on the role of Pikachu, the player will initially find themselves at the entrance to the Meadow Zone, one of the Poképark's eight different zones. Each zone hosts a large variety of Pokémon befitting its theme, which, in the case of the Meadow Zone, is predominantly Grass-types. A helpful visualization of the zone mechanic can be established through a comparison with the Terarium from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Indigo Disk, where the map is similarly divided into a number of quadrants, each home to its own set of unique Pokémon.
However, while each section of Scarlet and Violet's Terarium is ruled over by a trainer who is part of Blueberry’s Elite Four, the Poképark, which features no trainers, is instead ruled over by individual zone leaders in the form of conventionally strong Pokémon such as Blaziken, Empoleon, and Venusaur.
The two core gameplay mechanics the player will keep encountering throughout their travels are skill games and attractions, which make for heavily varied albeit enjoyable gameplay. There are 193 different species of Pokémon in this game, and your goal after completing the main plot is to befriend all of them, which you'll do through either skill games or attractions. Once you have befriended a particular Pokémon, you will be able to play as it in certain attractions, which you will need to do at times in order to reach a high enough score to retrieve the piece of sky prism held by the Pokémon running said attraction.
Skill Games
Skill Games are individual, one-on-one games Pikachu can play against the many Pokémon found roaming the Poképark. By walking up to any Pokémon within the game, Pikachu can challenge it to its preferred skill game, which can be either a battle, chase, quiz, Obstacle Hop, or game of Hide-and-Seek. There is no static difficulty to these games, with stronger Pokémon being more difficult to overcome and thus befriend. One humorous example of this is the contrast of chase games between Mew, which is notably pretty difficult for a kid to catch on their first try, and that of Slowpoke's own chase game, which sees Slowpoke begin running from Pikachu at a snail's pace. Though simple at first glance, there is an unexpected level of depth to some of these minigames.
Battles
Battles allow the player to take control of Pikachu and use its limited moveset to take on the enemy. Using Thunderbolt, Pikachu can channel for a short time before slinging a bolt in the targeted direction, which will stop the enemy in its tracks and damage it. Its other ability, Dash, allows Pikachu to either put distance between itself and the enemy or dash directly into it, which deals damage. Pikachu can upgrade these two moves throughout the game and also unlock a third move, Iron Tail.
As Pikachu gets stronger, however, so do its enemies. While most Pokémon you'll take on in battle have two health tabs and thus take two hits to beat, those such as Feraligatr and Torterra have twice as much health and a wider array of offensive abilities. This scaling isn't necessarily linear throughout the game either, with Torterra actually being found in the very first zone despite being quite difficult to defeat at that point. However, this does give the player a good reason to revisit the zone later on in the game once they've further upgraded Pikachu’s abilities, as you don't necessarily need to befriend Torterra to continue.
In order to prevent young players from repeatedly being defeated by a difficult boss in an early area, however, many Pokémon traditionally viewed as strong, such as Gengar and the aforementioned Torterra, will only appear in their relevant zone once the player has either completed a certain part of the main story, reached a certain amount of friends, or completed a more unexpected objective, such as defeating the same Pokémon in battle five consecutive times. Through accomplishing these objectives, the player can unlock the most difficult fights in the game against enemies such as Scizor, Infernape, and Luxray.
Tag
Games of tag are another type of skill game that are relatively self-explanatory, but they still have a notable degree of depth. After beginning a chase, the target Pokémon will flee while a timer counts down from three seconds. Once the timer is up, Pikachu has to chase and make contact with the Pokémon before time runs out.
While this is oftentimes a pretty easy thing to do, with Pikachu's dash ability being particularly useful during this type of minigame, there is arguably more variance within games of tag than in any other skill game, which can lead to unexpectedly difficult encounters at times. While you can play laughably easy games of tag with notably slow Pokémon species, such as Slowpoke and Shroomish, players will sometimes find themselves desperately chasing after speedy Pokémon such as Leafeon and even ones that arguably cheat by taking flight, such as Wingull and Golbat.
Hide-and-Seek
For Pokémon that excel in neither speed nor strength but have an element of natural camouflage, such as Sudowoodo, Geodude, and Oddish, Hide-and-Seek is the ideal game. After Pikachu turns its back for a few seconds, it will be given a minute to find the target Pokémon, which is now hiding nearby.
As is the case with tag, you'll sometimes get gimmicky games of Hide-and-Seek, such as when you turn around to see Psyduck hiding right in front of you, hands over its eyes in the hopes that if it can't see you, you can't see it, but most games of Hide-and-Seek are relatively straightforward if the young player can associate the Pokémon with what real-life object they look like and would thus likely try to camouflage against.
Quiz
Quizzes are very straightforward and typically consist of the Pokémon testing the player's memory about either the zone they're currently in or their general Pokémon knowledge. If the player has been paying attention as they've played through the game, most quizzes should be a breeze. And even if the player gets a question wrong, thus failing the quiz, there is no penalty and they are free to try again.
Obstacle Hop
The Obstacle Hop is by far the rarest type of skill game, being found only in a select few locations within the Poképark, while the most common games, those being battles and tag, are far more widespread and accessible. This is because the Obstacle Hop needs to take place next to a number of different pillars spread out over a large area, with the player needing to jump from pillar to pillar and reach the end goal before time runs out in order to triumph. If the player falls, they will have to restart from the first pillar as the timer continues to tick down.
While the Obstacle Hop does not look at all intimidating at first glance, its difficulty is exacerbated by virtue of it being so seldom utilized within the game, leading to the player never really becoming all that familiar with how it works.
Attractions
The difference between skill games and attractions is that attractions occur on a much larger scale and are more complex. While you can talk to a Pokémon, challenge it to its favorite skill game, and befriend them there and then, attractions only occur at select locations around the Poképark and have their own character selection menu. Each zone's leader hosts its own attraction, such as Venusaur's Vine Swing and Empoleon's Snow Slide.
The theme of these individual attractions ranges from target practice all the way to rhythm, with the playable roster also varying depending upon the task at hand, trying to feature Pokémon that could believably take part in that activity. While only Water-types and a surfboard-wielding Pikachu unlocked via a redeemable password that still works to this day can play Gyarados's Aqua Dash, Rotom's Spooky Shoot-'em-Up can be played by a roster all connected by their ability to use ranged attacks, such as Magnezone, Magmortar, and Gengar, which plays into the titular theme of the game. So long as you have befriended a Pokémon on the playable roster for an attraction, you can opt to play as them instead of Pikachu.
While conventionally speedy critters such as Ponyta and Arcanine can complete Bulbasaur's Daring Dash in short order, others, such as Turtwig, will always be much slower, so why play as them when taking part in this attraction? This is where the exciting Personal Best function comes in.
Having to account for what would otherwise be a glaring flaw of the game, Poképark's developers have allocated a target "personal best" that players should aim to reach when playing as a certain Pokémon. Pokémon better at a particular attraction will have a personal best with a larger requirement, though this is justified by the fact that the Pokémon is so much better in the first place. If the player can achieve the personal best for every playable Pokémon in an attraction, they will unlock the ability to play as a legendary or mythical Pokémon. While this ranges from Latias in Pelipper's Circle Circuit flying game to Groudon in Blaziken's Boulder Bash, what's universal among these Pokémon is that they are so incredibly good at their chosen attraction to the point of being unquestionably overpowered, ensuring that attractions remain enjoyable even after 100%'ing them. Though the player may struggle to achieve personal bests on certain Pokémon, attractions become an nothing short of a cakewalk upon unlocking that mythical Pokémon.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Poképark is a game trying to simply be a good time for its young audience, and it excels in that department. There is no big bad evil team, no sudden plot twist that changes the way in which you perceive the game, and no sudden difficulty spike in the form of a new area or mechanic that is introduced late into the game.
Through this, Poképark tries—and succeeds—at being a straightforward, laid-back game that allows the player to play through at their own pace. Players can take on leisurely activities such as gathering materials to help Bidoof construct a dam, cleaning up the beaches of the park in order to coerce certain Pokémon into returning, and even exploring a haunted house in search of a particular Pokémon in a manner reminiscent of a certain Old Chateau, all while progressing the main story.
All things considered, the game is simply a cozy experience that spreads a message of friendship and resolution while also boasting a whole bunch of replayability in the form of its attractions. Even after all these years, Poképark remains a straightforward yet enjoyable spinoff that takes the franchise in an exciting, new direction that would later be furthered by the 2011 release of PokéPark 2: Wonders Beyond.
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