Oh heck, is it Sunday again already?
Well fair enough, let’sturn our caps backwards, hit the dramatic music and get ready for some sparring, because today we’re taking on the wonderful world of Pokemon, along with a few other worlds, of course! As always, these delightful questions have been captured, trained and evolved by Heather, the finest question creator to ever exist and keeper of Just Geeking By, the golden Gyrados of blogs!
Also, if you enjoy reading all about the pocket monsters, I would be remiss not to point you to the indomitable Pinkie’s Paradise. Pinkie has a keen passion for Pokemon (and other things besides) that definitely needs to be checked out!
Way back in 1996 in Japan, a brand new game called Pokemon was released and it took the world by storm. Every year on 27th February fans worldwide celebrate the original release and even if you’re not a Pokemon fan you can’t deny the effect that this game has had on pop culture. This week’s questions are aimed at looking at just that.
Question 1 – How familiar are you with the Pokemon franchise?
Okay, so, my experience with the world of Pokemon began in about 1999/2000, when the anime first aired in the UK and the Game Boy games were suddenly hot property. I was given Pokemon Red for, I think, my 15th birthday around that time and it actually catapulted the big grey brick from “handheld I played on occasion” to “handheld that chewed through 6 AA batteries a week” status, because man was I addicted! Things got even more addictive when my friend got a copy of Blue, which of course meant that we could trade beasties exclusive to both games and get some rare evolves out of it!
I also loved the first series of the anime, even if Ash Ketchum was whiny and actually useless at battling his Pokemon (I mean, come on, your Charizard left you, dude). It still has the best intro song to a kid’s series ever, by the way.
Since then, however, I have never been able to recapture that lightning-in-a-bottle love I had for Red. Later games just didn’t do it for me, sadly. I did, however, enjoy the Detective Pikachu movie, which I would recommend to anyonw who likes witty family adventure movies.
Question 2 – There have been various augmented reality games and pet battle features in MMOs since Pokemon was released, have you played any?
I’m not really one for AR games, for the most part. They burn through my phone battery and, overall, they’re just not my kind of deal. I did try Pokemon Go once, but I got rid of it after low-key chasing a zubat around a garden centre. Like I say, just not my cup of tea!
Though when I see people with full collections, I’m always very impressed!
Question 3 – A well-known one of these is Neopets; did you ever play Neopets?
Oh, heck yes!
I had an account on Neopets back in the early 2000s, when I was a college student. We spent most of our time (including study time, oops!) in the computer room, levelling up our critters, buying gear for them and… whatever else it was we did there (it was a long time ago, alright?)
My favourite Neopet was my wasp-like one, who was red and was called Bu66Elite, I got him from the “rescue” part of the site, some heartless cur had sold him, but he was always like a (JPEG) son to me! I even got him loads of awesome weapons for the arena, amazing!
Question 4 – A new pet battle game has just been announced for a big franchise; which one do you hope it was for?
Hmm, now there’s a difficult one to answer!
What about… the world of The Witcher? Andrzej Sapkowskis’ world, extended via the video game trilogy, is jam packed with all manner of horrible beasties that you could trap in a red and white ball and use to fight each other. You could rock up with a drowner or a foglet, or even capture some great big gryphen to lay waste to your opponents.
And, this being the world of The Witcher, it would be full of bawdy language and fighting too! And probably Gwent!
Question 5 – What smaller fandom would you personally create a game like this for?
Okay, so, for those who haven’t checked out my recent books reviews here, there is an indie publisher new on the scene called Skullgate Media. They bring together various writers, who all work together to create interesting universes in which to weave their stories. Both volume one, Achten Tan: Land of Dust and Bone and volume 2, Under New Suns, are jam packed with all manner of fantastical beasts, so you could easily make a pet battling game from these universes. Giant ants versus space sharks? Why not!
Question 6 – Pick a creature from fandom and tell us what it’s battle abilities would be!
This one really had me thinking of a fun example, I was racking my brains let me tell you! But then I remembered my number one JRPG boy (as decided in my post for The Great JRPG Character Face-Off 2020), Morgana from Persona 5!
Is he a cat? A human? A monster? An old camper van? Who knows! But if he were a Pokemon style critter, his moves (in the style of Pokemon) would be…
Scratch
Some kind of healing move
Gust
Seed Shot (most like his trademark catapult!)
And that’s it, we’ve had a fun-filled romp through the world of Pokemon and a couple of other fandoms, and hopefully fun was had along the way too. As always, I implore you to check out the other pieces published under the #SeriouslyGeekySundays hashtag, because they’re all amazing, as well as my good friend Pinkie for all of your Pokemon blogging needs!
See you all next time!
Craig Rathbone - Writer 
I was definitely a Pokemaniac when I was a kid when it came out. Sometimes I feel really old with how long the franchise has been around and lost track of all the new Pokemon. When I become a grandfather, I’m probably going to say: “Back in my day, we only had 151 Pokemon!” to those whippersnappers.
Neopets? OMG, I used to have an account on that site during my youth. Wow, that’s a blast from the past.
Not going to lie, I got into Digimon back then. In hindsight, the anime was better than the Pokemon one with there being an actual story, character development, catching them all wasn’t the point, and the monsters can actually talk.
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See Digimon I never tried, just seemed to derivative at the time (though I hear good things as an adult!)
Yeah we spent about 2 years of our graphic design course just playing Neopets instead of, you know, doing projects, it was pretty sweet! And as for Pokémon, well I’ve tried twice to get into later games and it just doesn’t do it for me, Red was the highlight for me!
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Gotcha. It’s not as derivative as one would expect. I only saw the first three seasons, but I kept going with Digimon as a kid when I stopped watching Pokemon.
Oh, wow! Hahaha! That’s crazy. I hear you right there with a lot of the post Red/Blue/Yellow games.
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Yeah it apparently very much finds an identity of its own as it goes on, always a good thing!
I remember playing Yellow on emulator years ago (pretty sure it was rare over here), it was cool seeing the anime characters cropping up for sure, even if Ash is a bit of a wet lettuce! The anime’s season one theme tune is still the best of all time though, sorry He Man and TMNT!
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Digimon certainly did which was a plus. I also liked how it was a full story instead of just going to gyms to get the badges. It also took WAAAAAAAAAY too long when Ash finally won a Pokemon League tournament where it took 20 years for it to happen and it even made mainstream news of all things.
Nice! I hear you right there about Ash. The Pokemon these is easily one of the best theme songs. I agree it’s better than He-Man and the original TMNT. My favorite theme song from shows I watched during my childhood would be Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (the game show, not the cartoon).
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Ah see I remember the cartoon but never the game show, maybe it never made it over here? Man the more I think about Ash, the more I hate him! He’s almost as useless as Team Rocket… Almost!
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I see. That’s a bummer if the game show didn’t come over to the UK. It was a really good show and I learned a ton about geography then.
Yeah…Ash wasn’t the best protagonist. Hahaha!
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See I always loved geography and history even as a kid, so I’d be made up with that! We did have Knightmare though, which was mega if really silly!
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That’s amazing! The game show was so fun and I wanted to be on it when I was little. I’ve never heard of Knightmare before. That’s something I might have to look up.
In case you’re wondering, here’s the game show theme by acapella group Rockapella who actually acted as the house band with the background music and sound effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozYg8vDTmkc
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