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Pokémon Mystery Dungeon

Chunsoft's roguelike, played as a Pokémon

Classic GamesSource-checked

In 2005 Chunsoft, the makers of the Mystery Dungeon roguelikes, put the player inside Pokémon's world as a Pokémon. Red Rescue Team (Game Boy Advance) and Blue Rescue Team (Nintendo DS) opened with a personality quiz that decided which Pokémon you had become, then sent you into dungeons that changed every visit. Sequels followed on the DS, WiiWare, 3DS and Switch.

Most Pokémon games make the player a trainer who catches the creatures. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon made the player one of them. “You are a regular Trainer who wakes up one morning to discover you’ve been turned into a Pokémon!” is how The Pokémon Company describes the opening of the first games, Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team. A personality quiz at the start decides which Pokémon you have become. You can now understand what other Pokémon say, a partner joins you, and the two of you set out into dungeons whose layout changes every time you go in.

The dungeons came from Chunsoft, which had been making them since 1993.

From Torneko to Pokémon

Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon games began with Torneko’s Great Adventure (1993) on the Super Famicom, which gave a merchant from Dragon Quest a dungeon of his own, and continued with Shiren the Wanderer (1995). They followed the rules of the old computer game Rogue, the founder of the roguelike: a turn-based crawl through floors laid out afresh on every visit. Chunsoft’s series was, in Retro Gamer’s words, “massively popular, providing an easy introduction to the sub-genre”, and in 1997 Edge reported that Square’s Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon was “based on Chunsoft’s popular Siren Mystery Dungeon”.

“Trust Nintendo to take an age-old sub-genre and give it a cute new spin,” Retro Gamer wrote of Red Rescue Team.

Red and Blue

Like the main Pokémon games, the first Mystery Dungeon came as a pair, but this pair was split across two machines: Red Rescue Team for the Game Boy Advance and Blue Rescue Team for the Nintendo DS. They came out in Japan on 17 November 2005 and in North America on 18 September 2006.

The player and partner form a rescue team, taking on missions to help other Pokémon in trouble and recruiting new members along the way. Each time the team enters a dungeon, the floors are laid out differently and the items lie in different places. Fainting in a dungeon sends the team back to its base without the items it was carrying.

Later games

Chunsoft kept the series going through two console generations. Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness (2007) and Explorers of Sky (2009) stayed on the DS. Adventure Squad (2009) came out for the Wii’s WiiWare download service. Gates to Infinity (2012) moved to the 3DS. Retro Gamer gave it 62% and judged it “clearly aimed at kids with its trite storyline and cute visuals”, but found “beneath its cheery exterior” a “surprisingly challenging Roguelike affair that’ll offer you hours of gameplay if you’re prepared to put the time in”. It also used the 3DS’s augmented reality. Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon followed in 2015.

By then the developer had a new name: in April 2012 Chunsoft merged with Spike to become Spike Chunsoft. On 6 March 2020 Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX for Nintendo Switch “reimagines the very first entries in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series”, in The Pokémon Company’s words. It keeps the personality quiz, and a player who faints in a dungeon can ask other players to come to the rescue. In August 2024 the original Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team became available on Nintendo Switch Online with the Expansion Pack.

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