Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee! review – a children’s classic, refreshed

A beloved childhood film can easily be shared with the next generation, but the cherished video games of 1990s children can now look off-puttingly primitive, even if they’re as fun to play as ever. Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog’s early outings might have weathered the years well, but Pokémon: Red and Blue, a foundational text of the millennial generation, has not. The originals were, after all, played on a two-inch Game Boy screen.

Pokémon: Let’s Go Eevee! and Let’s Go Pikachu! are transformational remakes of those 20-year-old games for the Nintendo Switch, with bright, beautiful cartoon graphics and characterful animation to replace the squat, monochrome pixel approximations of 1997’s Kanto. And yet the imagination and wonder of these creatures and this world, in which kids venture out to find their own destiny in the company of loyal, adorable pets, is as potent as ever. Collecting and battling the original 150-odd creatures, assembling a special team of six to take on Gym Leaders and the Elite Four to become the world’s best Pokémon trainer is, in retrospect, a fable about persistence, loyalty and self-determination.

Pokémon is a classic fantasy of child empowerment. Like the Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter, it gives children a world where they are in control and parents are background figures who wave them off with a smile. It also gives them a key to a universe of knowledge beyond the reach of adults: the hundreds of creatures, their thousands of moves, their stats and evolutions have all been enthusiastically memorised by generations of kids. In my first few hours in Kanto, I rediscovered this vault of knowledge tucked away in my memory: details about type matchups, where rare creatures could be found, which Pokémon can be evolved with mysterious stones and tunes from the TV series I had painstakingly recorded on VHS tapes with self-illustrated labels.

Of course, Pokémon has changed over the decades and Let’s Go incorporates a lot of ideas and adjustments from more recent games. Your favourite Pokémon can walk around the world with you or, if they’re big enough, you can ride on their backs. Your first Pokémon isn’t a choice between Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle, but between Eevee and Pikachu, its two cutest, most enduring and most universally recognisable mascots. And your relationship with that special Pokémon defines the game more than any other. You can pet your Pokémon, feed them treats, dress them and your character up in matching outfits. It offers you a lifelong best buddy, like Ash and Pikachu in the long-running anime series.

But the most fundamental change has been inspired not by original developer Game Freak, but by Niantic, the Californian creators of smartphone sensation Pokémon Go. When you’re exploring the world and battling creatures against each other, Pokémon Let’s Go plays just like Red, Blue and Yellow did on the Game Boy. But catching creatures now works like it does in Pokémon Go. Instead of tramping about in patches of grass hoping to find rare creatures, you can see them frolicking around and chase the ones you want to catch. Instead of battling a wild Pokémon until it’s weak, you simply throw Pokéballs to capture it.

It’s a huge simplification of Pokémon-catching, making it more fun and accessible but drastically less challenging and dramatic (outside of super rare Legendary Pokémon, which must still be battled before they can be caught). It makes it easy to run around catching 30 Psyducks, if that’s what you want to do. Some older Pokémon players have complained that it is an oversimplification – but they are missing the point of these remakes. I have played Pokémon Let’s Go with two delighted little girls, with a couple of people around 30, with a curious 12-year-old and – rather unsuccessfully – with my toddler son. Not one of them cared about the integrity of 20-year-old Pokémon acquisition mechanics. They cared about what’s fun.

This is a Pokémon game that blends old and new, designed to be played across generations and together by families, shared perhaps between the grown-up original Pokémon trainers of the 90s and their own kids. Shake a second Switch controller and another trainer drops on to the screen, letting you guide a younger child through Kanto or work together with an older one to obliterate trainer rivals and catch ’em all. It does everything it can to welcome any player, no matter how young or inexperienced. The bones of Pokémon: Let’s Go might be 20 years old, but in 2018 it is refreshing to play something so heartfelt, wholesome and charming.

• Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! and Let’s Go Eevee! are out now; £42.99.