In September of 2006 Nintendo released two Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles, one for each of its portable gaming devices, GBA and DS. Developed by ChunSoft, a team with more than enough experience with the genre, Nintendo seemingly started a revival of dungeon crawlers. Not only that, but these Pokémon spin-offs introduced an interesting idea; no longer do you play with Pokémon, now you are one of them, and it’s up to you to figure out why. This premise, the relatively obscure genre, and obviously the brand name made the games a success. Unfortunately, reviewers in general weren’t too keen on the titles, not able to look past the repetitiveness of gameplay and level design. These factors didn’t matter to gamers, though; the franchise quickly found a dedicated ‘cult’ of sorts, populating forums and exchanging rescue codes. A pair of sequels was released in Japan last year, and North American DS players just received the latest updates of the series, Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness. Unfortunately, most of the flaws present on the first titles remain.

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