My falling out with PoKe'Mon

When Patrick and I began Dual Analogs at the start of the year, we talked about doing little joint ventures, be it debates, discussions, or competitions. When PoKe'MoN Black and White came out, Patrick proposed a little contest to see which of us could complete the National 'Dex to quickest. Seems like it would have been a lot of fun, but I had to turn it down. Unfortunately, PoKe'MoN and I have had kind of a falling out recently.


I was a fan as soon as PoKe'MoN first came out, and I was 13 at the time. I had a copy of Blue, Patrick had Red, we watched the TV show and I dabbled in the card game. I even went to the movie when it came out in theaters. As soon as it became available, my PoKe'MoN of choice was Eevee and all of its evolutions (at that time only being 3). However, a couple years later, I lost interest in PoKe'MoN. I gave my game away and became one of those kids who was "too cool" for PoKe'MoN. I had put it behind me.

Five years ago, in the summer of '06, I picked up a Nintendo DS. I enjoyed it very much, and I got thinking about PoKe'MoN. With all the cool new functionality that came with the DS, I decided that a new PoKe'MoN game would be pretty sweet. I actually began hoping that a new game was in the works. My wish came true and in the Spring of '07, I rushed out to get my copy of Pearl.

I loved it so much I bought Kyra (my then girlfriend, now wife) her own DS and a copy of Emerald Diamond. I played it fanatically. I bought a copy of Leafgreen (on GBA) for the soul purpose of acquiring more Eevees and transferring them to my copy of Pearl. I had a complete collection of all the Eevee evolutions (now totaling 7). It took a lot of work and I was quite proud of it.

Then they released HeartGold and SoulSilver last year. I rushed out and bought one for myself and Kyra. I transferred over my Eevee party and I proudly sported my PoKe'Walker in public. But this is where things began to go downhill for me, and the magic began to wear off.

When I began playing Pearl, I hadn't played PoKe'MoN in years, and the familiarity was very nostalgic, which added to the appeal for me. I remember thinking "Man, this hasn't changed. This is awesome." But then playing through SoulSilver, I realized "Oh... it really hasn't changed at all..." There I was, doing the exact same thing, but with different scenarios and different PoKe'MoN. What made it more disheartening was that I was almost halfway through the first region and I had only been using TWO different PoKe'MoN. I began to really think about how little the game actually challenged players.

So I kind of realized that all I really wanted was to continue beefing up my Eevee party and battle other real life players. I wasn't really interested in playing the game.

Well, this all fell apart when someone stole my DS with my copy of SoulSilver. In an instant, my entire Eevee party (and about 75 hours of work) was gone. Granted, this is not PoKe'MoN's fault, but it was a crushing blow to my spirit.

So now we have PoKe'MoN Black and White. Part of me really wants to play it because of some of the new things they have done with the game (TMs can now be used indefinitely? Hell yes!) but at the same time I am just not interested in messing with it. PoKe'MoN to me is a social thing. I don't want to sit around collecting PoKe'MoN and grinding levels, I want to battle and hang out with other players. Unfortunately, that was taken from me by a thief, and I haven't wanted to put the work back into it since.

But whenever I am at a convention and I see all the PoKe'MoN kids battling with their DS's, it makes me really wish I would just get over it and play the game again.