Posts Tagged ‘pokemon’
3 items.
A wild Ditto appeared!
I guess it’s Pokemon Week here in the Weirdest City. There’s a lot of Pokemon. Too many even. But of all of them, Ditto is probably still the most unique. It can become any other pokemon, and apparently as such can mate with any other pokemon. That alone is disturbing enough, but if you grew up while the first season of Pokemon was on TV like me and remember the cartoon, then you remember that it can become an exact copy of anything except for the face, which is always this blank, creepy grin.
Can you imagine? Watching something turn into me from an amorphous blob already sounds like an unmitigated horror-fest, but for it to get me only like 97% right? Nightmare fuel.
That last 3% is critical. If you want to terrify someone, this method is super effective.
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So I’m a bit of a hypocrite.
I bought the newest Pokemon (White) game, and it’s actually a lot of fun. In fact, it might be the most I’ve enjoyed a Pokemon game since the original two. But upon closer inspection, I realized that it’s probably because there are so many pokemon that echo the original set. There is a burrowing creature with massive claws, a two-level lightning (rather than fire) horse, a huge battle turtle, I tiny electric mouse, a prehistoric flying monster you can revive via fossil, etc. The list goes on. It’s almost like they went “Let’s make the first game over again and reuse all the same pokemon ideas.”
But it seems to work. I’m having a blast playing it. From the past. The nostalgia factor is really high.
I am as big a Pokemon fan as anyone. I loved it growing up. I think most of us did. It’s one of the few things really think defines our generation. Most people I talk to can at least name the first hundred fifty, because it was something we sort of universally enjoyed at that age.
I know I had intentions of catching every Pokemon well beyond the first games. I think I got to like, 146, when I was about 9 years old. And then a new game came out. A whole new set of Pokemon came with it. Okay, that was just a minor set back, right? More for me to catch.
Then another game came out. And another. Sometimes you could only get a Pokemon through an exclusive giveaway at a certain time. It has been like 14 years, and they are still making new Pokemon games. The Pokemon seem to lack more and more creativity with each new game. There’s like 50,000 Pokemon or something now, and I find myself playing the remake of the first game more than any other. Looking back it’ll always be my favorite, because it was so much less complicated then.
Sometimes you realize that the cartoons/games/stories you enjoyed as a kid are just business like anything else, meant first and foremost to sell toys and t-shirts and movie tickets. Maybe I was never going to be a Pokemon Master (because let’s face it, that shit is tough), but neither is Ash, because then they would have no more games to sell and make money off of. Seriously, he’s been the same age for like 14 years now.
I still haven’t caught all of the original 150. My Mewtwo is pretty sweet though.