Often mistakenly thought of as a consequential product of the television anime – Pokémon or ポケットモンスタ was first released by nintendo in 1995, 2 years before the immensly popular television version. Despite this time difference the televsion show storyline remained reasonably loyal to that of the videogame. The original versions – Pokémon Red & Blue collectively sold 21 million copies worldwide and we the second best-selling games for nintendo gameboy. Like many role-playing turn based games – pokémon was often criticised for being repetative, dispite being one of the only games played on gameboy with multiplayer capabilities.
(original graphics)
The main character of the story was male in appearance – clearly reflecting the game’s intentional audience, this, however was later changed in following versions in which, player’s could choose to play as a boy or girl. One aspect, which differentiates the game from the anime, is that the story follows the journey of a single character (name chosen by the player) – the equivalent of ‘Ash’, rather than Ash, Misty, Brock and of course, Pikachu. The main objective of the game is for the protagonist to ‘catch ‘um all’ (‘um being the 150 species of pokémon), however, in order for the character to navigate around the fictional world of Kanto, the player must defeat a ‘gym leader’ as to allow him entry to the next town, wherein he would face another gym leader. After defeating each ‘leader’ the majority of the game-map is accessible and all of the ordinary pokémon are avaible for the player to ‘catch’. In order for the final ‘special’ pokémon to be caught the protagonist must defeat 5 powerful antagonists – peculiarly named ‘The Elite Four’.
Rather than battling the main concept of pokémon stems from the hobby of collecting and raising animals as pets. The creators thought the gameboy was ideal for this because of the link cable that allows trading of pokémon between players – one of the first strong examples of interactivity in the gaming world, and, the gameboy’s portability, which unsurprisingly was the basis for the name ‘Pokémon’ (a japanese abbreviation for ‘Pocket Monsters’). This trading and collecting function also offered a certain level of personalisation as player’s could only carry up to 6 pokémon at a time – each player would have had an entirely different team of pokémon, depending on their gaming strategies and tastes.
The main character of the story was male in appearance – clearly reflecting the game’s intentional audience, this, however was later changed in following versions in which, player’s could choose to play as a boy or girl. One aspect, which differentiates the game from the anime, is that the story follows the journey of a single character (name chosen by the player) – the equivalent of ‘Ash’, rather than Ash, Misty, Brock and of course, Pikachu. The main objective of the game is for the protagonist to ‘catch ‘um all’ (‘um being the 150 species of pokémon), however, in order for the character to navigate around the fictional world of Kanto, the player must defeat a ‘gym leader’ as to allow him entry to the next town, wherein he would face another gym leader. After defeating each ‘leader’ the majority of the game-map is accessible and all of the ordinary pokémon are avaible for the player to ‘catch’. In order for the final ‘special’ pokémon to be caught the protagonist must defeat 5 powerful antagonists – peculiarly named ‘The Elite Four’.
Rather than battling the main concept of pokémon stems from the hobby of collecting and raising animals as pets. The creators thought the gameboy was ideal for this because of the link cable that allows trading of pokémon between players – one of the first strong examples of interactivity in the gaming world, and, the gameboy’s portability, which unsurprisingly was the basis for the name ‘Pokémon’ (a japanese abbreviation for ‘Pocket Monsters’). This trading and collecting function also offered a certain level of personalisation as player’s could only carry up to 6 pokémon at a time – each player would have had an entirely different team of pokémon, depending on their gaming strategies and tastes.
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