I still, to this day, remember going to the store in the fall of 1998 to pick up a copy of Pokemon Blue for the gameboy. I had no idea what I was getting into other than a few of my friends telling me “You need to get this.”  Twelve years later, I continue to play the latest release of Gamefreak’s addictive franchise.

Black and White’s releases came at an interesting time, nearly a month before the 3DS hit store shelves with a less than stellar launch line-up. Black and White will likely be the DS’s last major title release. This is the first time we’ve ever seen three separate sets of Pokemon games on one platform, and not since the original Gameboy have two new pokemon generations shared the same platform.

Adding more new Pokemon than any previous generation, Black and White sets itself up to be a promising leap forward for the series. But did the gamble of leaving no stalwart favorites to fall back on harm or benefit the fifth generation?

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It is October 1994. I am on my way back from the mall with a brand-new copy of Final Fantasy III for the SNES tucked safely in a bag next to me. I would love to be reading the manual on the way home like I usually do, but I am the one driving this time with my recently-acquired learner’s permit. When the arduous fifteen-minute drive ends, I rush into the house and head straight downstairs to the basement, where the SNES patiently waits for me. Tearing open the box, I settle in on the couch and begin to read the instruction booklet. Yes, I am one of those people. Once I’ve learned about how to set Espers and seen that I will be able to equip Relics with a multitude of effects, I am more ready than ever.

Running back upstairs to the kitchen, I grab a can of Coke and a box of Harvest Crisp crackers. Supplies in hand, I head back downstairs and pull my comfy, if somewhat threadbare, beanbag chair over in front of the 26″ CRT Panasonic TV and slide the cartridge into the SNES with a satisfying click.  Flipping the system on, I settle back into my beanbag and let the first strains of the opening theme wash over me. I have, of course, run the SNES sound through the stereo to take advantage of the bigger speakers.

I am hooked pretty much instantly. The moment those mechs come walking through the snow towards the lights in the distance, I know that this is where I’m going to be spending most of my time for the next few weeks.

Somewhere just outside the basement door, my father is splitting wood for the stove. Winter is coming soon.  The rhythmic thuds of his axe striking the logs punctuate the theme of Narshe.

I should be out helping him, but I’ve got a world to save.

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A memorable villain in a game can be a powerful force. Players can learn to hate them, fear them, or even pity them.  Everyone who has played Final Fantasy VI remembers Kefka, and any StarCraft player in the world probably has a firm opinion on the Queen of Blades. The big villains – the bosses – have a lot going for them when it comes to memorability: the story usually revolves around them, they usually get the most epic battles, and quite often they get the best graphical treatment, too.

But what about the little guys?  What about the endless underlings the player crushes on their journey to the Big Bad?  What makes those guys memorable?

Consider, for a moment, the humble Goomba.  Almost anyone who has had contact with video games over the past 25 years can probably identify one in an instant, most likely right down to even knowing their name.  Even those that might not know the name still know they are “the little mushroom men from Mario” (as my father has called them). Koopa Troopas fall into that same category.  Heck, most of the enemies from the Mario series fall into that category.  But why?

For the Mario cast, much of it comes down to longevity and repetition.  Goombas and Koopas and the like have been harassing gamers for over two decades, remaining relatively constant throughout.  Though there have been subtle changes to their looks over the years, they remain easily identifiable, even after the jump from 2d to 3d.  Add to that plenty of out-of-game marketing of the characters, from cartoon appearances to plush toys, and you’ve got the makings of some pretty iconic underlings. So while the Mario minions have a lot going in their favor, what about all the other game baddies that stick in our minds, regardless of repetition or merchandising?  What turns a low-level baddie into something that stays with us, sucking up precious memory space?

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When I first heard that the new iterations of Pokemon Gold and Silver were going to come with a pedometer, it brought back memories of a miniature Game & Watch style Pokemon game called Pokemon Pikachu, which was essentially a pedometer that built up “watts”, which could be used to buy items in the original Gold and Silver games. There was also a stand alone version which had no interaction with the Gameboy games at all.

Now, at the time, it had to be purchased separately, and while I had one of the original units, I never knew anyone that had the later ones, and the only feature that you could use between units was to transfer watts. If this proto-Pokewalker actually came with Gold and Silver like the Pokewalkers did, then things might have been a bit different. For a while in the mid 90′s, things like Pokemon Pikachu – whether it be Tomagochis or Digimon or whatever -were a lingering fad, but one that never really took off. That’s why I thought it initially odd that Nintendo would attempt to revisit something that never had much popularity. Does anyone ever actually remember linking with random people like the advertisements used to claim?

Turns out that despite my initial concerns, it seems to have been a pretty good idea…

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I first played Pokemon Red the autumn of my Junior year in college.  I was traveling abroad to Japan for a semester, and after growing somewhat enamored of the cartoon (as discussed previously), I decided I should give the game itself a try.  It proved to be a wise investment, as I put far more hours into it than any other GBC game I ever bought.

Pokemon is, on the surface, a pretty simple concept:  Collect Pokemon, battle with them, gain experience, and fight your way to the top. The collection aspect, which has always been the core of the game (as well as the core of its marketing) is, by itself, a pretty powerful motivator for a lot of players.  A player could invest hours upon hours in the game tracking down and either capturing or trading for every single Pokemon they can to fill their Pokedex, and that alone would probably garner enough gameplay hours to rival most modern JRPGs.

In my mind, however, the real genius of Pokemon is only revealed once you scratch the surface a little deeper.  While the charming story and addictive collection aspects are solid on their own, where the game really succeeds is in how it creates layers of depth that are accessible to those players that wish to take the time to explore them.

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Mention the concept of “grinding” in a room full of gamers, and you are liable to get one of two reactions: either some titters of excitement, or a cacophonous mix of sighs and groans.  There are, in my experience, very few people who respond to the idea of the grind with simple ambivalence.

Grinding, in traditional gaming terms, stems from RPGs where the player has to fight battle after battle in order to gain experience and level up before being able to proceed further in the game (think of the original Final Fantasy and the huge jump in difficulty when moving from one area into the next). In more general terms, grinding is any time the player engages in a repetitive activity for the purpose of gaining some sort of reward (think brewing hundreds of potions in Oblivion to become a better alchemist). 

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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.

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Last week, Anthony Burch over at Destructoid put out the latest entry in his “Rev Rants” series.  In these short videos, Mr. Burch picks whatever aspect of gaming is weighing on his mind and gives a spirited “rant” about what’s wrong with it.  In his most recent rant, Mr. Burch declares that it’s time for video games to just stop being about “fun,” and that they need to tackle more serious matters.

Already a lot of people have reacted to this piece, and while I am not David Jaffe, I too have been thinking over his words and my reaction to them.  Mr. Burch makes many points that I agree with, but I find that, overall, he is arguing on somewhat flawed grounds.  While I won’t call this a rebuttal, I’d like to take the time to go over some of his points and where I feel they are mistaken.

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Every day, when I wake up, one of the first things I do is peek out the bedroom window into the outside world.  I do this for two reasons: First, to make sure the damn squirrels aren’t on my bird feeder (I am a crotchety old man), and second, more importantly, to see how the weather looks.  I do this because the weather plays a large part in most of the decisions I make first thing in the morning.  If it’s bright and warm and sunny, I can perhaps get by with a t-shirt.  If it’s cold and windy, I’d should probably think about a sweater.  If it’s pouring, I might have to consider canceling my hike in the woods later that day.  If it’s 90 degrees and humid at nine in the morning, I might also want to think about canceling it for completely different reasons.

The point here is: the weather is an important, constant factor in pretty much everyone’s life.  So why is it, then, that games tend to ignore it completely?

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This past weekend, my wife and I packed up all of our belongings into a series of increasingly heavy boxes, paid some dudes to carry it all down the four flights of stairs from our current apartment and load it into a truck, and unload it all into our new home.  As I sat on the floor of our new living room, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, trying to figure out where to a particular lamp was, I looked around at the strange new walls that surrounded me and realized, “This is my home now.”

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