Pokemon Emerald Guide and Walkthrough

Pokemon Emerald Walkthrough

Unofficial Pokemon Emerald Guide by CM Boots-Faubert for SuperCheats.com

The first thing that most gamers notice when they begin playing Emerald is that it seems to be a lot like Ruby and Sapphire -- well of course it is!  Emerald is what they call the Bridging Game for those two.  In the Pokemon Game World the games are released as complimentary color-based pairs, with each having a slightly different set of Pokemon in it, and a different legendary.  The Bridging Game is basically most of the contents of both games joined into one.

Now if that was all that there was to it, a lot of gamers would skip the main games and just wait for the Bridging Game to come out, but that is not actually all that there is to it, mates.  The blokes at Game Freak use the Bridging versions to add in additional content and story to the games, so while they are similar to the first pair they are also uniquely different.  There are also a handful of Pokemon in each bridging game that have to be obtained from the two color-matched games that cam before it. 

The general trend is for gamers to buy one of the first pair, battle and trade with a mate who has the opposite game, and then get the bridging version to play as their base game in preparation for the release of the next generation.

That way they have the chance to play through the game again and experience its new content, and transfer all of their Pokemon and items from the first game so that when the next gen comes out everything is all together in the bridging game and ready to go!  Or that is the logic anyway, it does not always work out that way, but everybody is different.

The animations are different in Emerald, and it also has both of the antagonist groups -- Team Aqua and Team Magma in an equal and much deeper presence, and in fact it is when the two release their chosen Gods that Emerald pretty much parts company from the story in Ruby and Sapphire, offering you an entirely new lore and experience.

Welcome to Pokemon Emerald

In addition to changes in the story that are fairly significant, there are new areas in this version of Hoenn, including the Team Magma Hideout, the Mirage Tower, Marine Cave, Studio Cave, and the Desert Underpass to name just a few.  I should also mention the Battle Frontier -- yeah, because THAT is going to be a very important addition to the game for you!

You will find that Gym Battles in Emerald are markedly different, as the leader now have different Pokemon -- and in the case of one gym, a different leader -- and you will also find that Torchic is not the unstoppable dynamo  that they were in the other games, so you may want to give a bit of thought on who you pick as a starter this go-around!

Perhaps the most endearing difference in Emerald is the inclusion of Pokemon from other lands in the game, and the expanded breeding system, the new and altered traits and abilities, and the significant changes to the development process of breeding and training Pokemon for competition. 

Of all of the games from this generation, Emerald has the best support for the E-Card Reader and its associated cards -- while this was not the huge hit outside of Japan that it was in Japan, it was still pretty popular with the serious Pokemon Trainers in the US and UK, so it is not uncommon to attend an event and find trainers there with full sets of the E-Cards and the Readers in their kit box.

The most important point to be made -- and a large part of why this guide is being written -- is that fans of the series who joined during the DS generation are returning to Emerald in preparation for the release of Black and White in March of 2011 -- because the Pokemon in Emerald can be traded to all of the DS games, which in turn will be able to trade with Black and White, and thus taking the time to play through Emerald gives them access to Pokemon that they might otherwise never have.

Enough interest is targeted towards the game that even a used copy at GameStop costs almost as much as a new one in the box!  Demand has an impact on price, and the bloke at my local GameStop told me that they have seen such a spike in demand for Emerald that they had to order more from their warehouse.  An interesting turn of events to be sure!

If you have yet to play either Ruby or Sapphire, and this is your first exposure to the Hoenn adventures, well you could have done worse mate!  Emerald is an excellent game to play that generation as it has all of the semi-legendary and most of the legendary Pokemon obtainable in it, and its story line is a bit more intense and entertaining -- not to mention that it contains some bog standard Pokemon not available in the other games.

The Welcome Screen