The Pokémon games grow up with us
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    Image by Honou on Flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons.

    Nintendo released Pokémon X and Y for the Nintendo 3DS earlier this month, and it was only a matter of days before Nerdwestern students got their hands on it. And for people who haven’t tuned into Pokémon since the days of Aaron Carter and choker necklaces, X and Y are nearly unrecognizable as Pokémon games.

    Back in Ye Olden Days, also known as the late ‘90s, Pokémon was simple. There were 151 of them, and you really could catch them all. Misty’s outfit still seemed appropriate for a 10-year-old. Mew and Mewtwo, some of the first legendary Pokémon, were so important they got a full-length movie. (Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back. It grossed $85 million.)

    Today, not only are Misty and Brock long gone, replaced by these nobodies, but there are now over 700 Pokémon. Only 450 Pokémon are even available to catch in X and Y. While X and Y’s objectives are the same as every previous Pokémon game – earn gym badges, defeat the Team Rocket knockoff, complete your Pokédex – reaching all of those goals isn’t realistically attainable anymore.

    Is this bad? Not necessarily. In the first generation of Pokémon games, gameplay ended after you defeated the Elite Four and caught Mewtwo. You could keep wandering around the Kanto region, but there were no surprises. But in X and Y, becoming Pokémon Master is just one more item on a checklist. Afterwards, an entire city is unlocked, new legendary Pokémon are available to capture and you can even join a detective agency.

    Plus, the graphics are incredible. Gone are the bird’s eye-view screens of the first few games. The camera swings around to follow your character, and there are tiny, amazing details that bring the Pokémon world to life. When the original games Red and Blue came out in 1996, everything was an absolutely riveting shade of grey. Now you can even see the golden detailing of the clothes in wall portraits.

    When Mario, Sonic, Kirby and Link were Pikachu’s only contenders for what video game to play, it was enough to run around battling enemies. Now that The Sims and Animal Crossing have proven that people will do any mundane task as long as it involves a screen, Pokémon thinks it has to include that type of gameplay too.

    So X and Y have “Pokémon-Amie,” where players pet, feed and play mini-games with their Pokémon. This helps “build trust” between the Pokémon and trainer – in other words, certain Pokémon only evolve through playing Pokémon-Amie with them. In theory, this makes the game more complex, but is it filler? When mini-games are treated like vital components of a puzzle, they can be fun and challenging. When they just slow you down on your way to a bigger goal, they’re just time-wasters.

    On the other hand, Pokémon-Amie exemplifies exactly what the Pokémon cartoon always preached. The good characters on the show always say Pokémon are their friends, not their tools. But as Pokémon fans have gotten older, they’ve learned some important lessons: for example, friends don’t squeeze friends into balls barely bigger than a fist. Let’s talk about that issue before debating what Snorlax’s favorite type of cupcake is.

    The Sims’ influence added one great feature to Pokémon X and Y, because you can now customize your characters by choosing skin color, hairstyle and clothing. After you pick your gender, however, there are really only three options for complexion: white with blonde hair, white with brown hair and spray tanned. Eventually, after earning enough money, you have more hair and clothing choices. Even Ash has moved on from his beloved first hat. Nothing is sacred.

    Technically, X and Y are superior in every way to the first few generations of Pokémon games. You can ride on roller skates and on Pokémon. You can use flying Pokémon to battle in the sky, or fight six wild Pokémon at once in “horde battles.” Your Pokémon can even “Mega Evolve” for the length of a battle. (It’s awesome. Charizard turns into this.) X and Y possess the same sort of imagination-shattering awesomeness that made the first Pokémon games so addicting.

    Yet the simplicity of the original Pokémon was part of its charm. Its world was small, but so were we. As Pokémon fans grow older and the Pokémon world grows bigger, Pokémon’s complexity reflects our broadened horizons.

    Even Nintendo feels the nostalgia. Instead of choosing just one starter Pokémon, you are given two: a new Pokémon, unique to the French-inspired Kalos region, and a Pokémon from the original game – Bulbasaur, Charmander or Squirtle. No matter how exciting the sixth generation of Pokémon is, nothing beats the original.

    And, of course, the music is still awful.

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