Pokemon Blue & Red

Not too long ago, Pokemon X and Pokemon Y were unleashed upon the world.  Sales have been staggering, and I've heard people crow about all of the technological advances made to a franchise that has held a death grip on the world since 1998.  That's right, in some states, Ash, Misty, and Brock are old enough to work full time, drive a scooter, apply for a passport, join the army, or have sex with other consenting adults!

...I have no idea how to react to that.

...I'm sorry, what was I talking about?

Oh, right, Pokemon.  Right.  Okay, let's go back to 1998 and the first two games that came out, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue.

Nintendo managed to do something absolutely diabolical genius.  See, each version of the game had specific "exclusive" Pokemon that you couldn't find in the other version.  In order to truly "catch 'em all" you had to find people who had the alternate version of the game and "trade" Pokemon with them.  This meant that not only did you have to find someone who managed to catch some of the rarest Pokemon in the game, you had to find someone who caught enough to actually be able to share them.

This is somehow both a brilliant way to keep kids socializing instead of just playing games in their room all the time, but it was also cruel to those of us who didn't have as many friends whose parents were willing to buy them a Game Boy as well as a copy of the game.

So of course the solution was to buy both.

Anyway, the series is based off of the same classic RPG system you might have played in games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, with the exception that instead of leveling up your own character you instead level up small creatures who battle on your behalf.  The creatures gain experience, get now abilities, and can even "evolve" into a more powerful version.

The series became so huge that it spawned an animated series, numerous movies, novels and comics, a card game, and more memorabilia than you can shake a Pikachu at.  I actually used to use VHS tapes from the series when I babysat kids, because kids loooooved Pokemon in those days.

I also had the Pokerap memorized.  I was never really proud of that.

But back to the games.  Your goal was to become "the greatest trainer" who lived, which involved battling pretty much every person in the world and a bunch of wild Pokemon in nature.  You made your way to gyms (which, conveniently, got harder to beat the further you travelled instead of having your starting village be right next to the hardest one) and battle "leaders" to get badges.  Get enough badges, and you can battle the Elite Four trainers.

I distinctively remember that I assembled a team of "unorthodox" Pokemon to battle with.  Instead of going for a Charizard (the huge dragon above) or any of the other well-known ones, I tended to a) prevent my Pokemon from evolving with a handy tap of the "B" button to cancel it (because that's how evolution works, right?) until such a time as I needed them to get a specific skill, and b) build up their levels so high that they became a force to reckon with.

Let's see if I can remember my squad of five:  Zubat, Fearow, Kingler, Butterfree, Diglett.  Sometimes I'd toss in a "ghost" type Pokemon if I needed one.

Oh, that's right, Pokemon went by an incredibly simple means of determining which creatures could beat up other ones in a fight easier, it was essentially a massive version of "rock, paper, scissors."  Water-based Pokemon could beat up Fire Pokemon.  Fire Pokemon could beat up Grass Pokemon.  Flying Pokemon could beat Fighting Pokemon.

Yes, "Fighting" type Pokemon.  These were typically ones that seemed to use martial arts of some variety.

Now, there were always things about Pokemon that bothered me.  First of which was "what did these characters eat?"  This is a world where every animal you ever see seems capable of killing you with everything from summoned lightning to fire breath to toxic clouds, and even the plants could mercilessly beat you to death with branches if you tried to climb them for fruit.  The game and cartoon seemed to focus on the idea that Pokemon and people were "friends" more than anything, but when you raise a herd of cattle, you don't really want to be "friends" with it before they get sent out to become steaks.

Another bizarre thing was the fact that, as near as I could tell, there were no schools in this world.  Children would set out into the world with their "starter" Pokemon to attempt to, near as I can tell, become elite trainers and tame the savage wilderness with barely more than an elementary school education.  Middle school, at best.  I will not understand how these imaginary parents of pretend children are okay with sending their kids out into a world when all they had to defend themselves was this:

And the world could contain horrors such as this:

It just boggles the mind.

The graphics back in those days were pretty fancy, for a Game Boy game.  You had an over-the-top view of the world, watching your character move through towns, caves, and forests, trying to catch the next new Pokemon.  Battles happened from the same point of view as Resident Evil 4's combat, with an off-center "over the shoulder" view.

The species were easily identifiable (there were only 151 in those days, 152 if you included Missingno, but that's another topic for another time), and the graphics were sufficient to display each one without leaving you puzzled as to what you were fighting.  There weren't much in the way of other sprites, so a sleeping or poisoned Pokemon looked identical to the normal version of it, and when it attacked it would just sort of "scoot forward" and then "scoot back."

The games were a lot of fun, and are still fun to break out now and again to start all over trying to "catch 'em all."  I'm not quite as OCD when it comes to games like these as I used to be, so I'm more willing to just settle for collecting all of the ones I can from one game, but considering there's now 718 of the silly things, I kind of miss the old days.

Of course, having 718 Pokemon allows for some of the little monsters to be absolutely terrifying or downright bizarre, but that's a Top Eleven for another day.