The Pokémon franchise is easily one of Nintendo’s most popular to date. Considering this fact, it’s not surprising to see a game that really has very little to do with the franchise bearing its likeness. While you will find Pikachu and a variety of other familiar critters racing each other in Pokémon Dash, the appearance is entirely superficial. Pikachu won’t be jolting anyone as you race from one Poké Ball-shaped checkpoint to another. This waste of the license would be entirely forgivable if the game itself was very good, but instead it is seriously marred by a number of small issues and at least one fundamental problem. Amazingly, the game still manages to be rather fun if you can get past the warts.

Dash is played from a top down perspective. The goal of the game is to race from one checkpoint to the next. To win, you must effectively use terrain and items to your advantage. Certain pickups will allow you to run freely on difficult terrain, and balloons allow you to fly to any location you desire (I would suggest the vicinity of the next checkpoint). Landing a balloon in optimal conditions requires some amount of skill. You’ll have to strike a balance between choosing a soft landing spot and a spot that is close to where you’d like to be (you can land more quickly on soft ground and you cannot land in forests at all). The balloon aspect can be quite fun as you try to quickly hover over a soft patch of grass and pop both of your balloons, sending Pikachu into a very convincing freefall. It captures the speed thrill of a racing game much more effectively than any other part of the game (and more effectively than many traditional racing games even). As the competition heats up, you’ll have to carefully decide when to stay on the beaten path, and when to run off in search of terrain pickups or balloons. As you prepare to land a balloon, you have to quickly size up the ground below to choose an optimal landing spot before executing the landing, which may be complicated by wind. The gameplay design is actually quite fun once you get accustomed to it. However, it is somewhat unintuitive, so it will take some time to get comfortable. Fortunately, there are five tutorial levels, and the difficulty level of the grand prix course increases smoothly.

Unfortunately, despite the relatively solid gameplay, Pokémon Dash has quite a number of diverse problems conspiring to make you hate the game. I personally got over most of them and enjoyed the game a lot more than many other reviewers (for example, our import reviewer, Chris). I’m not sure where to begin describing the various small problems, but they are numerous.

First of all, the game suffers from Sonic syndrome. The close, top down view limits your sight to a very small area immediately around Pikachu. There’s not much you can do about it, except to pay attention to the terrain as you land from a balloon and replay the race a few times as necessary (which is a little cheap). An arrow points you directly toward the next checkpoint, but often you have to make big detours to avoid obstacles, making the arrow downright misleading at times. Surprisingly, you can be quite effective, even the first time you play a level, by using the arrow, the radar, and the bird’s eye view from balloons, but a better design might have incorporated a map and radar together on the extra screen instead of just a radar. The designers give you unlimited retries on a race (even in the middle of a cup) as long as you pause and restart before completing the race. This is an example of treating the symptom and not the problem, but it does make the game more playable. The radar is another source of frustration. Not only should it be a map instead, but it is also difficult to switch between the radar screen and the racing screen. I found myself wishing that a mini-radar was on the racing screen. The directional arrow that guides you to the next checkpoint may be a symptom of a larger problem, but the developers have created another problem by removing the arrow when you use a balloon. It’s nothing that paying attention doesn’t solve, but it can make you very lost as you search for a land formation matching the one that replaces the radar screen, having no idea in which direction it lies. Finally, when you pause the game, if you accidentally tap one of the quit options, it immediately obeys without a warning screen.

The controls in Pokémon Dash are unique. You always view Pikachu from directly above, and to move him, you place the stylus against the screen at any point and make a quick dragging motion in the direction you’d like to go. However, you must repeat this dragging motion over and over again to continue moving in that direction. It actually works well most of the time, but certain situations can cause the control to break down. For example when dashing in one direction, a quick change in direction often put my hand in an awkward position with no time to fix it. I also found that running quickly to the left was a lot more difficult than going in other directions (I’m right handed). These problems become most prevalent on rough terrain, where it’s more difficult to keep your speed up (so much that your hand may get tired). Another problem is that the game completely avoids the use of buttons except as an option to control menus (which is funny, because the menus control is responsive and intuitive with the touch screen). Most notably, whenever you fly or land a balloon, you have to vertically “slice” either the left or right side of the screen. There should have been an alternate method of doing this (maybe a double tap on any of the buttons or D-pad). I want to say that the control design is bad, but I can’t quite figure out what else they could have done except design a different game. The D-pad would not have given the analog control necessary for the game, and most other reasonable control schemes would have required using the stylus in conjunction with the D-pad, a dubious proposition at best. One good thing that came out of Pokémon Dash’s controls is that I no longer have any fear of scratching the touch screen on my DS. After hours of dashing, there are still no scratches that can be seen without an extremely bright light (and under such a light the screen is practically invisible anyway).

Graphically, the game is not far beyond a GBA game. Excluding the title screen, everything is essentially glorified sprite graphics. The best thing I can say is that the balloon view is impressive (although more from a technical stand point than a natural one). The game seamlessly scales from a very high bird’s eye view down to a ground level view during gameplay, which is easy to take for granted, but must have required very deliberate programming. The Pikachu model on the title screen looks great but is inconsequential to the gameplay.

The music of Pokémon Dash is probably the sole cause of my liking the game more than most. The second cup of the grand prix is probably the time when other reviewers started to become annoyed with the many problems of Dash. However, I particularly liked the music for this cup and I think it kept me interested until I learned to cope with the game’s flaws. Music can be a powerful thing for the musically inclined. The rest of the music is interesting as well, but only above average. The sound gets the job done. Pikachu doesn’t pika enough to drive you mad, and the various sound samples are of good quality.

In conjunction with the various faults holding the overall game design back is Dash’s limited replay value. Once you take out the 25 grand prix races in normal and hard mode, that’s the end of the meaningful gameplay unless you know someone else with the game (multiplayer requires one cart per player, unfortunately) or want to time attack the 25 races. I was not able to test it, but I imagine that if you could get a few people together who are skilled at the game, Pokémon Dash multiplayer could be very entertaining.

Ultimately, Pokémon Dash is a fun game, but there are so many little problems that should have been fixed that it feels very rushed. If you get a chance to play Dash though, try to get comfortable with the game on its own terms, and you will probably enjoy it. I would really like to see its gameplay expanded on with better overall design (a real 3D view instead of top down, mostly). There may be a future for Pokémon Dash, but it seems unlikely with a start like this.