The Pokemon video games are iconic and have been defining childhoods since 1996, including mine. What do I think about this series and the changes that it has undergone since its inception?

Core ideas of the first generation Pokemon games

Satoshi Tajiri said he designed Pokemon based on his experience catching bugs in the woods as a child in Japan. The neighborhood children would catch different bugs and show them to each other and see whose bugs were cooler. If they could’ve made the bugs fight each other, I’m sure they would’ve, and now with the Pokemon series they could.

The Pokemon games take that concept further and instead of being set in the woods or whatever, they let the player and their bugs travel all throughout the rural Japanese countryside (also cities), finding many diverse bugs and catching them and making them fight other people’s bugs. No one had a problem with this and it felt like the natural coming-of-age progression for any ten year old. With a big world to explore with tons of Pokemon and infinite freedom it really felt like you were on your own and could do whatever you wanted.

They also made the bugs into animals that people actually have empathy for (lizards, snakes, animated sludge, etc.) instead of literal bugs, so you could also develop an emotional attachment to these little guys. So in addition to meeting all sorts of diverse Pokemon trainers throughout the Kanto region you also had constant companions in the form of your Pokemon, who you could pretend had whatever personalities and foibles you wanted. The battles were challenging and dramatic and because it was your Pokemon in the battles you were forced to like them and root for them since without them you wouldn’t be able to accomplish any of the game’s goals.

Almost all the Pokemon were based on real animals and were believable as things that could exist on Earth. The ones that weren’t based on animals were human-created abominations like Koffing, Muk, Porygon, and Mewtwo. Most of these were disgusting, terrifying, or explicitly evil. This further added to motif of the game which was nature vs human stuff, with an implicit yet clear endorsement of the former.

If you made it far enough to catch Mewtwo deep in Cerulean Cave, you really felt like it was an acheivement. Far away from civilization, you were able to capture and tame this insanely strong monster. This was not something the game forced on you, let alone just handed to you, so it felt truly special. You could beat all your friends asses with it too, at least until Smogon banned it.

I love generation one of Pokemon. It really felt like you were coming of age as a ten year old and finally unlocking this massive natural world full of mysteries and surprises. I liked the later games as a kid too but as an adult I think they destroyed all the things that made the first generation good so nowadays I hate them with a passion.

Godmode engaged

For some reason Game Freak didn’t think they could sell another game about a ten year old who elliminates the mafia and becomes the champion of the sport their entire world is based around. They needed something more dramatic. So starting in generation two they figured out the basic plot of every subsequent main series Pokemon game: the ten year old would hear a bunch about some sort of “God” or mythological superbeast, and then force it under their control about halfway through the game. The encounter with the legendary Pokemon was hyped up (it was on the box art), unavoidable, and central to the game’s plot.

Contrast this with the Mewtwo encounter I talked about in the last section. The Mewtwo encounter felt like a capstone since it was the last and hardest thing a player would do in the game, while the legendary Pokemon encounters later in the series happened midway through the game and weren’t an acheivement because everyone was forced to do it. The Mewtwo encounter felt dangerous, deep in the hardest dungeon in the game, whereas the later legenday Pokemon encounters happened in an easy dungeon or even a town, surrounded by other humans who were on the player’s side. The Mewtwo encounter felt spontaneous and tense, whereas the later legendary Pokemon encounters were often preceded by a heartless, boxed cutscene just to convince you it was important. The Mewtwo encounter was foreshadowed in a mysterious and terrifying way in the ruined Cinnabar Mansion, whereas the later legendary encounters were talked about constantly by NPCs for about half the game, robbing them of any intrigue. I could go on. All this stuff cheapened the legendary encounters horribly.

Another thing you can notice is the stark departure from the “rules of the world” laid out in generation one. As I said before the generation one Pokemon are all within like two degrees of real animals that exist on this planet, besides the manmade monstrosities. It was totally believable that an everyday child could capture them and bend them to his or her will. But in generation two the box legendaries Lugia and Ho-oh are literal gods that created the universe. Bonding with a captive animal as you travel the countryside with it has a certain romantic, roughshod, us-against-the-world appeal to it that completely disappears if the animal is replaced with a creator diety. I wonder if Satoru Iwata would look quite so fondly back on his memories capturing bugs with his friends if instead of bugs they were world-sculpting supreme beings. It seems to me that this change completely destroys the tone.

I also hate all of the overcomplicated designs that the later generation Pokemon feature. Why do Kyogre and its two friends have to have runes and lines all over their bodies? This visual noise leaves me longing for the simple charms of the first generation Pokemon, with their honest faces and solid colors.

Entering the babyzone

With a centralized plot based around a climactic battle with a legendary Pokemon, the games were forced to adopt a more linear and traditional plot structure. The legendary Pokemon battle wouldn’t make sense without some extremely explicit foreshadowing done by other characters, so now the professors (and others) followed the player around and explained things in their heavy-handed way. The route the player took was forced to become more linear and restricted since all of the story beats in the different cities concerned the overarching plotline rather than local storylines. While the original games barred the player’s progress using whimsical characters with idiosyncratic and evocative problems (think that one thirsty guard who you need to bring some tea), the new games asked the same questions in every location: did you go see the professor? Did you fight the gym leader? Did you talk to X important person who knows about the legendary on the box of the game? Totally inorganic and contrived. Gone was the feeling of aloneness and independence that came with turning ten and being turned loose into the world to make of it what you would, replaced by the tendie of a chaperoned fieldtrip hosted by the professor. Gone were the organic, emergent bonds with your Pokemon, replaced with a bunch of half-assed characters that weren’t interesting but were forced on you at every turn. Gone was the joy of spontaneous discovery as you wandered from place to place as you would.

Also, the Pokemon battles became super easy. The later in the series you go, the easier they are, mostly.

Whyyyyyyyy

In the nineties and eighties the gameboy was the only serious way to play games on the go but in the 2000s every child was given a smartphone or ipod, and each of these devices could download 50,000 free games for people with low attention spans. No one liked leisurely games or challenging games anymore since phone games got all the children used to instant gratification. So of course Pokemon had to get easy and linear otherwise it couldn’t satisfy children accustomed to a cheap high. The leisurely joy of booting up your gameboy to wander through the Kanto region on a Sunday afternoon didn’t have the same immediacy as seeing numbers increase exponentially or completing a 20 second level in some app store game. It had to raise the stakes because a quiet journey to attain mastery and maybe do some good along the way feels trivial when much conflict in media is apocalyptic in scale. It had to have version-exclusive legendaries because no one was going to buy both Red Version and Blue Version just because they could catch Goldeen in one and Staryu in the other. So the pressures of the market corrupted Shigeru Miyamoto’s original vision of a bug catching ten year old, into what it is today.

What’s now?

If I had access to the most profitable single IP in the world I wouldn’t sacrifice it just to make a good video game, and I don’t think Game Freak will either. So Pokemon will keep printing money, and let’s hope the Indie Devs start making spiritual successors for it the same way they did for Metroid and Paper Mario. If they do, I won’t play them, though, because I hate RPGs.

About me

I played Pokemon from gen 3 to gen 6. Of those I liked gen 4 the best because of the music. I never played gen 1 or gen 2 but I liked the remakes. Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness is my favorite Pokemon game.