Keitai Denjuu Telefang Power Version (Game Boy Color)

 The "Power Version" part of the title is in contrast to there also being a "Speed Version", though I don't know exactly what differences exist between the two. But that piece of information, as well as a quick look at the screenshots accompanying this review, should tell you that this is a shameless Pokemon mockbuster. So much so, in fact, that for a long time it was mostly known to English speakers by the titles Pokemon Diamond/Jade Version, as that was the name of a poorly translated bootleg that was being sold for years. There's also a fanmade translation patch, which is the version I've been playing. It's not just a Pokemon mockbuster though: the plot also takes a lot of elements from Digimon! And, to be fair, though it does lift a lot from more popular series, it does have a lot of its own ideas, too.

 

So, the plot is extremely Digimon-like, until it starts adding in some slightly more unhinged elements: in the near future, another dimension is discovered that can be accessed via portals in trees that are accessed by using flip phones, somehow. In this other world, there are friendly monsters named Denjuu. Also, this other world was "discovered" by a pharmaceutical company who claim ownership over it. That company allows kids access for free, but adults have to pay money. Your character is a kid who's also apparently a baseball prodigy, and as a result of the aforementioned policy, most of the other human characters you meet are also kids. The exceptions being members of the Kazuka Party, a shady political party who want to win an election and give everyone curry? But they seem to be the only political party in the Denjuu world? 

 

Anyway, upon arrival in the Denjuu world, you're assigned a friend Denjuu, and you can also recruit more Denjuu by beating them up. This is explained thusly: "some Denjuu won't make friends with anyone weaker than them, so you have to beat them in battle to get their phone numbers". Which gets into the first interesting system: you don't have a party like in Pokemon. Instead, you have your main Denjuu following you around ala Pokemon Yellow (though you can change this to any Denjuu you've befriended), and the others are saved in your phone as contacts. At the start of a battle, you can call one or two of your contacts (I think this is based on how strong your phone signal currently is?), and they'll arrive within a certain number of turns. Again, I'm not sure what exactly determines this number, but my guess is the type of the monster and the type of area you're in (unlike the elements used for monster types in most games like this, Telefang's monsters are categorised by their home habitats). If your main monsters is defeated before any allies turn up, that's a game over, but the same also applies to enemy trainers who have multiple Denjuu allies, too. 

 

The way the game and its story are structured are interesting enough to be of note, too, I think. The story's kind of episodic, in that you turn up in a Denjuu village, solve whatever problem they're currently enduring, then move onto the next village. The villages are dotted around the world map, and connected by more big trees with portals in them. What's interesting is the world map itself: it's like the map in Link's Awakening! There's no scrolling, and one screen of the game world equals one square on the map. Dungeons, of course, have their own maps, and work in the same way. Unfortunately, I've only played through the first two towns and their stories, as the enemies surrounding the third town are significantly stronger than those that came immediately prior, in an obvious attempt to pad out the game's length via enforced grinding. I was mildly enjoying the game up to this point, but not enough to put up with that kind of nonsense.

 

As you can see from the screenshots, the battles are similar to those seen in the Pokemon games to an almost ridiculous degree, even using a near-identical screen layout. Mechanically, there's a couple of differences, though. There's the calling for help party system I already described, and there's also the friendship stat each monster has. This is increased by giving them gifts, talking to them on the phone, using them in battle, and setting them as your main partner. What it does is affects how the denjuu acts in battle: with a low friendship, they might do nothing at all, slightly higher, and they'll sometimes follow orders or sometimes do an atack of their own choice, and eventually they'll have enough friendship to obey commands every time. Other than that, there's attacks, buff/debuff moves, and status effects, and even the attack animations are very similar to those seen in Pokemon.

 

There's not much else to say about Keitai Denjuu Telefang. It's got a real time clock and day/night cycle, like Pokemon Gold and Silver had the year prior. I was mostly playing this in the dead of night, but I did force myself to have an afternoon session so that I could at least take some screenshots in the daytime. But that's about it. In the year 2000, when it came out, you could reasonably recommend Telefang to people who'd played all the actual Pokemon games to death and were desperate for something similar. But in 2023, there are significantly more Pokemon games to play though before you get to that point, and once you do, there are many more interesting options to go for, like the Nexomon games, or Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, for example. So this is just a historical curiosity, thanks to the unique circumstance of it having such an infamous bootleg.