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Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

economist.com

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Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#91

Post by bombcar »

ecshafer wrote: post #28

Its interesting that elementary kids have this kind of evergreen introduction to Pokemon. There is always a new set of games coming out, cards to buy, toys, anime. So kids see older kids with it, they want to get it, then they get introduced. So this "fad" has gone on for 30 years. However, even as someone who plays JRPGs. I can't for the life of me understand how adults are playing the games. The pokemon games are p…

"You're playing it wrong" - Pokemon can be played with a min/max grinding attitude, or it can be played as digital cockfights that you futz around with from time to time.

Some people really like relatively "mindless" entertainment that they can do while doing other things. Hell, that describes the vast majority of mobile games.

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#92

Post by kevinsync »

alexpotato wrote: post #56
ohhnoodont wrote: post #51

I loved gen 1 pokemon as a kid in the 90s. But today I sometimes feel like our culture is locked in time. Walking into a toy store is somewhat depressing - everything looks exactly the same as it did when I was a kid! It’s been 30+ years, kids should have way cooler toys and IPs.

> But today I sometimes feel like our culture is locked in time. People say this often and I agree that it does feel that way. They particularly underline "they are constantly remaking old movies!" which is also true. However, this is not a new phenomenon. As someone who loves movie trivia, IMDB is full of "this 1980s film was actually a remake of this other 1947 film". An older example: the Victorians (~1837 - ~1901…

Scarface! [0] We all think Tony Montana, but back in 1932 it was Tony Camonte.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarface_(1932_film)

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#93

Post by MPSimmons »

jtbayly wrote: post #43

Rant incoming... My wife and I live near a park. When we go on walks, we see people who have driven to the park, where they drive slowly around the parking lot, frequently stopping and starting, cars running the whole time. Rarely do they get out of their car. They are, I believe, playing Pokemon Go. Yesterday there were over 2 dozen cars driving around. Nobody was walking. They don't talk to anybody. They are like z…

I'm part of a pokemon go community, and the only time we ever do car raids is when the weather is terrible or freezing. What was the weather like?

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#94

Post by atomicnumber3 »

bombcar wrote: post #89
ohhnoodont wrote: post #51

I loved gen 1 pokemon as a kid in the 90s. But today I sometimes feel like our culture is locked in time. Walking into a toy store is somewhat depressing - everything looks exactly the same as it did when I was a kid! It’s been 30+ years, kids should have way cooler toys and IPs.

"Block" games existed in the 90s, perhaps, but Minecraft is from 2009. "Factorio" type puzzles may have existed, but nothing of that detail until 2016. Part of the big advancements of the 80-90s was that the technology was advancing insanely quickly, which meant that things that were simply impossible a year ago were commonplace next year. LEGO still exists, but the Lego of 2026 is not the Lego of the 90s (for good o…

"Harvest Moon never moved to PC/Mac"

That's not the opening that Stardew took. It was only on PC because that's the platform that doesn't make you fill out an application to get dev hardware for.

The opening they took was Harvest Moon putting out increasingly uninnovative game after increasingly uninnovative game for years. Rune Factory innovated exactly once and then swore never to do so again (though they managed to produce RF4 so I do give them props for that. even if RF5 walked it so far back.)

Something about these games is very hard to pin down. See also: the millions of SDV clones, some even by huge players with lots of money, that don't make any kind of cultural dent.

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#95

Post by mrob »

bubblewand wrote: post #63
alexpotato wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But today I sometimes feel like our culture is locked in time. People say this often and I agree that it does feel that way. They particularly underline "they are constantly remaking old movies!" which is also true. However, this is not a new phenomenon. As someone who loves movie trivia, IMDB is full of "this 1980s film was actually a remake of this other 1947 film". An older example: the Victorians (~1837 - ~1901…

The Wizard of Oz (the one you know of) was a remake. The Thing (the one you know of—though the other had a longer title anyway) was a remake. The version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland (so, the one with that meme-able image of him pointing toward the camera) was a remake. (Franchises? There are some from like the 40s that had a dozen or so entries over the next couple decades) Many remake ex…

>The Thing (the one you know of—though the other had a longer title anyway) was a remake.

I think it's more accurate to say they're both based off the same 1938 novella: "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. The 1951 movie "The Thing from Another World" is a very loose adaptation because it omits the most important plot point of the shapeshifting alien imitating people. The 1982 movie "The Thing" is a closer adaptation that includes it. This makes it a much better movie even if you ignore the improved special effects, because the drama of the characters not knowing who's really the Thing is a big part of the appeal.

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#96

Post by backscratches »

The coolest hacker-esque Pokémon ROM I've seen is InfiniteFusion [1]. Let's you combine Pokémon into original "fusions", in other words, there are over 200,000 Pokémon. Impressively well done and very fun with lots of user accessible settings like difficulty and degree of randomness. For example, this is the sprite you see in game if you have Blastizard aka Blastoise/Charizard fusion: https://www.fusiondex.org/blastoise+charizard/

[1] https://infinitefusion.fandom.com/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Infinite...

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#97

Post by wizzwizz4 »

yifanl wrote: post #76
haunter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Take a character from any of the past 15 years of animated movies and they are interchangeable with each other That's mostly an american thing You should watch some anime

To someone unfamiliar with anime, anime characters look extremely similar.

I'm unfamiliar with anime, and I disagree. (Not that I'll be able to provide examples.) There's a generic anime look, but there are a lot of things that don't look like the generic anime look.

Just looked up some names I've heard people mention: The My Hero Academia character art is very visually distinct from OG Pokémon, which is very different to the Sun & Moon version of Ash Ketchum.

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#98

Post by shnpln »

I am in my 30s, my wife and I enjoy collecting the cards still. We go to conventions and try to track down cool cards and trade for them. It is a fun side hobby that we do from time to time to get out of the house and meet new people. I have long since lost my love for the games, and I don't particularly care about the rarest cards. I just like tracking down cards that look cool to me and meeting people along the way.

Re: Thirty years on, Pokémon is still a monster hit

#99

Post by orwin »

I think the main story quality definitely decreased since black/white 2, but the ideas are there. And they streamlined the game enough that ev grinding isn't as painful, and breeding less random.

To be really short: I think the solo games are slightly worse overall, but the multiplayer VCG is in the best state it ever was. They have tournaments with 5k people.

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