Fifteen Years Ago today...

You know what? I probably never would have bought PayDay 2 had I never played the first one. And I probably wouldn’t have considered buying it if I didn’t already enjoy co-op games with friends. Thanks to Left4Dead and Left4Dead 2, that happened. But I probably never would have touched those games had Portal not been my first PC game. But Portal would have been impossible for me had Metroid Prime not been my first FPS game. Then again, I never would have heard of Samus if I had never played Smash Bros., which got me into Zelda and a long string from games related to that or StarFox or Fire Emblem or a number of other great Nintendo titles. And while it seems like I’m giving Smash Bros. all the credit for me being the gamer I am today, I never would have picked up an N64 controller to smash with the bros if it wasn’t for Pikachu. That’s right. The first game I ever truly owned and played was Pokemon and without that, I would have never stepped into gaming to be where I am today. In honor of the 15^th anniversary of Red & Blue coming to America, let’s talk about Pokemon and how much it means to me as a gamer.

It’s easy to write Pokemon off as another kiddie-Nintendo game that is only meant for casual players. But easy answers aren’t always the right ones and Pokemon offers more depth to the game than I’ve seen in most FPS games, many RPGs or puzzles, etc. But that’s the allure of Pokemon. It may seem like a casual and easy game, but that’s because it’s supposed to appear that simple. It’s a game designed to be easily approachable so that anyone can pick it up and play without feeling like the game is too unforgiving or unplayable. There can be some hard moments, but the simplicity and easy approach of it makes it so that no one can feel alienated by the game’s story or mechanics too early, aiming to rope them in by their first gym and keep them playing til completion.

The games all started with a simple tutorial of how to play drawn out over the course of a few events before completely setting you out to deal with the events of the world yourself. The first is just an explanation of the world and establishing the central characters of you, your rival, and Professor Oak. After establishing that, it’s quickly explained that the grass is Where the Wild Things Are and you need protection. Immediately telling the player that to fight Pokemon, all you need to do is go into the long grass. This segways into you picking your first pokemon and your partner that you’ll most likely keep throughout the game if you have a heart and don’t pick Bulbasaur. By doing so, you then jump into your battle tutorial. You get no real instructions on how to do it. Just a menu and your best guess as to how to beat your rival.

This is the genius part of the tutorial from the first game. It allowed for failure, which would change your rival’s final roster. But it also encouraged you to experiment and explore your options, a very strong theme of the very first Pokemon games. The game could have easily held your hand and told you want moves to make for the best results or given tips on strategy. Instead, it just throws you into the deep end to see if you can manage to get yourself afloat.

After all of that happens, Oak will ask you to make a delivery for him. This requires you going to the next town’s Pokemart. In doing so, you walk up route 1 and meet various NPCs that will tell you more small details about the game and getting around like how the ledges work, which help make your return trip faster. One even gives you a potion to heal your potentially damaged Charmander or Squirtle under the assumption you’ve been battling the wild Pokemon of the area in order to train them up.

Why would they assume you’ve been training? Aside from the fact some battles won’t let you run away randomly, the driving force is supposed to be your rival you just fought. If you just won, the designers want to give you the drive to keep training to stay ahead of him. If you lost, the designers want to give you the initiative to better yourself in battle, which is why encountering wild Pokemon isn’t just to strengthen your Pokemon and make them better in battle, but verse you in the dance of battle and realize what the best strategies and moves are. But, wait? Why would that possibly be the reason behind this? You’ll see in a couple paragraphs.

By doing Oak’s request, you visit Viridian City, the first major town in the game which has a gym, a Pokemon Center, and a Pokemart. The tutorial’s purpose is to help you find the PokeMart to establish where you can get healing items, Pokeballs, and other useful tools for later (the girl who gave you the potion early was another strong hint of this). And, luckily, it’s near the Pokemon Center, which is the most important structure to learn the location of for how useful it will be throughout the entire game. But if you can’t find it right away, talk to all the NPCs on the map because they’ll tell you everything you need to know like that the Gym is closed, the drunk/sleeping guy on the road won’t let you pass yet, and that the Pokemon Center is right “there”. You could go exploring, but the fact the road to the next town is blocked and you are supposed to be delivering something to Oak anyway. There is something you could go do now, but we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Another thing I almost forgot to point out is the “school” in Viridian City, which can teach you a few other useful bits of information such as the fact trainers go around to different gyms around the world and once they collect all the badges, they can challenge the elite four of the Pokemon League. And, if you read the signs, it’ll say that Viridian City is the gateway to the Pokemon League, which is a double meaning. It is physically the location where you enter Victory Road, but also the final gym for your final test before facing Lance and the rest of the Elite Four. Meaning you WILL be returning to Viridian City once again at some point, though not all of this is explained right then and there.

You return to Pallet Town with the parcel, again, probably fighting wild Pokemon on the way to continue getting you used to the battle mechanics, showing you the Pokemon available on the earliest sections of the game, and leveling up your non-Bulbasaur pokemon. You drop off the parcel and then your rival appears again. Another battle? No. Oak wants to give both of you a Pokdex, beginning the secondary goal of the game, catching all the Pokemon. While it has become a much more daunting and tediously pointless task in newer games, this was to incentivize players into catching all of the Pokemon and trying to use them in various combinations to design the best teams to best fit their own play style. It also encouraged more experimentation whereas someone who just stuck with one team the whole way through the game didn’t really get the most of what the game was intending to offer.

As you leave, Oak’s aid will give you five Pokeballs, which means you can now start catching these Pokemon. And you know what’s available. You go out and start catching and using that same route you travelled to level up your nearly caught Ratata or Pidgey or both. Eventually you return to Viridian City to see a notable change, the road is no longer blocked, allowing you to go forward. If you haven’t caught Pokemon yet, the formerly drunk/sleeping man will give you a quick lesson on how to before failing miserably, but revisiting him will give you a successful lesson the next time around. But before you move on, as always, explore because the game has encouraged it thus far. Have you looked off to the west of town yet?

This is the road that leads to the end-game battles of the Elite Four. There are also places to catch Pokemon here and a path that leads to an item on the ground an NPC will point out, letting you know what those Pokeball icons on the overworld are. But, and probably most importantly, your rival is lying in wait for you as well on the yellow brick road (at least in the Yellow version) that leads to the Indigo Plateau. This supports the theory that the rival isn’t just an annoying punk you fight constantly, but someone who is supposed to drive the player to catch new Pokemon, train them to higher levels, and be the player’s “test” to see how far they’ve come throughout various points in the game. This is your final test before leaving the tutorial to see if you’ve master the art of battling and if you’ve figured out how to use your Pokemon properly before setting you off on your own. Success or fail, you still learn a lot and either way will alter your rival’s final roster anyway.

Now that you’ve done just about everything you can, it’s time to leave the tutorial section and begin the real game, in the Viridian Forest. That said, the forest is where you learn a few lessons as well. First, how to deal with trainers other than your rival. You also learn about status effects, specifically poison and how much of a problem it will be throughout your adventure. This is where the game encourages you right away to return to the PokeMart to restock, but venture forward if you want. Once you make it out of the forest, you’ll hopefully have leveled up more in both Pokemon and in self as well as caught some new helpful allies on the way (Caterpie / Metapod / Butterfree is the best option if you have Charmander or Pikachu as your starter). Regardless, you’re now in Pewter.

Here, you use what you learned about the town layout to find your way around town. There’s a museum you’ll want to remember for late game, though you can still explore and get hints as to what to expect (Aerodactyl). But the usual suspects of the PokeMart, Pokemon Center, Kaiser Soze, and the Pewter City Gym are all accounted for and this is pretty much your test to see if Viridian City taught you anything about navigation. If not, the guy who stands guard of route 3 will not let you move on until you’ve beaten the gym, which will only happen one more time to encourage the notion of challenging the gyms before moving on.

This leads to the gym battle. Here, you fight Brock. Here, you test yourself one final time before going on to the rest of the game. By earning your first badge, you’ve passed the last real test for the “tutorial” section of Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow. This unlocks the rest of the game for you to explore (mostly). Now that you’ve got a badge under your belt, conquered your rival twice (possibly), escaped and survived the dreaded Viridian Forest, and caught and raised a team of dependable Pokemon to get you this far, the game leaves you with a feeling of “I can do this.” That’s the point, to get you mentally prepared to face any challenge. And how do you get rewarded now that you can press on? Well… you can buy a Magikarp for 500 PokeDollars… and then enter a cave filled with Zubats and Team Rocket.

Hm…

Consider those all to be more challenges and tests as you progress through the game. While everything up to Pewter City is just teaching you the basics, the rest of the game is still full of much to learn about the game world and logic behind how everything works. Every big battle is just a test for the next one. Every new environment is just another playground to explore, which the game constantly encourages with discarded items lying about, Pokemon only being in certain areas (legendaries too), and to fight any and every trainer in the game.  Despite all the glitches and simplicities Pokemon seems to have, the easily approachable nature and well-designed tutorial makes for a powerfully strong section of this game to teach and to engage. You get some direction, but only enough to have a vague understanding of what to do. The rest is up for you to figure out.

Need more proof that the game is all about exploration and experimentation? The ability to customize your Pokemon’s moves as much as possible adds credibility to that notion. The Safari Zone is clearly meant to encourage exploration as certain Pokemon can only be found in certain areas (or at least the percentages they appear changes). Exploring also helps lead to legendary Pokemon like Articuno, Moltres, or Zapdos (the last of which is WAY off the beaten path that you may miss it entirely if you don’t go looking for it). Even the HMs allow you to explore areas that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise (which is really the only good purpose most of them have anyway).

Why am I bringing this up? Well, as I may have mentioned in various podcasts and articles before, I don’t really like the generation five games (Black and White) because I don’t feel they capitalize on these two important aspects of the original Pokemon games. Exploring feels especially neutered when the game’s story pulls you along and railroads you from enjoying the world freely like in most previous titles. On top of that, experimentation is somewhat mixed. On one hand, a lot of the risks are removed like Pokemon fainting because healers are all over the place. In addition to that, TMs are reusable so if you use a move on a Pokemon, you can use it again on someone else. No more spazzing out over who to use the ONE Earthquake TM on.

But I suppose, in light of some more playing recently in preparation for generation VI, it’s not that generation V lost all of those original aspects. Like Legend of Zelda, a game that was designed to be as non-linear as possible to contrast with Mario, it was all about exploration without explanation. However, as you can easily see, the titles after that game became increasingly more helpful in aiding the player on where to go and what to do. Making all these games more approachable for newer players and those who are newer to gaming even more so.

Arguably, yes, this still makes the games “easier” and unchallenging to seasoned players who are there for the core exploring and experimenting. But experimentation may not carry the same risks as before, but that’s to allow for more flexibility. Now you can have multiple teams with a guy who knows Thunder or Earthquake instead of only have one (maybe two if you managed to win a lot at the game corner or save a shitton of money). Now you can mess around with movesets without worrying about wasting a TM pointlessly. As for exploring, it’s pulled back a bit, but thanks to post-game content, exploring is there. Plus, the main game doesn’t require needing HM moves except for one spot early on. You can literally go from beginning to beating the Elite Four (sort of) with only a single CUT. Why? Because all the HM required areas are just extra spots for exploration and making shortcuts for return trips. No, I’m still not a fan of generation V, but I can at least admit it tried to do a few good ideas in a few areas.

As for easier, maybe at first glance. But anyone aware of the EV training metagame insanity will tell you that this game has way more complexity than Ash Ketchum would lead you to believe. That’s all for today though as EV training would take too long to really get into here. But I thought this was a great way to share my enjoyment of the first game franchise I ever really played and enjoyed and celebrate 15 years of these awesome alien-like creatures. Here’s to another 15 more. Thank you Marlou for getting me my first game. Thanks to GameFreak and Nintendo for making it in the first place. And thank you for reading this, I guess. Two weeks until gen VI and I can’t wait to get started.