Going back to Pokemon...
By KillerFly 31 Comments
I was a kid in the late 90s, and like any self-respecting kid-geek in the late 90s, I was way into Pokemon.
I bought the games, I watched the anime, I collected the cards (and pretended I knew how to play the card game), the whole nine yards. For a while, it was all my friends and I could ever talk or think about. When I think about a moment in my childhood when I was really happy, I think about (along with other, more important things) how excited I was when my mom's boyfriend got me that Charizard card, and how jealous my friends were. Pokemon used to be a big part of my life.
But then, around 6th grade, I stopped caring about the series. Why? Probably for a lot of reasons. My friends weren't into it so much anymore, the anime seemed more and more lame the older I got, and I just got tired of the whole "Japan has 5000 new Pokemon that you're not gonna see for years!" thing. So that was it. No more Pokemon. I used to be able to name all of the original 151, no I care barely remember a few, let alone the hundreds of new ones they've added over the years.
Fast foward to 2009. After almost a full year of slowly going through it, I finally beat Lost Odyssey. It had it problems, and it wasn't ground-breaking by any means, but it's probably the first traditional turn-based JRPG I've beaten since, well.... Pokemon. And it reminded me how much I like the genre. At this point, it's a relic that hasn't evolved in ages, but that's just something about it that hooks you (maybe I'm still suffering from "anything's better if it's made in Japan" syndrome, who knows).
After that, I needed more RPGs. I bought Chrono Trigger on DS, and have been enjoying it a lot. I tried playing Persona 4, but I couldn't really get into it. Then there is stuff like Star Ocean 4 and Last Remnant I might like, but that's a whole other story.
That's when I saw the commercial: Pokemon Platinum. Holy crap. I haven't played these games in forever, and just when I'm feeling in the mood, a new one is just about a month away. I really wonder, can this series hook me again? Can 19-year-old me see what 8-year-old me likes so much about this series? Will I be able to wrap my head around all these new fangled Pokemon? Will playing it make me feel like some pathetic manchild? I can't wait to find out!