It's in the Trees, It's Coming!

missingno, bencanfield, 2010

Back in the summer I was engaged for several weeks with a role playing game. Though you don't play as any defined character, Gran Turismo has many of the elements of an RPG - just look at the grinding I had to do to afford an Audi R8. This month, however, I've got back into a proper RPG, one of the most popular of all time - Pokémon. Fittingly, I fell ill by the due date for this post as the last time I played Red/Blue was on a sick day which I spent bringing my Pikachu up to Level 100 in Cerulean Cave, which must have been at least twelve years ago. So aside from illness, why have I spent thirteen hours playing a child's old Gameboy adventure this month while on the cusp of turning twenty-five? And why am I also watching the anime?

The latter is fairly straightforward. Like that quote about being slightly too old for the sexual revolution, I was just outside the target audience by the time it hit these shores. I caught some episodes when it started being broadcast on Saturday morning television, but emergent teenage sleeping patterns quickly imposed themselves. The only episode I can remember seeing is Electric Soldier Porygon because I downloaded it five years ago out of curiosity, which is really the same reason I'm catching up with all eighty-one episodes of the first season. The former question has a more complex answer.

The original game(s) are culturally pervasive in certain corners and references, homages, and parodies are rife in the media I view. It was only a matter of time before I felt compelled to revisit them. Revisit may not be the accurate. It was actually my brother who was into Pokémon as he was in the intended demographic and duly received Blue for his ninth birthday. As I was nearly thirteen, my tastes were more mature and I purchased Rogue Spear at the same time the pocket monster obsession was in ascent. My knowledge of Pokémon was limited to the ever-present image of Pikachu, watching other people play it, and whatever I picked up from my own translations of imported trading cards. It was only during the aforementioned sick day that I really played the game, though limited to messing about within my brother's save - just levelling my own Pikachu up to the maximum level without progressing through the story. As all the gyms and trainers were defeated, that left high-level wild pokemon and the Elite Four who could be beaten over and over. I think that would suffice as a definition of grinding.

Actually, my reasons for playing the game from start to finish are the same as watching the anime from beginning to end - partly-imagined nostalgia. One of the online shows I watch recently peaked in references to Pokémon at Halloween to the point that a long-burning plot arc was revealed to be a homage to the infamous MISSINGNO glitch. I remember catching a MissingNo after hearing about the glitch by word of mouth via one of the Nintendo magazines. That's really what prompted me to set off from Pallet Town: reminiscing about a broken subroutine in an old cartridge game. I realise how odd it must look to have a post about Pokémon nested under a 1000+ word essay on politics. All I can say is §░╗╵PKMN╩╣¤▓▒▓a

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