The Madness of Pokemon

When I was a kid I was a big fan of Pokemon. I even had a Pokemon-themed Christmas once; Pokemon Annual, Pokemon Pokedex (cheap little LCD and plastic job), Pokemon Socks etc. etc. Needless to say as I grew older I grew out of this habit. Strangely enough it was around about the time that the second generation of games came out on the GameBoy. Then again, there's probably nothing strange about it at all.

Pokemon is one of those eternal children's franchises, in the vein of Power Rangers, that constantly redoes itself using the same basic concept for each successive generation of parent-bothering midgets to flounder their cash on. There's really no trick to it at all; just add new Pokemon, perhaps one or two new gameplay mechanics, and ship away for billions of dollars. It's a surefire formula. The question is, just how much integrity do the people making Pokemon really have?

In essence the Pokemon games haven't changed at all since their first release some ten years ago. Each game has brought little to the basic idea of capturing monsters and having them cruelly beat the living snot out of each other for our amusement. What's perhaps most shocking of this is that, beyond the graphics, there's little that has been done to even improve the game. The latest incarnations on the DS haven't even gotten around to fully animating each of the Pokemon. Sure there's a hundred or so of them, but anything is better than simply warping the sprite. What annoys me about the games in general is that they fail to even deviate slightly from the tested formula, most likely because the fan base continues to buy the games.

But let's be serious, just about every other franchise of game has tried to improve in some respect. Heck even sporting games, which could get away with basic team line-up changes and are confined to the rules of the sport they represent, are a far cry away from games of the same genre ten years ago. Compare something like Fifa '97 with Fifa '07. Beyond the transition from 2D to 3D there have been numerous updates to the basic control system, the way in which the physics of the ball works, etc. Pokemon hasn't even done that, allowing the DS's touch-screen capabilities to fall to the wayside. In short, Game Freak are lazy, money-grabbing bastard. But we can't really blame them for that. They have to keep their employees pockets filled.

No, who we should really blame are all the people who plays these games and never once complain. I played through the very first Pokemon game (Blue in case you were wondering), and since then I can't bring myself to play through any of the others because I feel as though I'm just retreading water. The gameplay is nothing innovative and hardly captivating. There are much better RPG's to waste your time on. Yet the amount of information and time gushed into Pokemon boggles the mind. If you don't believe me check out this Gamefaqs guide on stats gaining in Pokemon; it's something like fifty+ pages long. The subject in question is getting maximum stats for Pokemon. Now in any RPG it's always something of a challenge to try and get the best stats possible. But it's insane just how far people are willing to go for about two or three points of stats difference; controlling levels, feeding vitamins at the right time, breeding the right pokemon, making sure they have the right "personality" - there's a lot of variables, perhaps too many for a game supposedly targeted at children. It's crazy, but the attention to detail the community at large is willing to give it is even crazier. Still crazier is the demand for such information; It's fair to say in the past decade the Pokemon games in their various guises have barely left the Top 10 viewed pages on Gamefaqs, and indeed the level of discussion into tactics in the game is immense.

What's startling about this is that the games themselves aren't even that difficult; you can quite easily complete all the challenges within using capture Pokemon that have been sufficiently levelled. The only real reason to spend hours upon hours gushing over Pokemon, carefully picking their moves list and stats, is two fold; Firstly to have a blast owning everything in the game without a moment's thought, and second to take on other Pokemon players (NOT trainers, that title is just stupid). In the first sense there's no real point to this besides a sense of superiority over the electronic world in which your miniature beasts reside, and in the second it's probably difficult to find players that you will have a real hard time defeating because most players know everything about the games anyway. Really when it comes down to it it's more probable you'll die because you had the wrong element of Pokemon out when the battle started than the hundreds of hours spent raising their stats.

Personally I feel that Game Freak's customers should demand more out of their products. The complacency of each new release to be nothing more than a rehash of old ideas is disgraceful for consumers and shouldn't be allowed. When all the other games companies are striving to create new products and failing to make a profit whilst Game Freak spits out the same crap and makes millions that should give pause for thought. We always complain about companies like Microsoft that release inferior products and have a stranglehold on the market; well now everyone has a chance to make a difference. When the next Pokemon game comes out, don't buy it. Bring down the sales. Stand outside of shops and bat back children with sticks so they don't buy the games either. Eventually the world will become a better place. Or at least a slightly more innovative one.