Pokemon Trainer's Guide: Everything Pokemon (Pokémon) [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Brian Brokaw (Author), J. Douglas Arnold (Author), Mark Elies (Author), Mark MacDonald (Author, Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 188436425X | ISBN-13: 978-1884364259 | Publication Date: November 1999 | Edition: illustrated edition

AUTHOR MARK MacDONALD TRAVELED TO JAPAN to learn everything he could about Pocket Monsters (called Pokemon in the US), gathering all the available products. After months of careful study of the Japanese products followed by working with the U.S. releases, he has produced the most comprhensive book available in any language about Pokemon, documenting every aspect of how to win and collect all 151 of the monsters. Includes everything you ever wanted to know about Pokemon, both english and Japanese versions, including each color of cartridge, the Pokemon Stadium, with complete walkthroughs for the RPG quests. Mark is fluent in Japanese, and is the author of numerous video game magazine articles and book chapters, as well as the Final Fantasy VII Survival Guide. His new day job is for the Official U.S. Playstation Magazine. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

GameBoy Pokemon hunters rejoice! The ultimate guide to Pokmon has been completely revised to include Pokemon Yellow, as well as Blue and Red. This full color guide includes a complete walkthrough of the adventure with maps for every town, a complete alphabetical Pokmon list with full stats, and lots of extras. Bonus chapters include Pokemon Snap for N64, a Pokemon Trading Card Game player's guide, the Pokemon Cartoon Series, and Pokemon Toys.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Sandwich Islands Pub; illustrated edition edition (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188436425X
• ISBN-13: 978-1884364259
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A book for specialized tastes...., January 20, 2004

By 

"alamedyang" (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pokemon Trainer's Guide: Everything Pokemon (Pokémon) (Paperback)

(This review is based on the old version of this book, before inclusion of Yellow information.)

As other reviewers of this book noted, it's not the best guide to Pokemon Red and Blue out there -- the walkthrough is choppy, the layout is amateurish, the translation is holey, and it could've had more information. However, it has two great redeeming qualities (at least in my eyes) that no other book can offer -- the reasons for me buying the book at all:

1) It contains information for Japanese versions, which I happen to own. (This may be a handicap for everyone else, it was a strength for me.) More specifically, it contains monster location information for the "3rd cart" (which isn't Yellow, by the way), aka the nonexistant "English Green", or the Japanese Blue version -- plus a map to Mewtwo for the Japanese Green and Red carts. (The Japanese Blue cart actually uses the American map!)

2) It has actual percentages for monster locations, not just the unhelpful "common" versus "rare" that other books use, for each of the three versions. This way, I can check exact probability and decide which version to catch the monster in (and then trade to the other).

These two strengths only rate it three stars because the rest of the weaknesses are just too bad, especially in the translation department -- some Pokemon names are left in Japanese (Rakki for Chansey, Spectre for Haunter, Tamatama for Exeggcute, etc.) -- and the mechanics department: Where the versions differ for trading and other aspects of gameplay, only one version's information is presented, not all of them. Plus, I would have liked a PokeDex by number and not by name (it could have a name-to-number conversion chart to compensate), an item function chart, and a explanation of each attack move.... for things like these, other guides are far better.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Be Warned!, March 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Pokemon Trainer's Guide: Everything Pokemon (Pokémon) (Paperback)

Be warned that this guide isn't accurate as it should be. For example, on one page it states that you have to win the Rainbow Badge to get the Bulbasaur from the Pokemon Collector in Pokemon Yellow. You only need the Cascade Badge which you get in Cerulean City.

Another problem is the sequential order they use for the walk through which makes following it difficult and confusing. It would be better to have a step by step walk through rather than one that was so confusing as to mislead the readers.

Besides these problems plus the map of one of the areas in the game being somewhat hard to read, the book is a fair read but my suggestion is that the buyer should be ware.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tom's Review, January 30, 2000

By 

Tom Lew (Livermore, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pokemon Trainer's Guide: Everything Pokemon (Pokémon) (Paperback)

I bought this book for my daughter for Christmas. We used it constantly when she played Pokemon Snap. Now we use it when she plays with Gameboy Blue/Red/Yellow. I like the extensive use of pictures. I also like the alphabetical listing of the Pokemon instead of the 1-151 number system. Highly recommended!