Gotta catch em all! Pokemon!

Way back in the 90’s a gigantic hit known as “Pokemon” was made known to the world. Pokemon which was the shortened version of the word pocket monsters was a video game that saw its debut on the original gameboy coming in with two versions, red and blue. Both games offered the same story but gave out different pokemon per version.  The story revolved around a boy who in essence wanted to be a pokemon trainer which is where you start placed in his shoes.

What made the game fun, unique and addicting was that you had to catch pokemon with pokeballs in order to make them your own though thats not where it ends. After you catch them you would have to train them by battling other pokemon in order to gain experience and to level up when you gained enough levels your pokemon had the chance to evolve into a new form. It was this dynamic that got people so excited over this game. Travelling from town to town in order to battle gym masters who would reward you with badges so you could become the best trainer, that was the goal of the entire game.

But the most memorable thing in this game was surely the pokemon. There were 150 different pokemon to collect. Each would appeal to a wide audience there were pokemon clearly made for people who liked things that looked cute such as Pickachu, Jigglypuff and Clefairy and there were also pokemon geared to people who wanted something that looked cool or scary like Sycther, Nidoking and Charizard. Some of them were easy to catch and you could find them anywhere in the game. Some were rare and there was usually only one chance to get them in the game. The reward though was that these pokemon were a better upgrade then the generic ones. To get the exclusive pokemon per version you had to have a friend to trade pokemon with sometimes the pokemon would even evolve after a trade thus giving the players incentive to seek out other players.

Today Pokemon has branched out to all types of entertainment. There is a tv show that has spawned countless seasons and a number of movies. There is a card game, action figures, comics and of course even more video games in a number of consoles. Today there are over 600 pokemon in their latest versions of black and white. Its a daunting task to go out and catch all of them but it seems as though the fans are willing to go through all that just because of sheer love of the game but let’s all remember where it started with a little tiny cartridge that was produced by Nintendo in the 90’s and 150 little critters that decided that they’d make a huge impact that has lasted for more than a decade.

  

- Vieo Lopez

Sources:

Pokemon Logo, Retrieved July 24, 2011.

From http://www.platformnation.com/2011/02/04/pokemon-black-and-white

Starter Pokemon, Retrieved July 24 2011

From http://forum.starmen.net/forum/Storage/Interactive/GAME-Pok-mon-MS-Paint-Version

Untitled picture of pokemon anime, retrieved July 24 2011

From http://www.psypokes.com/anime/index.php