Before you leave your house in 1998 Pokémon Red and Blue—The first localized game to become a franchise of unimaginable proportions — you are given the option to interact with the TV. Click ONE on your Game Boy shows this text: “There’s a movie on TV. Four boys are walking on train tracks. I’d better go too.” This is a reference to Stand by me, the 1986 film based on a short story by Stephen King about young men venturing into the woods to find the body of a missing person — and its relationship to your upcoming adventure only becomes more apparent over time.
Stand by me rooted in nostalgia, not about the 1950s (when the story takes place) but about youth in general and magical companions in particular. It was a story that couldn’t be told to adults. As adults, we are too burdened with responsibility and self-awareness to take on the kind of journey that kids take. Stand by me Go on. The same goes for the journeys in most Pokémon games, journeys only a 10-year-old can do — trainers to fight, stop evil, catch all. they. These are goals uncomplicated by the things age throws at us. Pokémon is not a franchise about growing up but about the lens through which we see the world as children, a game full of fun and dreams.
But lovers of Pokémon from its early years have grown. Now there are generations after them, whether they are adults or children, who are experiencing it all for the first time. They are mesmerized by the game’s amazing simplicity and the growing state of its current popularity, thanks to megahits like Pokémon Go mobile games, recent installs Sword and Shield, interested in the upcoming Pokémon Legend: Arceus, and the reunion of the Trading Card Game into titles and broader cultural relevance. These new players may have never touched Red and Blue. Their only relationship with Pokémon is the here and now.
Both factions of the fandom are huge, which puts the franchise’s supposed targets in disarray. Is it for older fans, whose reactions to the series range from deeply nostalgic to desperate for progress? Or is the Pokémon Company’s vision focused solely on newer devotees, who have yet to discover the nature and addictive nature that has ensured Pokémon’s popularity for more than two and a half decades? One of the main draws of the franchise, along with one of its major pitfalls, is that it has done very little to keep up with the fans who have adored it all this time. I don’t mean the point of perfecting its plot. Putting Ash Ketchum, the main character in the anime, a stag, or filling games with unexpected grit, is a silly way to capture the fleeting attention of an older crowd.
Instead, Pokémon delights in the comfort it offers — with each new installment essentially serving as a light reboot of the series. That’s why Ash Ketchum will last forever 10. He’s meant to represent every new kid entering the series for the first time. And that’s why — before Arceus announced — any changes to the Pokémon game’s mechanics, difficulty, or gameplay design are incremental at best.
