I’ve already written most o’ what I have to say ‘bout the 1st generation games in my rambling post on the Pokémon main game series in general, so this post will be brief.
What I want to highlight is that part o’ this game that most pertains to the Game Boy Color: its peculiar color palettes. Though Game Boy Color games are capable o’ handling multiple palettes @ the same time, Pokémon Yellow uses the same palette system that the Super Game Boy versions o’ Red & Blue did: only 1 monochrome palette @ a time for the o’erworld, but which changes in different places, usually to reflect the place you’re in. Wild routes are green, while towns each have their own palette, usually similar to the town name — Viridian town is a green like viridian, Celedon City is a greenish-gray like celedon, Cerulean City is cerulean, & so on. Other than Pallet, which isn’t a color, but just a different spelling for the word “palette”, Vermilion City is the only exception for variety’s sake, as vermilion is actually just a synonym for cinnabar, which is the name o’ ‘nother town which has that color as its palette.
As a kid ( who didn’t realize the Super Game Boy versions o’ Red & Blue had this feature, too, not having a Super Game Boy ), this stood out to me, artistically, for reasons I didn’t know then, & now can only guess is ‘cause seeing a single hue @ a time makes each stand out mo’ on their own, than diluted in a mix ‘mong others.
I bring this up, ‘course, ‘cause this palette system o’ having a different monochrome palette for each place heavily inspired the palette system in Boskeopolis Land, where each level map & different sections o’ the o’erworld have a single monochrome palette.
