Link to original post: [drupal=4550]The Wonderful Journey of Life: Pokémon Rules the World[/drupal]
So last time I kinda just raced through a bunch of stuff willy-nilly. Now I guess I can talk about the Pokémon craze. THE craze to end all crazes. You see **** in the media now, like Justin Bieber, some other random celebrity, some new popular TV show, something with an unexpectedly large and crazed fandom like My Little Pony, but these are all blips on the radar compared to Pokémon. Do you know how I know for sure that nothing in history has ever reached its magnitude? My parents were even amazed. Most of our parents were born in the 50s-60s, so they’d lived a fair few years and basically lived through the biggest crazes, and usually when you talk about something to an adult, they’d have been all “well you know in my day this was just as big” etc etc.The only thing every adult would ever say was “never in my life have I ever seen anything this huge, I don’t understand it.”
The thing was, they didn’t just have difficulty understanding the magnitude of the popularity, they were smug enough to be all “I don’t see why this is popular at all it’s crap.” They judged the franchise’s popularity on the TV show (which was quite awesome anyway), and I would agree that just watching the TV show having never played the games can make it seem a little odd for an adult, as in, you can see the appeal to kids but not why it would appeal so much, to the enormous extent it did. So let’s see, why did it take us all by storm?
The games, oh God the ****ing games. Nobody has truly lived the Pokémon experience unless they played the originals during the time of the craze. Released in 1998 on our shores, this game was literally unmatched in its replayability, longevity, and ability to draw the player in. This was the time of the N64 and the PS1, it was 3D or gtfo, and honestly, were it not for Pokémon I don’t think handhelds would have been anything beyond a niche market for games. Pokémon proved something which previously wasn’t so much of a repeated cliché. Graphics, deep story, voice acting, all these things people always harp on about in games, these are all rendered irrelevant by great game design. Simple yet infinitely replayable, full of depth and variety, the only people who didn’t understand it only didn’t out of ignorance.
So anyway, enough of this impersonal crap, why don’t I talk about my first hand experiences with Pokémon? To say Pokémon was a significant part of my childhood would be a gross injustice. Pokémon is what defined my childhood, and while I’ve touted Majora’s Mask to be the greatest game I’ve ever played (so obviously my favourite), I don’t feel anywhere near the warmth and childish joy when thinking of Zelda. It’s hard to really say which series I love more, but when I think about it, Pokémon easily wins out on its influence on me, it had every inch of media cornered, but of course, we all know that right?
Like I said, Pokémon defined my childhood. It means that whenever I think of youth, the first thing that pops into my head is the Route 1 theme and that cute little sprite of Red. Speaking of Red, that was my first version, and for all you plebs that say Blue is better, you are wrong because Red version had Charizard on the cover, and Charizard is every 8 year old’s idea of a god, whereas Blastoise is just a tortoise with two super soakers, **** that. So anyway, I got Pokémon as a slightly late Christmas present since of course, getting your hands on a copy during Christmas when it was just released was like pretty much impossible. It’s funny how that game was like perpetually sold out, the only thing that even came close to matching that was the Wii not being available anywhere for like a year, but then again the Wii was a whole console and couln’t be produced in the same volume. Sometimes I wonder if they were producing enough Gameboy Colors to actually keep up with the game sales, because you’d better believe the only reason anyone even bought a Gameboy Color was for Pokémon.
So New Year’s Eve, was a pretty cool, I stayed up until 12pm of the next day playing Red with my brother (we shared the cartridge because we were raised right unlike me spoiled brat classmates but we’ll talk about that later), and we managed to reach Cinnabar Island. Bear in mind we didn’t have a Master Guide (I lost it LOL) unlike everyone else, and back then internet as I’d mentioned in the previous chronicles was universally crappy dialup, and thus you weren’t just one click away from the answer to the meaning of life (DA MEENING OF LYF IS DAT U SHUD LIVE IT 2 DA FULLEST).
So who did we choose? My fateful first Pokémon, the one that sticks with you for the rest of your life (they don’t even lie about that in the anime). Charmander, obviously. Didn’t lose to Gary’s Squirtle, after all, Scratch has 40 power compared to Tackle’s 35 in Gen 1, another reason why Charmander is better than Squirtle and Bulbasaur apart from being a ****ing fire lizard. We were also catching them all (why?), but obviously none of these **** like Pidgey and Rattata really deserved to be used I mean come on what am I a novice trainer? Caught a Pikachu in Viridian Forest <3, and of course, he got to stay because he wasn’t just the star of the show, his moves had awesome names like TUNDASHOCK. Brock was really easy to beat, I don’t know why anyone has trouble with him as Charmander. Geodude is a weakling, and Onix basically Bides most of the time, which means you can just Growl him until his real attacks do nothing, so you can just kill him with Ember. Yay. I’m not really going to go into my first ever playthrough any more except for a few highlights, which include:
- Charizard being like 20 levels above everyone else
- Did I say 20 I meant like 50
- Kadabra and Haunter still ****** errbody, and me totally loving them
- Not as much as Pikachu, Charizard, and Dragonair though
- This isn’t really a list is it?
- We evolved Pikachu btw, at that time we didn’t know how heinous a thing it was to do to evolve your first ever Pikachu.
- The chill I got and still get every time I heard this song and felt the power of my destiny, along with the electricity and fire in the air from the Pokémon craze.
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Actually I kinda feel that with almost every RBY song, but this probably more than any, even at the time, and the thing is, it’s hard to really say now which is my favourite route theme, but I’d say this probably evokes the most emotion out of me, to the point where if I were really absorbed, I’d probably shed a tear. Shut up.
- Never using the fabled Master Ball.
- Catching Mewtwo with a Poké Ball, as well as realising that the Great Ball is the best ball that isn’t a Master Ball, no matter what those stupid statistics things say, Great Balls are the best.
- Learning that holding down + A when the ball hits a Pokémon totally ****ing increases the odds of catching it!
- Noticing STAB and believing it existed, the only person out of anyone I knew that thought so. Hey, I paid attention. :x
- Not learning about Missingno until after I beat the game.
- MISSINGNO
- CATCHING THEM ALL
- Never forgiving myself for agreeing to restart the game (before we had Stadium and could save the mons)
- [yt]SxlLwGYNVGE[/yt]
If I were a trainer irl, I would have this as my theme if you battled me, even though I have plenty of amazing custom battle themes for any situation.
I got carried away didn’t I? :/
But that’s just the way Pokémon is, it gave me something to really remember. Whoever says it’s sad to look back and have your fondest memories be of videogames and stuff are stupid, we were all active kids that did aaaaaall the things boys did, and had a lot of fun doing those things. Whoever says it’s sad that Pokémon ate up our lives are just jealous we had something so amazing to consume our time, we chose to let it take over everything, and we chose well.
So this is just me, but what about everyone else? Well naturally, everyone else had a copy of the game, at least one. It was quite funny, the siblings that were little ****s and argued and wanted their own everything obviously got their own cartridge. I suppose that’s actually fair enough, when I think about it, one save file for two people is just not going to work. The funny thing is though, one of my friends has a really spoiled brat of a younger brother. Anything he wanted, he would get. This ended up in both the kids having their own Red and Blue versions, along with their own GBCs. Then consequently their own Yellow versions. Ugh. So, in school Pokémon had taken over, it was the only topic of conversation in the playground (and class), we doodled them all over our books, we thought about it instead of paying attention in class, and of course, we traded cards. Cards, Honestly when I think about it, during the initial craze, the cards were the biggest thing of all. I actually don’t know why, especially since there were like 3 people who’d ever even played the card game in our school, but it was great to collect them nonetheless! Pokémon cards perhaps brought out the most hilarious antics in us. The level of secrecy which we’d have to adopt due to their schoolwide ban, and the fact that there was always a chance some kid could get his grubby little hands on your Charizard. If anything taught kids to be sneaky, clever, and inventive, it was Pokémon cards. It’s funny, when I think how they brought our all these bad traits in us which parents always criticised the franchise for bringing out, I always like to tell them it’s because they always vilified the franchise and put a million restrictions over our enjoyment of it. Adults turned Pokémon into something somewhat forbidden and disapproved of, which obviously made million times cooler. You know if parents just endorse their kids and let them enjoy stuff, there would be much less trouble.
So trading cards filled in every moment where we couldn’t play Gameboy, and the games filled every moment that...
The TV show wasn’t on! You know something, the TV show was ****ing great, okay? The voice acting was great when it came to characters like James and Meowth, Brock’s famous running gag of falling in love with every woman, the cool tomboyish Misty (that everyone wanted to bang), the fact that Ash was a terrible trainer and that everybody knew that if they were in the Pokémon world with their mons, they’d destroy everyone that Ash struggled against with ease. ASH SUCKS yadda yadda, that was so mean, I thought Ash was alright, just needed to get it together a bit. Of course, in time I realised it was just because he made me hard but whatever, I was just a little boy. So here’s all this that saturated the media and controlled our lives, if you missed it, you will never experience anything similar again, and no child will ever experience anything similar again. Many years from now, Pokémon will truly go down in the annals of history where it belongs.
So funny stories! Our headmistress burned some kid’s Charizard card when he was caught showing it off. Well, that was what the rumour was, I was totally inclined to agree with it.
One time we were given a task in class to perform a scene with any premise or theme, and of course, there had to be one group that chose Pokémon. Basically it involved moments like a kid with holding two pencils between his shoulders and neck going “Blasoise Blastoise” as well as another doing nothing but just going “Pika Pikachu”. Teacher was very mad.
I was always a very honest kid, and one who didn’t steal and stuff. Still though, my brother was a bit more happy to do such things, or rather, get me to do his dirty work for him because I was the younger brother and could be influenced into doing so. Anyway, he convinced me to steal the revered Vileplume shiny (we call holos shinies you ****ers) from one of his friends when we were at his house. The Vileplume shiny was so greatly revered because of the move Petal Dance, which did 40 damage for each heads on a coin flip, with 3 flips maximum, it had a damage capacity of 120HP, enough to defeat the god card Charizard! This obviously meant that Vileplume was another god card. Anyway, I ended up stealing it, but the kid realised it was missing later when we’d got home, and he was in tears etc etc. So his parents called us up, and after a short time I fessed up because I felt really sorry for him. Anyway the kids’ parents didn’t mind (because they loved me and I fessed up and brought it back etc, plus I was just a kid!). The funny part is, I have 2 Vileplumes now.
We had Japanese friends, like, actual friends not just like “lul I know a Japanese guy aren’t I cool?”. This was before Japan was cool, so anyway, we managed all kinds of cool things like getting the Gym Leader series, the Gold/Silver series, the Rocket series, all these cards in Japanese and before they were released in English. I still have them in my collection, this makes me cooler than all of you.
Counterfeit Pokémon cards were the funniest ****, and we thought they were so funny that we actually started a separate trading system for them, so not only did we have normal cards to collect, we all tried to get a full deck of fakes too!
The first time a boy 2 years above me was no longer master of his domain, the thought he used to facilitate the process was Misty.
No, my first time wasn’t with a Pokémon character, but I would be lying if I said I never did it over Ashie boy.
Thanks to the Abra family, I spent hours as a child trying to bend spoons with my mind. I swear I got it to move just a little bit!
The only dream I ever had as a child was to be reborn in the world of Pokémon and live out my ****in’ destiny.
The first time I ever kissed someone, we were doing a mocking roleplay of Ash and Misty after getting inspiration from Bond movies, and how every male female relationship must end in at least a kiss. There was a slight difference though, Misty in this case happeed to be a boy, oh well, at least I stayed consistent I guess. Also it’s why I’m a better kisser than every other stupid boy I’ve ever made out with, because I actually totally got lots of practice without it being tied to a relationship. :3
So okay enough random stories, remember the rumours of SS Anne and Mew? See back in these old days of gaming when games having legit cheats was the norm, everyone always talked about how the truck found after surfing around the SS Anne could be pushed with Strength to catch Mew. They were, of course, wrong. Still though, the days of “secret” Pokémon and complete ignorance and naiveté lead to the most hilarious rumours. Missingno is like a real Pokémon guys it’s just like a secret one and basically it’s this really big bird and it holds two water guns that’s why it has Water Gun twice. You get Pikablu by like talking to the old man fifty times then beating Elite Four 99 times then like you have to surf around Cinnabar until Missingno appears and then you have to throw out a Pikachu and when it gets hit with a Water Gun, you have to kill Missingno and then your Pikachu will evolve into Pikablu and it has 999HP and it can learn every move as well as DEATH RAY where you can actually like, kill a trainer’s Pokémon and ****.
Yes, people would actually come up with elaborate fake cheats like that, off the top of their head no less, honestly I don’t even get why they would.
Anyway, Mew being an actual secret Pokémon made watching the First Movie that much more awesome. I got all the promo cards for that movie. XD
Pokémon inspired me to massively increase my internet and computer expertise. Why? Because I wanted Pokémon Gold and it wasn’t going to be out for like a year. So... what do? Ah yes, the old days, where only the coolest people would use emu-CENSORED, not to mention your average GBC game is a couple megabytes, which at 56Kb/s (that’s kilobits), so consequently 7KB/s absolute max meant that you had to be patient, and that you had to be resourceful. You had to know sites, you had to actually know how to follow instructions and follow them out, something which most people struggle with. So yeah, I got a patched translation version of Pokémon Gold way before it came out in the west. I was so proud, and of course I picked Totodile. Also, the patch was essentially a hack, and of course the whole emusomething scene was basically moreso about hacking/patching or getting a game before it was released, rather than infringing copyright to save cash. I mean hey, I bought Silver and Crystal for GBC anyway, but I’m still totally proud of my achievement. Plus, thanks to that scene a whole door was opened to me into other other games, games I probably wouldn’t have found out about were it not for this scene. Pokémon patches were really hot, basically you’d get a game, hack it to have a Pokémon theme, and there you have it. I discovered Link’s Awakening and this amazing game called Stranded Kids because of it. I wish I’d played Lost in Blue, I actually really wanted that game just because it was a sequel to Stranded Kids, and I’m probably one of the few people (in this country anyway), who know what that game is, and how ****ing incredible it really was. Open ended survival game in 1999 for GBC, **** yeah.
I guess I haven’t talked about Pokémon Stadium, and being the only kid in my entire school who managed to beat it entirely. You have any idea how hard that was? You actually have to have a deep knowledge of the game mechanics, and most kids didn’t see much beyond CHARIZARD IS COOL (which to be fair is a totally valid answer to everything), and that FIRE KILLS PLANT LUL. Beating Pokémon Stadium was infuriatingly difficult, but I did it, and you have no idea the level of satisfaction it gave me, and I still see it as one of my greatest life accomplishments. I could go on about how it tied in so well with the GBC games just like how everything in the franchise all tied in together so well to consume every minute of every hour of every day but I think you already kinda got the picture.
Pokémon consumed my childhood, and because of that, I still play it, still enjoy it, still hold it closer to my heart than most people. When I think about it, a large part of all the relationships with people I love (romantic or not!), had Pokémon to thank for a large part of their development. 1998-2001 is and always will be ruled by Pokémon. The only thing that ruined Pokémon was Ruby and Sapphire, and honestly, it wasn’t because they were bad (although they are my least favourite in the franchise), it’s that they disowned RBY and GSC. It felt like Pokémon was trying to move forward by cutting away everything that had made it great. Now I understand the reasons behind it, and am nowhere near as critical, if at all, but for children who’d literally done nothing but be PokéManiacs for 3 years, to suddenly disown the creatures and characters they came to adore was the worst thing imaginable. Why are Gold and Silver often celebrated as the best games in the series? They gave you the awesomeness of the new, and the beauty of nostalgia. Hell, what nostalgia you say? It’d only been like 2 years since Pokémon Red, one since Yellow. Still though, a year to a prepubescent child is a very very long time. Going back to the land you grew so attached to, to feel as if you were already the master of the land, enjoying the familiarity, gasping and smiling at the changes to the landscape, the world, the people. Pokémon’s creators just seemed to understand, too well even, how to blow your mind with 8 bit music and pixelated sprites. The show knew how to grasp the dreams of kids and bring them to life, the trading cards well, the jury’s out on that one as to why it was so ****ing popular, but I guess shiny stuff is just cool. Still though, to be so popular that a Gameboy game gets made based on the TCG, that shows some serious popularity.
So next time you think of any other game franchisel; Halo, CoD, Zelda, The Sims (was really popular you know), WoW, GTA, wjatever. All these really popular games, they’re just that, they’re huge game series, and stuff like Halo managed to branch out into books and all that, but honestly, do none of these hold a candle to Pokémon, they’re like the insignificant gnat a bison will lick out of its nose, that bison being Satoshi Tajiri of course. Pokémon ruled everything, it ruled my life, it ruled all our lives, and I’m glad. My greatest pleasure comes from being able to say I was alive and very much conscious when the most enormous craze in history swept through.
Oh btw, my first Charizard had 325HP at level 100 (the only stat that mattered obviously).
You know how I remember that? Pokémon is important to my subconscious mind, it is obviously more important to remember the HP score of a bit of code that left existence over ten years ago than to remember the answer to an exam question that will decide my future. Pokémon may have brought some bad behaviour, but it also brought out the best in kids, showing stunning capacity to remember the smallest details, to strategise, to think tactically, to reason, to solve problems. Our generation of kids were smart as ****, the hardest to control, the hardest to trick, we had our wits about us, and honestly it was because Pokémon developed our minds, mental exercise of any sort is still going to develop your rain, and trust me, without Pokémon we still wouldn’t have listened in class. So basically, Pokémon taught us to think numerically, tactically, encouraged memory, inspired us to develop artistic talent, inspired musical talent, inspired absolutely ****ing everything that a parent would want their child to develop.
All of this, and I never even mentioned the savefile of which I am most proud, my Pokémon Yellow one, but then, I think I’ve rambled enough in a scatterbrained fashion. I did have Mew though, so in your faces all you other kids.
Edit:
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I thought the blog deserved a fitting outro.
So last time I kinda just raced through a bunch of stuff willy-nilly. Now I guess I can talk about the Pokémon craze. THE craze to end all crazes. You see **** in the media now, like Justin Bieber, some other random celebrity, some new popular TV show, something with an unexpectedly large and crazed fandom like My Little Pony, but these are all blips on the radar compared to Pokémon. Do you know how I know for sure that nothing in history has ever reached its magnitude? My parents were even amazed. Most of our parents were born in the 50s-60s, so they’d lived a fair few years and basically lived through the biggest crazes, and usually when you talk about something to an adult, they’d have been all “well you know in my day this was just as big” etc etc.The only thing every adult would ever say was “never in my life have I ever seen anything this huge, I don’t understand it.”
The thing was, they didn’t just have difficulty understanding the magnitude of the popularity, they were smug enough to be all “I don’t see why this is popular at all it’s crap.” They judged the franchise’s popularity on the TV show (which was quite awesome anyway), and I would agree that just watching the TV show having never played the games can make it seem a little odd for an adult, as in, you can see the appeal to kids but not why it would appeal so much, to the enormous extent it did. So let’s see, why did it take us all by storm?
The games, oh God the ****ing games. Nobody has truly lived the Pokémon experience unless they played the originals during the time of the craze. Released in 1998 on our shores, this game was literally unmatched in its replayability, longevity, and ability to draw the player in. This was the time of the N64 and the PS1, it was 3D or gtfo, and honestly, were it not for Pokémon I don’t think handhelds would have been anything beyond a niche market for games. Pokémon proved something which previously wasn’t so much of a repeated cliché. Graphics, deep story, voice acting, all these things people always harp on about in games, these are all rendered irrelevant by great game design. Simple yet infinitely replayable, full of depth and variety, the only people who didn’t understand it only didn’t out of ignorance.
So anyway, enough of this impersonal crap, why don’t I talk about my first hand experiences with Pokémon? To say Pokémon was a significant part of my childhood would be a gross injustice. Pokémon is what defined my childhood, and while I’ve touted Majora’s Mask to be the greatest game I’ve ever played (so obviously my favourite), I don’t feel anywhere near the warmth and childish joy when thinking of Zelda. It’s hard to really say which series I love more, but when I think about it, Pokémon easily wins out on its influence on me, it had every inch of media cornered, but of course, we all know that right?
Like I said, Pokémon defined my childhood. It means that whenever I think of youth, the first thing that pops into my head is the Route 1 theme and that cute little sprite of Red. Speaking of Red, that was my first version, and for all you plebs that say Blue is better, you are wrong because Red version had Charizard on the cover, and Charizard is every 8 year old’s idea of a god, whereas Blastoise is just a tortoise with two super soakers, **** that. So anyway, I got Pokémon as a slightly late Christmas present since of course, getting your hands on a copy during Christmas when it was just released was like pretty much impossible. It’s funny how that game was like perpetually sold out, the only thing that even came close to matching that was the Wii not being available anywhere for like a year, but then again the Wii was a whole console and couln’t be produced in the same volume. Sometimes I wonder if they were producing enough Gameboy Colors to actually keep up with the game sales, because you’d better believe the only reason anyone even bought a Gameboy Color was for Pokémon.
So New Year’s Eve, was a pretty cool, I stayed up until 12pm of the next day playing Red with my brother (we shared the cartridge because we were raised right unlike me spoiled brat classmates but we’ll talk about that later), and we managed to reach Cinnabar Island. Bear in mind we didn’t have a Master Guide (I lost it LOL) unlike everyone else, and back then internet as I’d mentioned in the previous chronicles was universally crappy dialup, and thus you weren’t just one click away from the answer to the meaning of life (DA MEENING OF LYF IS DAT U SHUD LIVE IT 2 DA FULLEST).
So who did we choose? My fateful first Pokémon, the one that sticks with you for the rest of your life (they don’t even lie about that in the anime). Charmander, obviously. Didn’t lose to Gary’s Squirtle, after all, Scratch has 40 power compared to Tackle’s 35 in Gen 1, another reason why Charmander is better than Squirtle and Bulbasaur apart from being a ****ing fire lizard. We were also catching them all (why?), but obviously none of these **** like Pidgey and Rattata really deserved to be used I mean come on what am I a novice trainer? Caught a Pikachu in Viridian Forest <3, and of course, he got to stay because he wasn’t just the star of the show, his moves had awesome names like TUNDASHOCK. Brock was really easy to beat, I don’t know why anyone has trouble with him as Charmander. Geodude is a weakling, and Onix basically Bides most of the time, which means you can just Growl him until his real attacks do nothing, so you can just kill him with Ember. Yay. I’m not really going to go into my first ever playthrough any more except for a few highlights, which include:
- Charizard being like 20 levels above everyone else
- Did I say 20 I meant like 50
- Kadabra and Haunter still ****** errbody, and me totally loving them
- Not as much as Pikachu, Charizard, and Dragonair though
- This isn’t really a list is it?
- We evolved Pikachu btw, at that time we didn’t know how heinous a thing it was to do to evolve your first ever Pikachu.
- The chill I got and still get every time I heard this song and felt the power of my destiny, along with the electricity and fire in the air from the Pokémon craze.
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Actually I kinda feel that with almost every RBY song, but this probably more than any, even at the time, and the thing is, it’s hard to really say now which is my favourite route theme, but I’d say this probably evokes the most emotion out of me, to the point where if I were really absorbed, I’d probably shed a tear. Shut up.
- Never using the fabled Master Ball.
- Catching Mewtwo with a Poké Ball, as well as realising that the Great Ball is the best ball that isn’t a Master Ball, no matter what those stupid statistics things say, Great Balls are the best.
- Learning that holding down + A when the ball hits a Pokémon totally ****ing increases the odds of catching it!
- Noticing STAB and believing it existed, the only person out of anyone I knew that thought so. Hey, I paid attention. :x
- Not learning about Missingno until after I beat the game.
- MISSINGNO
- CATCHING THEM ALL
- Never forgiving myself for agreeing to restart the game (before we had Stadium and could save the mons)
- [yt]SxlLwGYNVGE[/yt]
If I were a trainer irl, I would have this as my theme if you battled me, even though I have plenty of amazing custom battle themes for any situation.
I got carried away didn’t I? :/
But that’s just the way Pokémon is, it gave me something to really remember. Whoever says it’s sad to look back and have your fondest memories be of videogames and stuff are stupid, we were all active kids that did aaaaaall the things boys did, and had a lot of fun doing those things. Whoever says it’s sad that Pokémon ate up our lives are just jealous we had something so amazing to consume our time, we chose to let it take over everything, and we chose well.
So this is just me, but what about everyone else? Well naturally, everyone else had a copy of the game, at least one. It was quite funny, the siblings that were little ****s and argued and wanted their own everything obviously got their own cartridge. I suppose that’s actually fair enough, when I think about it, one save file for two people is just not going to work. The funny thing is though, one of my friends has a really spoiled brat of a younger brother. Anything he wanted, he would get. This ended up in both the kids having their own Red and Blue versions, along with their own GBCs. Then consequently their own Yellow versions. Ugh. So, in school Pokémon had taken over, it was the only topic of conversation in the playground (and class), we doodled them all over our books, we thought about it instead of paying attention in class, and of course, we traded cards. Cards, Honestly when I think about it, during the initial craze, the cards were the biggest thing of all. I actually don’t know why, especially since there were like 3 people who’d ever even played the card game in our school, but it was great to collect them nonetheless! Pokémon cards perhaps brought out the most hilarious antics in us. The level of secrecy which we’d have to adopt due to their schoolwide ban, and the fact that there was always a chance some kid could get his grubby little hands on your Charizard. If anything taught kids to be sneaky, clever, and inventive, it was Pokémon cards. It’s funny, when I think how they brought our all these bad traits in us which parents always criticised the franchise for bringing out, I always like to tell them it’s because they always vilified the franchise and put a million restrictions over our enjoyment of it. Adults turned Pokémon into something somewhat forbidden and disapproved of, which obviously made million times cooler. You know if parents just endorse their kids and let them enjoy stuff, there would be much less trouble.
So trading cards filled in every moment where we couldn’t play Gameboy, and the games filled every moment that...
The TV show wasn’t on! You know something, the TV show was ****ing great, okay? The voice acting was great when it came to characters like James and Meowth, Brock’s famous running gag of falling in love with every woman, the cool tomboyish Misty (that everyone wanted to bang), the fact that Ash was a terrible trainer and that everybody knew that if they were in the Pokémon world with their mons, they’d destroy everyone that Ash struggled against with ease. ASH SUCKS yadda yadda, that was so mean, I thought Ash was alright, just needed to get it together a bit. Of course, in time I realised it was just because he made me hard but whatever, I was just a little boy. So here’s all this that saturated the media and controlled our lives, if you missed it, you will never experience anything similar again, and no child will ever experience anything similar again. Many years from now, Pokémon will truly go down in the annals of history where it belongs.
So funny stories! Our headmistress burned some kid’s Charizard card when he was caught showing it off. Well, that was what the rumour was, I was totally inclined to agree with it.
One time we were given a task in class to perform a scene with any premise or theme, and of course, there had to be one group that chose Pokémon. Basically it involved moments like a kid with holding two pencils between his shoulders and neck going “Blasoise Blastoise” as well as another doing nothing but just going “Pika Pikachu”. Teacher was very mad.
I was always a very honest kid, and one who didn’t steal and stuff. Still though, my brother was a bit more happy to do such things, or rather, get me to do his dirty work for him because I was the younger brother and could be influenced into doing so. Anyway, he convinced me to steal the revered Vileplume shiny (we call holos shinies you ****ers) from one of his friends when we were at his house. The Vileplume shiny was so greatly revered because of the move Petal Dance, which did 40 damage for each heads on a coin flip, with 3 flips maximum, it had a damage capacity of 120HP, enough to defeat the god card Charizard! This obviously meant that Vileplume was another god card. Anyway, I ended up stealing it, but the kid realised it was missing later when we’d got home, and he was in tears etc etc. So his parents called us up, and after a short time I fessed up because I felt really sorry for him. Anyway the kids’ parents didn’t mind (because they loved me and I fessed up and brought it back etc, plus I was just a kid!). The funny part is, I have 2 Vileplumes now.
We had Japanese friends, like, actual friends not just like “lul I know a Japanese guy aren’t I cool?”. This was before Japan was cool, so anyway, we managed all kinds of cool things like getting the Gym Leader series, the Gold/Silver series, the Rocket series, all these cards in Japanese and before they were released in English. I still have them in my collection, this makes me cooler than all of you.
Counterfeit Pokémon cards were the funniest ****, and we thought they were so funny that we actually started a separate trading system for them, so not only did we have normal cards to collect, we all tried to get a full deck of fakes too!
The first time a boy 2 years above me was no longer master of his domain, the thought he used to facilitate the process was Misty.
No, my first time wasn’t with a Pokémon character, but I would be lying if I said I never did it over Ashie boy.
Thanks to the Abra family, I spent hours as a child trying to bend spoons with my mind. I swear I got it to move just a little bit!
The only dream I ever had as a child was to be reborn in the world of Pokémon and live out my ****in’ destiny.
The first time I ever kissed someone, we were doing a mocking roleplay of Ash and Misty after getting inspiration from Bond movies, and how every male female relationship must end in at least a kiss. There was a slight difference though, Misty in this case happeed to be a boy, oh well, at least I stayed consistent I guess. Also it’s why I’m a better kisser than every other stupid boy I’ve ever made out with, because I actually totally got lots of practice without it being tied to a relationship. :3
So okay enough random stories, remember the rumours of SS Anne and Mew? See back in these old days of gaming when games having legit cheats was the norm, everyone always talked about how the truck found after surfing around the SS Anne could be pushed with Strength to catch Mew. They were, of course, wrong. Still though, the days of “secret” Pokémon and complete ignorance and naiveté lead to the most hilarious rumours. Missingno is like a real Pokémon guys it’s just like a secret one and basically it’s this really big bird and it holds two water guns that’s why it has Water Gun twice. You get Pikablu by like talking to the old man fifty times then beating Elite Four 99 times then like you have to surf around Cinnabar until Missingno appears and then you have to throw out a Pikachu and when it gets hit with a Water Gun, you have to kill Missingno and then your Pikachu will evolve into Pikablu and it has 999HP and it can learn every move as well as DEATH RAY where you can actually like, kill a trainer’s Pokémon and ****.
Yes, people would actually come up with elaborate fake cheats like that, off the top of their head no less, honestly I don’t even get why they would.
Anyway, Mew being an actual secret Pokémon made watching the First Movie that much more awesome. I got all the promo cards for that movie. XD
Pokémon inspired me to massively increase my internet and computer expertise. Why? Because I wanted Pokémon Gold and it wasn’t going to be out for like a year. So... what do? Ah yes, the old days, where only the coolest people would use emu-CENSORED, not to mention your average GBC game is a couple megabytes, which at 56Kb/s (that’s kilobits), so consequently 7KB/s absolute max meant that you had to be patient, and that you had to be resourceful. You had to know sites, you had to actually know how to follow instructions and follow them out, something which most people struggle with. So yeah, I got a patched translation version of Pokémon Gold way before it came out in the west. I was so proud, and of course I picked Totodile. Also, the patch was essentially a hack, and of course the whole emusomething scene was basically moreso about hacking/patching or getting a game before it was released, rather than infringing copyright to save cash. I mean hey, I bought Silver and Crystal for GBC anyway, but I’m still totally proud of my achievement. Plus, thanks to that scene a whole door was opened to me into other other games, games I probably wouldn’t have found out about were it not for this scene. Pokémon patches were really hot, basically you’d get a game, hack it to have a Pokémon theme, and there you have it. I discovered Link’s Awakening and this amazing game called Stranded Kids because of it. I wish I’d played Lost in Blue, I actually really wanted that game just because it was a sequel to Stranded Kids, and I’m probably one of the few people (in this country anyway), who know what that game is, and how ****ing incredible it really was. Open ended survival game in 1999 for GBC, **** yeah.
I guess I haven’t talked about Pokémon Stadium, and being the only kid in my entire school who managed to beat it entirely. You have any idea how hard that was? You actually have to have a deep knowledge of the game mechanics, and most kids didn’t see much beyond CHARIZARD IS COOL (which to be fair is a totally valid answer to everything), and that FIRE KILLS PLANT LUL. Beating Pokémon Stadium was infuriatingly difficult, but I did it, and you have no idea the level of satisfaction it gave me, and I still see it as one of my greatest life accomplishments. I could go on about how it tied in so well with the GBC games just like how everything in the franchise all tied in together so well to consume every minute of every hour of every day but I think you already kinda got the picture.
Pokémon consumed my childhood, and because of that, I still play it, still enjoy it, still hold it closer to my heart than most people. When I think about it, a large part of all the relationships with people I love (romantic or not!), had Pokémon to thank for a large part of their development. 1998-2001 is and always will be ruled by Pokémon. The only thing that ruined Pokémon was Ruby and Sapphire, and honestly, it wasn’t because they were bad (although they are my least favourite in the franchise), it’s that they disowned RBY and GSC. It felt like Pokémon was trying to move forward by cutting away everything that had made it great. Now I understand the reasons behind it, and am nowhere near as critical, if at all, but for children who’d literally done nothing but be PokéManiacs for 3 years, to suddenly disown the creatures and characters they came to adore was the worst thing imaginable. Why are Gold and Silver often celebrated as the best games in the series? They gave you the awesomeness of the new, and the beauty of nostalgia. Hell, what nostalgia you say? It’d only been like 2 years since Pokémon Red, one since Yellow. Still though, a year to a prepubescent child is a very very long time. Going back to the land you grew so attached to, to feel as if you were already the master of the land, enjoying the familiarity, gasping and smiling at the changes to the landscape, the world, the people. Pokémon’s creators just seemed to understand, too well even, how to blow your mind with 8 bit music and pixelated sprites. The show knew how to grasp the dreams of kids and bring them to life, the trading cards well, the jury’s out on that one as to why it was so ****ing popular, but I guess shiny stuff is just cool. Still though, to be so popular that a Gameboy game gets made based on the TCG, that shows some serious popularity.
So next time you think of any other game franchisel; Halo, CoD, Zelda, The Sims (was really popular you know), WoW, GTA, wjatever. All these really popular games, they’re just that, they’re huge game series, and stuff like Halo managed to branch out into books and all that, but honestly, do none of these hold a candle to Pokémon, they’re like the insignificant gnat a bison will lick out of its nose, that bison being Satoshi Tajiri of course. Pokémon ruled everything, it ruled my life, it ruled all our lives, and I’m glad. My greatest pleasure comes from being able to say I was alive and very much conscious when the most enormous craze in history swept through.
Oh btw, my first Charizard had 325HP at level 100 (the only stat that mattered obviously).
You know how I remember that? Pokémon is important to my subconscious mind, it is obviously more important to remember the HP score of a bit of code that left existence over ten years ago than to remember the answer to an exam question that will decide my future. Pokémon may have brought some bad behaviour, but it also brought out the best in kids, showing stunning capacity to remember the smallest details, to strategise, to think tactically, to reason, to solve problems. Our generation of kids were smart as ****, the hardest to control, the hardest to trick, we had our wits about us, and honestly it was because Pokémon developed our minds, mental exercise of any sort is still going to develop your rain, and trust me, without Pokémon we still wouldn’t have listened in class. So basically, Pokémon taught us to think numerically, tactically, encouraged memory, inspired us to develop artistic talent, inspired musical talent, inspired absolutely ****ing everything that a parent would want their child to develop.
All of this, and I never even mentioned the savefile of which I am most proud, my Pokémon Yellow one, but then, I think I’ve rambled enough in a scatterbrained fashion. I did have Mew though, so in your faces all you other kids.
Edit:
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I thought the blog deserved a fitting outro.
