Pokémon Colosseum is a spinoff of the incredibly popular Pokemon franchise for the GameCube. Produced by Nintendo and Pokémon Company-owned Genius Sonority and released in 2003, the game and its sequel Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness are notably Darker and Edgier than the rest of the series. The subseries takes place in the desert region of Orre, where there are no wild Pokémon to be found. So how do you accomplish the usual task of catching and raising your own small army of adorable little forces of nature then? You steal them, mainly from the bad guys.The main character of Colosseum, Wes, is a top operative of an organization known as Team Snagem. Using a device known as a Snag Machine, this gang is infamous for "snagging" Pokémon from Trainers all across Orre. All is well until Wes pulls a spectacular double cross on the organization, stealing their only portable Snag Machine and blowing up Snagem's headquarters. Upon reaching the town of Phenac, he stops two thugs in the middle of kidnapping a girl called Rui: a girl who can perceive a strange black aura around certain Pokémon that indicates that they have been corrupted into heartless fighting machines known as "Shadow Pokémon". She pleads with Wes to use his "snagging" expertise to help her purify all the Shadow Pokémon and uncover the conspiracy behind their creation.Pokémon Colosseum is notable for being the first fully-3D Pokémon RPG (with a storyline and everything!) and for some unique gameplay features: such as the fact that every fight in Orre is a double battle, requiring a whole new set of tactics from regular play.The sequel, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, was released the following year.
The series as a whole contains examples of:
After Combat Recovery: At least in normal (non plot-driven) Colosseum knockout challenges such as the Phenac and Pyrite Colosseums, and Mt. Battle.
The AI also loves to gang up on the pokemon in the first slot for some reason.
Aerith and Bob: The two main characters have the fairly normal-sounding names of Wes and Rui. However, everyone else has really weird, made-up-sounding names. One possible theory is that it's due to a bad attempt at making the setting seem more exotic. Another says that the game's translators brought in a bunch of toddlers to bang on the keyboards.
As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Another theory about the weird names of Orre is that the weird names were selected to give the region an otherworldly, foreign feel.
Bowdlerise: Rui's shirt no longer shows off her navel and has her skirt lengthened a few notches (originally it was shorter than Dawn's) outside of Japan. A bit odd in such a Darker and Edgier work, but least she no longer looks like a cheap hooker.
Check Point Starvation: Although it isn't much longer than the average dungeon, the Shadow Pokemon Lab doesn't have any healing machines or PC's halfway through to make the trip easier. But at least your enemy encounters don't respawn.
Mildly done in general as you couldn't just save anywhere, unlike other games.
Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Miror B. seems to be in his own little world most of the time.
Combat Pragmatist: Cipher is regularly indicated to have Pokémon physically attack humans (Trainers can be found on the ground in pain saying how they lost). "Pokémon are (pocket) monsters that can seriously injure or kill a human, the only reliable defense against them is other Pokémon (which is gone if all yours are KOed)" has always been the Elephant in the Living Room of the series, implied, but never stated, (Except in Pokémon Special, where it is completely explicit), though Cipher is the only one to carry out the implied threat (again, outside of Special).
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: When you use an item in battle, it takes effect immediately, before the AI selects its own moves, even. This means that when you use an item to cure a status effect (such as Poison or Confusion), the AI can re-afflict your Pokemon with that status on the same turn.
Cool Bike: Wes' hoverbike monstrosity is his primary mode of transportation. The laws of physics say that that thing shouldn't be able to move, but of course the Rule Of Cool trumps this.
Cool Sidecar: During the first two trips, the side car has Espeon and Umbreon in it, with both of them sticking their heads out the top into the wind like real-world dogs.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Eagun attempts to fight a Cipher minion with his high-level Pikachu, to no avail.
Darker and Edgier: Oh boy, see the intro for the tip of this iceberg. Very noticeable, as it premiered right after the Lighter and Softer first three generations.
This is the first game to show a Trainer using physical violence against another trainer.
Dramatic Wind: Every single battle seems to have high speed winds coming from the center, given the way the Trainers stand.
Desert Punk: Especially the first few parts. Virtually no law (only two real cops in all of Orre!), bone-dry wastelands, criminal gangs tearing up the place... prototypical Desert Punk. Agate Village is the only exception to this. Exactly why Orre is so bone-dry is never explained.
Disc One Nuke: You start with Espeon in Colosseum, which begins with Return (and maximum happiness), and the STAB boosted Confusion. Umbreon, on the other hand, is a defensive tank in a game where tanking is awful thanks to the 2v2 format.
Elite Mooks: Cipher Peon Skrub, who is battled three times and is given a leadership role in relation to his fellow peons during the first two.
Endgame Plus: After beating the game, Wes starts receiving email from the Kids' Grid members hinting about where to find more Shadow Pokemon, including the old Team Snagem hideout which he blew up during the opening movie. On the other hand, nobody acknowledges the defeat and arrest of Team Cipher's leaders, and the player may return to Realgam Tower Colosseum to challenge the final battles again.
Enormous Engine: Wes probably stole the engine for his hovering motorcycle thingy from a Greyhound bus...or a Top Fuel dragster...or a diesel locomotive. It's mounted at the very front of his vehicle; only the Rule Of Cool keeps the machine from nose-diving forward and catapulting Wes and Rui face-first into the sand.
Expy: Ein is basically Hojo in the Pokémon universe.
Rui also resembles, and even acts, like Misty in her pre-GSC/HGSS design.
Many, many, many characters are or have been suspected of being expies of characters from various canons of Pokémon. It's actually part of the fun for some people trying to see which characters are which.
Faceless Goons: Cipher grunts. Ironically, they are the only evil team in the series whose grunts have individual names.
The Dark Chick: Lady Venus, shared with Miror B. (They both administer the running of Pyrite, above, and the Under, below).
Foreshadowing: In Colosseum, a couple of easily missed dialogue lines reference a man who made got very rich in the mines of The Under and a rich man building the Tower Colosseum (Cipher's HQ). These seem like throwaway lines until you realize, no one encountered in the Cipher Administration of Colosseum is wealthy. They're refering to Mr. Verich aka Grand Master Greevil, the Bigger Bad of the series.
He even has an aspiring fanboy in the form of Mirakle B., who may be a Loony Fan.
Ground Punch: This is how Earthquake is animated: the user punches the ground and ripples travel out to break the ground under everyone else.
Guide Dang It: To fight Mirakle B., go to where Miror B. was after he is defeated, but before the final boss. A bit of an Easter Egg.
There's also how to get Ho-oh in Colosseum, which is never hinted at anywhere in the game, as well as a huge slog through 100 consecutive battles (fortunately, you're allowed to save between them). The kicker? If you're not using Pokémon off of your Colosseum file, you won't get Ho-oh.
Of course, that doesn't mean you can't trade your good GBA Pokemon to the Colosseum file and use them.
Heel Face Turn: Wes has one at the very beginning of the game. And he sure knows how to make it count, since he pretty much crippled Team Snagem while performing it. Eldes and Greevil in the second game ultimately perform one after they're defeated.
Inevitable Tournament: Want to get into Miror B.'s hideout? Go win the Pyrite Colosseum challenge first so they can reward you with a Shadow Pokémon.
Joke Character: The Plusle you get from Duking, which starts off as horribly below everything else in the game in terms of levels. And if you're only playing the game for 100% Completion in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, it's even more worthless to you.
Karma Houdini: All the Cipher admins except Evice and Nascour.
Kick the Dog: Cipher is pretty much all about this trope. For example, during Cipher's attack on Mt. Battle, Dakim knocks a Trainer to the ground with a huge punch. That's how evil and strong he is.
Kid Hero: Averted for the first time in the franchise with Wes.
Lost Forever: Averted; if you fail to Snag a Shadow Pokemon the first time, you will eventually get a chance to rematch the trainer and try again, although it will be much later in the game. However, it's played straight with Mirakle B., who leaves forever after you beat the game.
Magic Skirt: The camera is quite careful about this for every female opponent, but it becomes really noticeable if you play VS mode with Leaf, who still has a skirt that just barely covers the hips and has a pose (one foot out forward and leaning in, as if bracing against wind) that should provide maximal pantsu, but the skirt is posed in just the right way for it to reveal nothing at any camera angle.
Morality Chain: Rui, kind of. She won't allow Wes to use the Snag Machine on anything but Shadow Pokemon.
Morality Pet: Wes's Espeon (and possibly Umbreon) starts with max happiness, as if to assure the player Wes cares for his Pokémon, despite his stats as an ex-Snagem member.
Mythology Gag: Rui's grandfather. Aspired to be a Pokémon master? Granddaughter's a redhead? His oldest, strongest, and closest Pokémon is a Pikachu? A reference to Ash, the protagonist of the anime.
Never Trust a Trailer: An early Nintendo Power ad made out Wes to be an outright villain.
Nintendo Hard: The story mode is a huge Difficulty Spike compared to the rest of the series, because of the small pool of available Pokémon, and the fact that bosses are not suffering from Crippling Overspecialization. They use legitimate—and often very effective—strategies which can easily decimate your party.
No Export for You: The game has e-Reader support, but none of the cards were released outside Japan. Defeating the trainers on those cards unlocked three more Shadow Pokémon (Togepi, Mareep, and Scizor).
Non-Elemental: Shadow Rush (90 power, incurs recoil) is completely exempt from elemental matchups.
It's Wes more than Rui who doesn't hint at anything, but, really, the only time that Wes acts as anything but a blank player avatar is during the opening cut scene. Like most Pokémon protagonists, he's a Heroic Mimewith no personality whatsoever.
One Game for the Price of Two: One of the complaints was how in order to get all of the Pokémon before FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald were released, you needed this game and one of those GameCube to Game Boy Advance Link Cables.
On the other hand, Rui seems to have a crush on Wes early on - she brushes off the fact that he used to be fairly highly ranked in Team Snagem even though she's probably only known him for fifteen minutes or so at this point, calling him her "gallant prince who rescued me". There are also some NPCs who seem to refer to the two as a couple.
Point And Click Map: Rather than the usual free-roaming between each town, the player instead moves between areas via a map-selection screen, with cutscenes of the player character driving between locales.
Police Are Useless: Taken to a nearly horrifying extreme. There are a grand total of TWO cops in the entire two games, both working the same crime-infested city and unable to do much about any of it, and one of them is a complete moron. There may be more that we don't see.
The Power of Friendship: Hilariously enough, Cipher's master plan of closing the hearts of Pokémon to turn them into mindless killing machines can be completely reversed by simply caring for the Pokémon.
Primal Stance: There is no reason for Dakim to be walking around like a gorilla, aside from the fact that he is characterized as a brutish thug.
Punny Name: A few, seeing as this is a Pokémon game. (Silva, a silver-haired character, is one example.)
Quieter Than Silence: When you battle Nascour, there is no battle music whatsoever, only the distant sound of the crowd.
Random Encounters: Averted, unlike the main series. There are no wild Pokemon whatsoever in Orre — the only Mons you battle belong to opposing Trainers.
The Reveal: The mayor of Phenac City—that fat, balding old man you meet a grand total of once before he goes back to being a useless NPC? He's the Big Bad.
Foreshadowing: Remember where you first meet Nascour? The mayor's office? Yeah.
Recurring Riff: There is a 13-note melody that appears in the Pyrite Town music (at the beginning), the normal battle theme (just before the turnaround), and the Cipher Admin battle theme (partially at the beginning and later at the climax), as well as at least partially in some other songs in the game.
Save Game Limits: You have only one save "file" ... per memory card, at least. The file is also locked to the card it was created on; you can't copy it off to a different card.
Save Point: The PC's normally used for Pokemon/item storage also save your game.
The Scottish Trope: "A distant land" (listed in "Met" in a Pokemon's profile page) is the only reference made to Orre in the rest of the series. PERIOD.
Secret Character: Ho-oh. You have to purify all the Shadow Pokemon, then beat Mt. Battle from top to bottom using mons on the Colosseum save.
Slasher Smile: A rare good example comes from the protagonist as he roars off from the destroyed Snagem base.
Space Western: Well, futuristic western. The game makes use of western style archetypes (vigilantes against town controlling gangs), setting (crime ridden desert with little to nothing between the mostly independent towns that only have a state and federal government above the local law in theory) and music (there is a shocking amount of harmonica in the tracks, sometimes using underneath a techno and piano combination, which works shockingly well.)
Stripperiffic: Some of the female civvie and hood Trainers dress in this fashion, but no more than the average Rockette. Cipher Peons averted this before Galactic Grunts did - slimmer Faceless Goon suits are all you get if you're XX. Venus is somewhere between the two.
Wake Up Call Boss / Early Bird Boss: Miror B. in Colosseum is this due to the fact that you can't level up any Snagged Pokémon yet, and you have precious few moves that are effective against his team. At least his battle theme is a Crowning Music of Awesome.
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