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Pokémon, Part III: The Pokémon Renaissance
More than ten years have passed since the original Pokémon games (generation I) came out, and I can safely say with some confidence that we have now entered the period of the Pokémon renaissance, a period where Pokémon culture is seen as popular and accepted, rather than just something that those nerdy kids at school play.
I guess you could say that there have been multiple renaissance periods, one surrounding every new game release, but my own Pokémon renaissance starts around the release of Pokémon Black and White.
The way I see it, everyone between the ages of say, 10 and 25 knows about Pokemon. Perhaps they’re a little less enthusiastic about it these days (if enthusiastic is indeed the right word), and perhaps they don’t show the anime on TV anymore, but the point is, everyone knows about Pokémon.
You could definitely say my own Pokémon renaissance was spurred on by my desire to play Pokémon, restrained only for my disapproval of the direction Pokémon had taken since generation I and II. I understand Nintendo can’t simply let the Pokémon franchise stagnate, but alienating existing Pokémon fans by adding (in my mind) unnecessary game mechanics and modifications only serves to curb enthusiasm, not increase it.
Which is exactly why I chose to play Pokémon once again — wait, what? I guess in the end my desire to relive old-school memories won out, or something. I saddled up with a (comparatively old-school) DS Lite (for GBA compatibility, more on this in a sec) and purchased a copy of SoulSilver and White, along with the strategy guide for White.
Forget the fact that there are now umpteen hundred Pokémon to catch, or that you can now grow berries, and that Kurt can now make up to 99 Pokéballs out of apricorns each day, forget all the game mechanics that Nintendo have added that either make the game more complex or untrue to the core Pokémon experience — for me, my personal Pokémon renaissance is all about reliving those old school days, regardless of whatever changes they’ve made since.
See, I don’t think you quite understand how much I enjoyed spending untold hours training and battling Pokémon. It’s pretty addictive once you get into it — combine that with a desire to finish the game and then catching ’em all, and you’ve got a pretty good recipe for success in the game market.
What’s the plan from here on out? Well, it’s pretty simple: play as much Pokémon as I need to. Starting with SoulSilver, as it’s a generation IV remake of the generation II Silver seems like a good a place as any to start, since Pokémon Gold was the very first Pokémon game I ever played. Once that is all done and dusted I think I’ll go back to generation III with LeafGreen, a remake of the generation I Green that started it all. From there, Emerald, also from generation III, brings the best out of generation III games, and then Platinum, also the best of the generation IV games. Finally, Pokémon White. Or maybe I’ll play Pokémon White while playing all of those. I’m not quite sure yet.
And so, with my DS Lite in hand and quite a lot of Pokémon ahead of me (I’ve sunk rougly 35 hours into SoulSilver already, and am probably about 25% though), I begin a journey of my very own — call it what you want, but it’s my very own Pokémon renaissance.
Pokémon, Part II: Intermission — The Trading Card Game
Part I: Prologue — The Pokémon Generation is just three posts below this one!
No picture this time around as I can’t seem to find my tiny, almost non-existent, collection of cards from the Pokémon trading card game.
There are many aspects of Pokémon, one being the trading card game (henceforth referred to as TCG). Despite being hugely popular when I was during my upper-primary school years, I never got into it.
Perhaps it was the fact that I was too young at the time to even fathom buying items for seemingly my own enjoyment, or perhaps it was because compared to the video games and the anime and whatever other aspects of Pokémon were popular at the time the TCG just seemed so boring and bland in comparison, I never got into it. Plenty of other people were, but I wasn’t.
I remember other people being awed by collections, and when “shiny” cards were produced people were awestruck. Perhaps one of the most famous cards of all was shiny Charizard, easily one of the most coveted cards of my particular generation.
I remember somehow acquiring a single Japanse card — it was either Psyduck or a Pokémon that I had no knowledge about (i.e. one of the ones introduced in generation III or IV).
I remember knowing the difference between a fake card and a real one, right down to the hue and intensity of the blue border on the back of the card itself, as well as the feel and texture of the card.
Mostly, though, I just remember not getting involved. I’m not sure whether it was the whole “collectors” aspect that didn’t appeal to me or the “battling” aspect that could be performed with the Pokémon TCG, but I just couldn’t care about it as much as I could the video game.
Which is interesting, because it was years later that I started to get into Magic: The Gathering. No real reason, but it seemed to be pretty popular in my early high-school years, and seemed like the right thing to do. I remember sitting the library at lunchtime and duking it out with the self-appointed master of Magic — but that’s a story for another time.
Whatever the reason, Pokémon the Trading Card Game just didn’t appeal to me. Shame.
Schrödinbug
A schrödinbug is a bug that manifests only after someone reading source code or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked in the first place, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed.
Insane Portal 2 Cube Tricks
Really no idea how some of these are possible. Perhaps there’s some sort of console auto-aim evil going on here…