How Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow sent millions of kids on an adventure
Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow (1999)
Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow (1999)
Latest statistics reveal that Fortnite has made over $26 billion in revenue, with a record $6 billion coming from 2022, proving that the game ain’t dead just yet. How could it be, with over 270 million active players enjoying the game, all contributing to what I would conservatively estimate is two zillion game-hours in total.
The whole thing is a phenomenon, and even I tried it once. That’s right, I tried a modern and popular game, but I hasten to clarify that that’s only because the game is free. In the two matches I’d played, I wandered around hoping for some help, a tutorial of sorts, or even just a bit of abuse dressed up as advice from my teammates, whom I couldn’t even tell apart from the actual enemy.
I finally encountered a clear enemy and attempted to take a pot shot at them, only to witness my opposing apex predator immediately build what you’d have to class as an 11th century cathedral all around himself. This thing had a refectory, courtyards, acreage and everything.
Ignoring my wayward bullets totally, treating them like the noisy flies that they were, my opponent then effortlessly put down all manner of bridges going every which way outside of their magnum opus, providing the new hub for all remaining players to battle to the death in. While all this was happening, I had been thoroughly headshotted, naturally.
And so my “involvement” in the match, if that’s even the correct term, came to an abrupt halt. Completely outdone by what I’m sure was an 8-year-old child, I began wondering to myself. How do they know everything about this game? How could they keep up with it all?
How indeed? It was probably the first time I’d ever been made to feel old by a game. Too old, too slow, must go, as they say. Immediately it made me want to look down on the whole Fortnite rigmarole. It’s surely just a fad. Kids will move on to the next big thing. Or, it’s not even that good anyway, that type of thing. It’s just a cash-cow where only the greediest win.
But how could I level anything so hypocritical against the game? It’s the exact same guff we used to get about Pokémon, 25 years ago now. Where does that time go?! Fortnite may be immensely popular now, but I’m not so sure it’s going to spawn twenty-season anime series and movies, or trading card games or several mobile apps, or above all else, a game series that’s still mega popular over two decades later.
I’m also fairly certain that Fortnite’s never been accused of being satanic, or in some way anti-Christian, such that you’ll hear of wild hick groups in rural Alabama burning copies of the game. Or in this case, burning receipts for V-Bucks. Pokémon’s had that treatment. Harry Potter, too. So can you really consider yourself among the mainstream top brass, if don’t have people burning effigies of your mascots?
It was simply extraordinary how Pokémon took its hold over here in UK and Ireland. For starters, we had the anime come out over here before the games, which only ramped up our appetites to get playing.
You’d wonder about the power of advertising on children. Me, I obviously wasn’t going to miss out on Pokémon, given that I knew it was a Nintendo-backed cartoon and I was the biggest fanboy in the world. But everyone else in school started talking about it, even the absolute dregs, who would wholly deny that fact now.
Who told them about it? Everyone knew Pokémon to be something big, something popular, and therefore something that you simply had to be a part of. Otherwise you’d be risking social ostracism, a terrible and irrevocable fate to suffer when you’re 9 years old.
And so, in Europe, after a six month period that we’d spent lamenting Ash’s skills, laughing at Brock’s plights with women and entertaining pre-teen fantasies between ourselves and Misty, we finally got the first two Game Boy games, Pokémon Red & Blue.
This was more than two years after the games had hit Japan. Can you imagine that now? We later got the special Yellow edition, which had more references to the anime, and crucially starred Jessie and James from Team Rocket - the best characters in it.
But as for Red and Blue, the effect it had on us was immediate and profound. To my dying day, I’ll always remember coming round the corner into the schoolyard, with my purple Game Boy Color containing Pokémon Red held out in front of me like Del Boy’s Filofax, only to see that probably 99% of the other children had the same idea.
My little heart soared. How sad is that? Finally, my encyclopaedic game knowledge could become cool. I would become the authority, the guru, the man every other child in school looked up to for a clue.
That didn’t quite happen of course, but I did become a desirable young man to know, as I was in possession of an official Link Cable, the crucial tool that would allow for trading and battling with other mugs. Wired communication, if you don’t mind.
But perhaps I’ve gone too far into background here, and maybe some actual game talk wouldn’t go amiss. Well, time probably hasn’t been the most kind to Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow, given the advancements that subsequent generations of the game have brought, and given that the game coding has been shown to be pretty much held together by spit, gum and sticky tape.
To wit, the battle mechanics are fairly out of whack, the game is completely unbalanced in favour of the Psychic-type Pokémon, you’re never more than 6-feet away from a game-breaking glitch, and some of the graphics and Pokémon sprites are a disaster.
But as a sheer adventure, this game really nails the atmosphere of being a young kid, ready to shake off the shackles of parents and school, and explore a big bad world with six trusted companions. There are not too many other games that offer the sense of adventure like the original Pokémon games do, and that’s even despite the quaint graphics.
Whereas later games in the series like Pokémon X and Y give you absolutely no autonomy whatsoever, and should probably be seen as guided tours rather than adventure games, Pokémon RBY just leaves you to it. It’s you versus the lie of the land, with plenty of ambitious, sinister and even cute trainers and Gym Leaders in-between, all of whom you’ll need to beat to become the very best.
This lack of hand-holding probably proved a bit too much for the stupider children, but come on. Can’t children figure these things out for themselves? Can’t they be given some credit? Millions of children managed to finish Pokemon RBY. Yes, I know they did it with one Pokémon, a Level 100 Charizard with a hideous moveset, but they did it. Why do the latter day Pokémon games, and many other games besides, need to give you tutorials up the wazoo? Have attention spans gotten so low?
Evidently they have, or I would have given Fortnite more than two attempts before sneering at it and pronouncing it to be clag. And I can’t imagine any Fortnite playing child these days would look very favourably upon a monochrome adventure like Pokémon. Not when it’s on a portable system, a system that isn’t even backlit mind you, and it doesn’t fry their brains with new colourful graphics, shiny micro-transactions and “pride and accomplishment” every five seconds.
But for that window of time, 25 years ago, we were all little adventurers. We all went out there and bumbled and made dreadful mistakes like Ash. We battled, we traded, we bonded. We let our minds wander, our imaginations do the work. We played a front and centre role in a phenomenon that the rest of society wanted to look down on and take away from us. That’s why I don’t attack Fortnite or its players - they just got swept up in a colourful phenomenon, same as us.
29 September 2023