The Series: Pokemon

Seems like I've been talking about Pokemon a lot lately. "Pokemania" came at a very formative time for me. I'd given up on Power Rangers and Super Hero cartoons and other things that were "for kids" and was trying to get into the things that were popular with my peers. I had a very very sports focused group of peers from kindergarten to 6th grade, many of which ended up being on the varsity teams when I got to high school, and very few who were willing to talk about Batman or Spider-Man since they were for nerds. But when Pokemon hit it was all encompassing, and I was right at the forefront of it, with the cards the cartoon and everything. After a year or two though, Pokemania started to die down. The cartoon was always stupid, but I realized how stupid as I got older, and Wizard of the Coast, responsible for publishing the Pokemon Card Game, hit a bit of a snag with the Japanese publisher, causing the 4th set to be long delayed. The huge fad that was Pokemon slowly started to die, and it took me with it. However, there is one part of Pokemon that has always been near and dear to my heart. The games.
The video I've spoken of that got me into Pokemon in the first place was sure to extol every virtue the series had.  Including of course, the games that started the franchise in the first place.  I was so hooked I started saving up for a Gameboy right away.  Luckily for me, one of my neighbors was selling his old beat up brick of a Gameboy at a garage sale, and after some more saving, Pokemon Red and Blue were mine.  I had the Blue version, but for Christmas that year my brother got a Gameboy Pocket and Red.

I talk about my own experience a lot on this blog, but I find with the Pokemon games, its hard to say what's great about them that I haven't talked about in my bigger posts about Pokemon already.  It appeals to gamers that want to collect, to gamers that want to level up, and to gamers that just want to complete a game.  The combat if incredibly slow by modern standards, and the user interface has issues, but both are still serviceable today.  It's very important to note how much what makes the Pokemon games what they are was there at the beginning, learning new moves as you level up, items that let a Pokemon learn new moves, moves that can be used both in combat and to interact with the environment, an "evil" team of Pokemon trainers to serve as antagonists, very powerful Pokemon that are unique in the game and must be found by solving some sort of puzzle, it's all there.  That they fit all of that on a single little Gameboy cart still astounds me, but it couldn't be done perfectly, and one of the most interesting parts of Red/Blue to me is the number of glitches.

For those of you that never played the original Pokemon games, there were a huge number of glitches, some of which were only discovered years after the games were released and people had moved on.  Two things stand out about these glitches.  First of all, they were relatively benign.  While reports exist of Save Files being deleted by them, that never happened to me or anyone I knew, and some minor data did get corrupted, but nothing useful, just some of the records.  Second, you had to go out of your way to encounter them.  Most of them were easy to replicate, but the steps required would almost never be taken by mistake.  They were more like complicated cheat codes than real glitches in some cases, allowing for infinite items and to copy Pokemon and they added some mystery to the game.  Something you could share with friends that might not know, to give them a little edge.

It was a mere two years before Pokemon got a proper sequel in Pokemon Gold and Silver.  Today that might actually seem like a short time frame, but as a kid, seeing little things leaked like Togepi on the cartoon and "Pikablue" sometimes made it seem like the game was in development for decades.  When it finally did come out though, it was the perfect sequel.  100 new Pokemon, most of which were designed just as well as the originals, two new types of Pokemon to help reign in the dominance of the psychic type, tons of new moves, gender, breeding, the list of features added was huge.  The glitches were tightened as well, though a couple still existed, they were much harder to preform, and caused no problems with data loss.  I think the most impressive thing however was the games reverse compatibility.  You could trade your old Pokemon from the older games forward to the new version, and in fact some Pokemon could only be obtained in this way, adding to their uniqueness.  In addition, once the first part of the game was complete, you unlocked the old island of Pokemon Red and Blue, which had advanced in interesting ways, and made the game more than twice as long as the older version.  Pokemon Gold held the distinction of the game I'd spent the most time in from the time I was 12 until I was 17, and I still don't feel like I got everything I could out of it.  It's a rare example of a sequel that added everything you could want and more, without messing anything up.

While people were clamoring for a "real" console release from Pokemon, Nintendo didn't go that way for their next release, deciding to keep Pokemon where it had always been successful, on their handheld consoles.  So with the Game Boy Advance came two more Pokemon games Ruby and Sapphire.  Unfortunately, these games had a huge hill to climb.  Gold and Silver had perfected the User Interface, added more features then anyone could have expected and doubled the length of the game.  Ruby and Sapphire took advantage of the GBA's greater power to improve the graphics quite a bit, but Nintendo games and Pokemon have always been about game play.  Pokemon Contests were added as an alternate way to compete in the games, but they were optional and battles were still the game's center point.

So what did they add besides pretty graphics?  Well, they completely redid the way Pokemon are coded.  This let them add in things like "natures" personalities for Pokemon that effected their stats, as well as adding "Abilities" passive powers individual Pokemon had to give them a bit more personality.  While a neat idea this came at a cost, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire were not compatible with previous versions.  In addition, in order to spotlight the new Pokemon, the developers decided not to include the majority of the older Pokemon, introducing only a handful.  While it was a bold idea, it made the game feel smaller over all.  They only had one are to explore and a fraction of the Pokemon.  While Ruby and Sapphire are great games, they don't have the grandeur of Pokemon Gold and Silver, and I can't help but feel it was a step back.  While I've said I still feel there's plenty for me to find in Pokemon Gold, I've completed Sapphire twice and I pretty much feel done with it.

If Ruby and Sapphire were a step back, then the next installment was a step to the side.  With a huge number of beloved Pokemon removed from the games and the catch phrase "Gotta Catch 'em All" made impossible rumors began to circulate about remade versions of the classic games.  Rumors that proved true when Fire Red and Leaf Green were announced.  Remakes of Red and Blue, FR and LG had the various glitches removed, the Pokemon reworked to match those in Ruby and Sapphire, and some new content added to go through after the game was completed, along with the much needed User Interface improvements that Gold and Silver got and a spattering of new Pokemon from the games released sense.  While it's easy to critique anything for being a simple remake, Red and Blue really show their age, and I'm quite glad to have updated versions.  If you've never played a Pokemon game, I sincerely recommend you start here, the games have everything that made Pokemon great with most of what made it frustrating stripped out.

They couldn't do simple remakes forever however, and soon after the Nintendo DS was released, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl followed.  To be honest however, I've never completed either game, never even got more than about half way through before completing one of them.  They continue to be great games, and I like to think I'm saving Pearl, Black, and Black 2 for a rainy day when I've got nothing to do, a treat on the horizon.  However, new Pokemon have seem a little uninspired since Ruby and Sapphire.  That's not universally true, every generation has a couple of standouts, but most animals and legends have already been adapted at least once.  The first 151 Pokemon all seemed unique and interesting, and the next 100 were a great expansion upon them, but every gen since has had filler, and Pokemon that seem to just be there to feel roles like "Bird" or "Vermin" or "Starters".  At the same time, no Pokemon game has seen the shear number of improvements that Pokemon Gold and Silver saw, and the series has stagnated a bit.

One of Nintendo's big upcoming games for the year is Pokemon X and Y.  I havn't been paying too much attention to it, since I still have three generations of Pokemon games to go through first, but what do they need to do in order to recapture my interest?  I think going to 3d environments is actually a big step forward.  People have always wanted a "true console Pokemon game" and that's a big part of what they want.  I think the two major keys however are in the Pokemon and the singe player experience.  I've only seen the three starters so far, which look passable, the fox starter stands out, since there are plenty of kitsune legends to draw inspiration from.  Sure, Ninetails fills that already, but that's a Pokemon from the original days and there's plenty of room for a new spin on that theme.  Time will tell if the new Pokemon can capture the imagination the same way the originals did.  Second, they need to take a page from Pokemon Gold and add more to do in the single player stuff.  Optional stuff like contests are cool, but they're nothing compared to the whole extra world that Gold let you explore.  Something beyond battling Gym Leaders and gangsters is what the game really needs.

Still, despite my advice, I think the biggest problem with new Pokemon games is how great the old ones still are.  Every time I go to play my copy of Pearl, I ask myself why I don't just fire up Fire Red or Heart Gold instead.  It's always a question I have trouble answering, not because Pearl is worse then those old games, but because they've truly stood the test of time.  If I have kids, there are certain things important enough to me that I want them shared with him, and Pokemon Fire Red is at the top of the list, as far as video games are concerned.