Pokemon: whether you love it or hate it or hold no opinion on it, you’ve definitely heard of it. Whether you’ve encountered it in video game form, card game form, cartoon form, or any other endless number of merchandising forms, it’s pretty tough to avoid. Pikachu snack foods, Pikachu party favors, even Pikachu airplanes; there is denying the reach of Pokemon in global culture.

But where did it all start? Many people, even if they recognize those “pokemans,” they may have absolutely no context to put them in – they just are. For those in the know, the truth is that Pokemon first came onto the scene first in 1996 as a rather unassuming Game Boy RPG in Japan and later spread to the rest of the world in 1998. In the world of Pokemon, these creatures roam the world, just waiting for a strong trainer to come along, kick the crap out of them, stuff them into a techno-magical ball, and then train them into being BFFs. That may be a rough summary, but I challenge you to tell me it’s wrong.

In the first titles in the series, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, players take the role of a young trainer on the first day of their career, getting ready to head out into the world and make a name for themselves, eventually aiming to become champion of the Pokemon League. Players choose a “starter” Pokemon from a set of three available, either a fire, water, or grass Pokemon. Here is another key element of the series: all Pokemon have an inherent element (sometimes two), and different elements are either strong or weak against others in a complicated array of rock-paper-scissors-esque proportions. For instance, picking a grass Pokemon as your starter can be a big help when you reach the first gym, as the gym leader uses rock-types which are weak to grass. On the flip side, if you took a fire-type, you might find yourself in a tough spot as stone and dirt rain down on your poor type-disadvantaged Charmander.

The other key concept of the Pokemon games was the idea of “gotta catch ‘em all.” With 150 (initially) Pokemon out there, players were challenged to find ways to catch every single last one of them. The extra trick here was that not all of them were available in either title; Blue had a limited set, and Red had a different, but also limited, set. In order to fill out their Pokedex completely, players would have to seek out other players with the opposite title and trade with them directly. This added a social element to the game (as well as a compulsive collection element) that really created a world beyond the basic plot of the game itself. Players could meet and trade, or they could meet and battle, always trying to see who had raised a superior team.

As the target audience of the games were younger children, this created a ready-made schoolyard activity that spread like wildfire. Top that off with a cartoon and, later, a trading card game, and you had a sensation that swept across schools around the world – Pokemon was a hit, and subsequent sequels would grow even more and more popular.

Of course, the popularity of Pokemon extends beyond just children, though not every older gamer is willing to admit it. For some, like us, it’s a guilty pleasure that’s been with us for years…

How It Began

Mike – I remember getting this in early 7th grade, right around the same week it came out. I can’t honestly remember seeing a lot of advertising or anything, just one of my friends saying ‘get this game’ and so I went out and faithfully bought Pokemon Blue. I think it was a good four to six months before I even figured out there was anything other than the Gameboy game. Out of my group of friends, only one person got Red. We tried to be a little more balanced when Gold/Silver came out. It was also the only game I ever remember actually using with the link cable that came with my Gameboy.

Joel – My introduction to Pokemon is probably a testament to the power of multi-media advertising. I was a sophomore in college at the time, and I was taking a class on Japanese culture and mythology. For one of my reports, I was doing a paper on “Japanese Myth in Anime” (a bold topic, I know). I asked a friend of mine to provide me with a few different tapes from his anime collection to use in my presentation, and in return, he handed me a shopping bag full of unmarked VHS tapes and asked me to catalog what was on them.

What was on them turned out to be the first twenty-four or so episodes of the original Pokemon cartoon. I was not very familiar with Pokemon at the time, though I had heard the name. As I sat and watched through these episodes, dutifully writing down their names and order, I became oddly entranced; something about this monster-catching concept was sucking me in, and I had to watch more.

So, six months after that, as I was preparing for my study-abroad semester in Japan, I knew the time was ripe to invest in a Game Boy Color and my very own copy of Pokemon Red.

First Memories:

Mike – My memories of playing Blue revolve generally around endlessly grinding the elite four to level up and evolve things to complete my Pokedex; a very difficult task, even with a group of friends, since there was no breeding in Blue. In order for each of us to get all of the starter’s entries, we had to get an extra copy of the game, because in order to trade away a fresh starter, you not only had to save your game, erasing the one you have, but you had to play to a certain point in order to save in the first place. The same was true trying to exchange varieties of Eevee evolutions, and trying many, many unsolicited means from the internet of getting Mew. Eventually I caved in and used a GameGenie I had bought years earlier to get Mew, which I promptly filled a PC box with and gave away or sold to other kids.

Joel – My first memories are inexorably tied with my time in Japan. When I was there, in late 1999, Pokemania was in full blast. I would sit each night and play in my small apartment (it was the only game I had other than Metroid 2), slowly making my way through the game. The game surprised me with its depth, coming across as a pretty solid RPG instead of a throw-away marketing tool to suck in kids. I did, however, feel pretty behind the times, as advertisements for the Japanese release of Silver and Gold were on the TV constantly, and I was still grinding through Red…

Did You Ever Actually Catch ‘Em All?:

Mike – Yes, twice actually, in R/B my friends and I worked our butts off to fill the Pokedex. In Gold/Silver, Ruby/Sapphire, and Fire Red/Leaf Green I came pretty damn close, my Fire Red and Ruby games directly contributed to me getting a full National Dex on my Pearl cart. I was lucky that it didn’t take me too much effort when I finally got the DS games because I was able to simply import everything from my older games and then just fill in a few evolutionary holes.

Joel – Alas, I have never managed to catch them all in any of the titles. I have never been a prolific poke-trader, so that has made it a lot harder for me to fill in a lot of those gaps.

What do you think of the changes from R/B to D/P?

Mike – By and large I’ve liked them; I think breeding was a very necessary addition, especially for completing a Pokedex, as friends tend to not want to trade away a starter or and Eevee. I think some of the IV/EV things are a bit unnecessary, but it gives a high degree of customization to those that want it. The contests and berries, I think, are completely worthless; they just waste space on the cartridges where you could put other content. Also, I hate the idea of ‘special event pokemon’ – seriously, those need to die in a fire. Ever since finding out that Mew was technically unobtainable unless you went to some special event where they were giving it away, the whole concept just left a bad taste in my mouth.

The only other thing I really don’t like was not being able to travel back to old areas…I guess cartridge size is the real problem here, but I always thought since they could fit Kanto and Johoto into one Gameboy cart, they could fit those, along with Hoenn, in Ruby/Sapphire. Probably the best thing they did in Diamond/Pearl was to allow a pokemon’s levels to be equalized when fighting over WiFi. This eliminates the “level 100 grind” and allows players to focus more on move sets and EV customization rather than level grinding.

Joel – I agree that breeding is probably the best addition to the series overall, as it adds some great tools for completion and trading. The IV/EV system can be pretty complicated, but I don’t think it’s much of a problem since it’s completely optional; you can beat the games, battle friends, etc, without every worrying about what the hell an IV is. The day/night cycle was also a nice addition, but could actually be somewhat problematic depending on what your gaming schedule looked like…

As for the contests, I think they started off as a slightly interesting concept, but in their latest incarnation in D/P, they feel utterly worthless and tacked on. As Mike says, take that junk out and give us back the ability to travel to Johto/Kanto/Hoenn.

Which was your favorite?

Mike – Gold/Silver without a doubt: it’s before they started adding some of the more needless things like contests, it had the IV/EV complexity that has becomes so ingrained in the later games, and it let you travel back to the old area. It also had the most “difficult” fight in any of the single player parts, against the ‘champion’ from the previous games (this would have been a really great mind-fuck if it asked you to somehow upload the team you had won with in Red/Blue). Being that Gold/Silver were my favorites, I eagerly await the re-release on the DS, and hope it will be a great upgrade, much like Fire Red/ Leaf Green were on the GBA.

Joel – I’m also in the Gold/Silver boat – to me, they just felt like an excellent evolution from the original games, with enough new stuff to keep it fresh, but without overloading the system with needless extras. I do hope they don’t tinker too much with them in the new re-releases, but we’ll find out soon enough…

Where do you see it going in the future?

Mike – They’ll probably follow the same trend they have been: whatever handheld Nintendo follows the DS with, they will release two completely new games with a new set of pokemon. After which they’ll follow up with a remake of Ruby/Sapphire. Of all the things Nintendo has ever done with its franchises’ gameplay wise, Pokemon has remained largely unchanged at its core: it’s still turn based, one on one (mostly), and entirely based on type matching and stats. I doubt Nintendo is going to screw with that formula considering how long its worked.

Joel – Remakes of the older titles, new paired releases for whatever system comes next, and a whole lot of spin-off titles. Nintendo has the formula down right now, and it’s working quite well for them, so I can’t see them tinkering too much with success. If it starts to fade in popularity for some reason or another, then we might see some shake-ups.

Where do you *think* it should go in the future

Mike – If someone put me in charge of making the next game, it would be a 3D MMO. Diamond/Pearl gave Pokemon fans what they had truly craved for a long time: online battling/trading via the DS WiFi. An MMO for Pokemon would largely be a gold mine of subscriptions for Nintendo. The other thing I might consider changing would be to have 3-D real time battles similar to something like Star Ocean or the Tales series. I’m not sure how it would completely work, but I think it would change a lot of things for the better as far as keeping players engaged in an MMO setting.

Joel – A 3d Pokemon MMO could be brilliant, but I would just settle for a damn console version of the game; I’ve been waiting for a 3d jump to the consoles for years, and Nintendo has yet to oblige. I’m not sure how a real-time battle system would work for the core games, or even an MMO, but I could definitely see it making its way into a spinoff title.

Also, where is my sequel to Pokemon Snap!

Why do you still like it?

Mike – Sometimes, I really don’t know, but mostly I think it’s the heavy levels of customization and team building. Finally now with D/P, I can play others online and actually test the team I made. One thing I do kind of miss from the older games was that the single player game darker undertones that have only slightly come back in the more recent games. I mean, the original Red/Blue sprites had Team Rocket members with whips, and direct references to death, killing, and horrendous experiments; things that were largely removed or glossed over in the GBA remakes. Heck even the single player message when you lost a battle got sugared-over from the first games – you blacked out, and I assumed you got mugged and lost your money (you are participating in what are effectively cock-fights after all); In the remakes, it says you just ‘ran back protecting your pokemon from further harm.’ Well, at least I can think in the back of my head that the 100th friggin’ Zubat I’ve fought in the cave I’m trudging through was savagely mauled and killed by my Arcanine instead of just ‘fainting.’

Joel – When you get right down to it, the Pokemon series have always been about games with options: you can pick a team to develop from a huge number of possibilities, you can swap around movesets to try new combinations, and you can even get into some pretty heavy-duty calculations if you are into IV/EV training. The Pokemon games are games with depth, though most people would gloss over them because of their kiddie exterior. And yes, they may not be the deepest stories in the RPG world, but that’s never really been what they were about anyway. So long as Nintendo can keep up that depth without over-saturating the system, I’ll keep buying them.

I’m sure they are glad to hear that.