At the time of it's launch, the Gameboy Advance had already established a foot hold in dominating the market. The software for the Pokémon Mini consisted of 10 titles, all with a strong Pokémon theme that had little appeal to hardcore gamers. There was simply no reason for the average person to own such a system. As such, the system received little promotion. Eventually, the system was released in the United States, but only in one store: The Pokémon Center in New York City. The Pokémon Mini fell into immediate obscurity, and was seen as taking up valuable shelf space. In the end, it was packaged as a promotional bonus for people buying Pokémon Channel for the GameCube.

Ironically, it was Pokémon Channel that subsequently caused a small revival of the system. Located within the Pokémon Channel game was the capability to find a Pokémon Mini hand-held. This hand-held was driven by a in-house developed emulator. The discovery of the emulator inspired a fan, going by the alias of DaveX, to reverse engineer the software. This project started the group Team PokéMe.

Process quickly advanced on the project and much of the CPU's behavior had been documented. Later on, a clever (now infamous) fellow going by the name of DarkFader had dumped the existing software and created his own homebrew applications. At this point, there was growing notoriety behind the project, because it was one of the few instances of a group publicly hacking a completely custom system and producing runnable software. It was at this point that I became interested.

The development team gathered on an IRC channel. Though the members were from all reaches of the world, it consisted of only a handful of members. The system was still mostly undocumented, and the only effective way to test homebrew code was to patch the Pokémon Channel during run-time. This left many of the team members unable to test their code on a viable platform. A member named JustBurn had began creating an emulator that, while good in it's own respect, did not support enough of the internal hardware to be effective. Feeling inspired by the work being channeled into this fledgling system, I began work on my own project: The Minimon.

Together, we mapped much of the internal hardware. Internal save memory (providing an internal watermark of "GBMN", an abbreviation for Gameboy Mini), sprites and other various system devices were discovered. This eventually allowed my project to run commercial software, something that even the emulator Nintendo itself created struggled with. At the time, I only owned the four titles that received US releases, and it was refreshing to finally get to see software that was otherwise inaccessible to me. Even though the system was designed for Pokémon-centric software, many of the titles were well engineered, and they were obviously created with the gamer in mind, not just the bottom line. It is hard to think that for such a limited system there would be software that was worth while.

The leaders of this pack are Pokémon Race Mini, Pokémon Sodateyasan Mini and Togepi no Dai Bouken. Pokémon Race Mini consists of a left scrolling race/platformer, a genre that has not really been explored in any real depth. Players race against the computer to complete a defined number of laps, race time trials, prior ghosts and also play mission challenges. Players also had their choice of a handful of Pokémon racers, each with different skills and advantages. Pokémon Sodateyasan Mini is a virtual pet, much like the Pocket Pikachu which the system was likely modeled after. Players are given the opportunity to raise a Pokémon to maturity, making sure to feed, water, exercise and maintaining the general happiness of their pet. Togepi no Dai Bouken is a tilt-and-roll labyrinth puzzle. Players are given a limited amount of time to roll a Togepi through a maze, avoiding holes, spikes and other pitfalls to get their Pokémon to safety.

The system is most certainly a gimmick. The system was well engineered, tiny, and provided quite a bit of functionality for something of such diminutive stature. It is still, however, a vehicle for Pokémon promotion, regardless of what purpose it was originally created for. I, myself, look at the system with rose colored glasses, for I've invested so many hours into the device. If you find one, buy it. They are cheap and they are becoming exceedingly rare, more so than when it was initially created. The games can be a bit on the expensive side however. The system may have been a throw away project to Nintendo, but it has been and most likely will always been one of the most entertaining system's I've ever worked with.