I have a friend named Terry. Terry is a Catholic and I'm an atheist. His beliefs get capitalized because they have a sacred book, a city and a guy in a funny hat*. Mine don't because it's not a religion; It's the complete absence of one. You'd think we would argue constantly or couldn't be good friends if you knew nothing about us and judged us solely on stereotypes of those two words. You couldn't be more wrong. In fact, there's a lot of things we agree on. One of the few things we come to blows about, figuratively, is Pokemon. Specifically, how many of them exist.

At the moment, Nintendo makes the spurious (possibly blasphemous) claim that there exist 719 different species. I lost count myself after it passed the 500 mark, but I don't feel like most of those are... well... real. To me, there are exactly 252 monsters that would fit into your pocket. Terry's even more extreme. He makes the claim that he's a Pokemon fundamentalist and the only ones that exist are the original 151 and Missingno (the glitch Pokemon, number 000). I at least see the 2nd generation as being "real," meaning that after Gold, Silver and Platinum, the Pokeverse stopped collecting new species**.

In Terry's world, the psychic types reign supreme, dark and steel don't exist, there are only three ghosts and dragons, Onix and Scyther don't evolve and everything is a helluva lot simpler. Things get a little more balanced and complicated with mine and the world is a bit more interesting, but I'm biased towards my own viewpoint*** so take analysis that with a grain of salt. We at least agree that fairy types are stupid.

Why did I start this by mentioning our world views about the supernatural? Because I feel it shapes our Pokemon argument, if such a frivolous and silly discussion can be called an argument. I'd much rather call it a disagreement. The places where we disagree are huge, but we're both so far from the norm that it really doesn't matter that much. We're making up rules to a made up game just to please ourselves psychologically. There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere, I'm just missing it. I now feel better for having got this on paper... or whatever the hell you write a blog on.

* Okay, okay, not JUST because of those things, relax.

** This is similar to my viewpoint on the three Indiana Jones films. People tell me there's a fourth and that I've even seen it in theaters. I don't recall it; I've blacked that memory out.

*** LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IS. Stop claiming that game reviewers are magically different in that respect.