Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire

English Title Screen

Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire is a Nintendo GameCube product released May 30th 2003 in Japan and in North America on July 11th 2004. In North America however, it was only available at the Pokémon Center in New York. Pokémon Box itself is not so much a game, however, as it is a storage unit for a Trainer's Pokémon.

European gamers were able to purchase the game with a GameCube Bundle which includes: Pokémon Colosseum, a memory card and a GameCube link cable. Also, there was a limited amount of Pokémon Box available online at the Stars Catalogue on the official Nintendo of Europe website.

Features

Trainers can store up to 1500 Pokémon in twenty-five boxes that hold sixty Pokémon and trade between Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen. All the Pokémon can be stored on a memory card which comes with the game itself.

Once a Pokémon is in a box, Trainers can examine the stats of their Pokémon and open a spreadsheet style graph with numerous categories such as original Trainer, moves, Pokémon Contests stats, friendliness and level to name a few. In the main menu, each Pokémon can be displayed on a small stage. The host of the game, Bridgette, is the creator of the mass storage system, and is the sister of Lanette, who along with Bill developed the standard storage system.

The game also comes with a GameCube to Game Boy Advance link cable, which allows Trainers to deposit Pokémon from their GBA game to the Box without the need to trade. However, certain conditions in each game must be met before depositing Pokémon can begin. For example, the cartridge must have at least 100 Pokémon in the Pokédex and in the case of Pokémon Fire Red and Pokémon Leaf Green, Trainers must have the National Dex as well.

Bonus eggs

When a certain amount of Pokémon are deposited from a game pak, a Pokémon egg is deposited in box and said Pokémon has a special move that it would not learn normally and can not be passed down through Breeding. It is important to note that these Pokémon do not have to all have the same original Trainer ID number, but just have to all come from the same game pak into Pokémon Box. This means that, in cases where a player has access to multiple games, all of the Pokémon can be transferred to one, then moved into Box. The Pokémon that are available from the special eggs are:

• Swablu with False Swipe: receive at the start.
• Zigzagoon with ExtremeSpeed: 100 Pokémon from one game.
• Skitty with Pay Day: 500 Pokémon from one game.
• Pichu with Surf: 1499 Pokémon from one game.

Emulation

Aside from being a storage device, Pokémon Box can be used to play Pokémon Ruby or Pokémon Sapphire on the television without the Game Boy Player. Only those versions, not FireRed, LeafGreen, or Emerald, can be played and the storage system on the memory card cannot be accessed via the in-game PC, just the game cartrige's boxes. In this way, it is much like the Game Boy Tower of Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Stadium 2.