So Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow are due to arrive this Saturday on the 3DS Virtual Console and naturally we’re all very excited to take a trip back in time to our childhood here at N-Europe.  I remember I was but 10 years old when I first set out on my first trip to Kanto to become The Best There Ever Was…

But wait!

STOP RIGHT THERE!! You are under arrest for the crime of playing a game while underage!

That’s right! This ain’t the 90s anymore because hilariously enough, Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow now comes along with a brand new PEGI rating of 12 for these Virtual Console releases! It seems that the Game Corner is just too successful of a gambling simulator for PEGI to allow it to slip by their insightful grasp.

So in the run up to the re-release of the first generation of Pokemon, we have complied a handy dandy list of games that all have PEGI ratings that are lower, or equal to what these humble little games now have attached to them and a little reminder of the completely unquestionable content that they contain within…

Be warned that these lists may contain spoilers for certain games…

Our first list starts off from the bottom of the scale, all containing games that have PEGI 3 ratings.  These games would have all been far more suitable for my younger self back in the day and would’ve saved me from my life of destitution… if only I had known… if only…

Earthbound Beginnings

Ahh, this wonderful and unassuming little game.  Now THIS is much more fitting for a little kid.  Sure, it contains strip clubs, human sacrifice and underage drinking, but it doesn’t have any of those pesky gambling machines that will influence my little Timmy!

Wario Ware Touched!

WAHAHAHA!! You won’t find anything questionable in Wario’s game! There’s nothing but perfectly suitable content for 3 year olds, such as scatological humour and a microgame where you get to strip everyone’s favourite garlic muncher down to nothing! (only a single leaf protects his dignity!)

The Pikmin series

This is a nice little game, about walking, living flowers and the beauty of nature.  Sure, your faithful Pikmin friends can be burnt alive, electrocuted to death, can (and will) drown in front of your eyes, be eaten alive, squashed flat and blown to bits and will very likely go completely extinct; but hey! You can always drug them up with “nectar” to even the odds and hide all that ugly stuff from your precious little ones, so it's all ok!

Fire Emblem GBA

Now, Fire Emblem Fates might be full of all that nasty, horrible stuff that has you interacting with those you love, but Fire Emblem GBA has a PEGI 3 rating, so that means that there’s nothing nasty here.  Certainly no violence, political intrigue and backstabbing, death and, most assuredly, no questionable support conversations (Dart and Priscila certainly don't imply incestual relationships with other characters during certain ones... no not at all…) 

The fact that this game got rated PEGI 3 twice (once on the GBA and once again on the Wii U Virtual Console) of course only means that this is doubly safe for your kid!

Magical Drop 3

Now this is a nice looking puzzle game, with plenty of beautiful… bits to look at.  Any 3 year old kid is sure to love the fast paced non-violent gameplay and the bouncy animations that accompany it...

Kirby’s Dreamland 3

Kirby is such a cute character and his world is such a happy place.  There’s nothing nasty that happens in any of his games.   What!? What do you mean that Kirby’s Dreamland 3 has a scene where DeDeDe’s chest bursts open, re-enacting the Xenomorph Birth scene from Alien!? Or that its final boss has its face get torn to shreds in showers of blood!? Stop talking nonsense! Kirby games NEVER have questionable content that happen right at the end of most of them, not at all…

The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Series

Oh come on, this is Pokemon! Of course it’s kid friendly!  The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is known for its surprisingly interesting and engrossing stories that absolutely don’t contain themes such as bodily possession, suicide cults, on-screen murder, the destruction of entire worlds, physical sacrifice and child kidnappings by Drowsie (and it’s a good thing too, because considering his and Hypno’s Pokedex entries that imply some nasty stuff involving children, that would certainly be bad if that happened in this game…)

Banjo Tooie

Ahh, the sequel to Banjo Kazooie.  With Bottles violently killed off in the first 5 minutes (on camera, might I add), MORE than its fair share of expungent innuendos (Fancy a Suck or a Blow on the BOB anyone?) and enough scatalogical humour to make Wario proud, this is the perfect game for your little three year old...

And like its SRPG counterpart Fire Emblem, this also has been rated as suitable for three year olds twice over! The ELSPA took care of duties the first time around on the N64, but PEGI clearly took a long, hard, extended look at the Xbox 360 re-release because they felt that it was clearly suitible for three year olds once again!

Want more? Well, you're in luck, because we have another two articles that cover even more, perfecly kid friendly games that I am absolutely sure are far more suitable for children than these horrible and destructive Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow games.

Click here to read the next article.  This one covers PEGI 7 rated games!