Pocket Monsters ポケットモンスダー

I had some free time, now I must spread the word of Pocket Monsters! We Pokemon fans have often been labelled and stereotyped as Childish, Pokemon is and never will be "childish". I am going to write an a post that might change your world view of the Pokemon franchise.

Pokemon is "child-like" because it appeals to kids who know nothing about the fantastic programming that has gone into the games. In each and every Nintendo handheld console, it has always been the Pokemon games that pushes the limits of the tiny machinery to its extreme. The amount of hard work on the programmers part is simply amazing, its no longer the artists that spend the hours in the studios in most Japanese games. Now, as someone who have been programming for the past 3 years, I truly respect the hard work those guys spent and people like you perhaps, seem to continuously call Pokemon a childish play thing.

The Pokemon flagship RPG games uses a very complicated Catching formula to determine whether the player is able to catch the desired Pocket Monster. Also, consider the Damage Forumla which were then affected by Damager Modifiers which are affected by the stats which depend upon EVs and IVs. Not to mention that many moves have their special calculation as well, like Hidden Power. Those things probably took years and lots of efforts to debug and perfect. Speaking of which, the programmers not only had preventions and workarounds in place to prevent any possible bugs, they also have cheats into conderation, take Arceus for example, they included the "???" type sprite to prevent a game crash resulting from cheating by changing Arceus to a ??? type Pokemon. I have not even mentioned the TIME function since Gold and Silver, a function rarely used by any game at that time, time allows events in the game to be more realistic like certain Pokemon appearing during the day or at night.

Many people think that Pokemon is an easy game but that's only the Single Player. In multi player games, one needs strategy and a properly trained Pokemon to win. Its not just the level but factors like IVs and EVs come into play and decides the outcome. Strategy is also a vital part of competitive battling, just look at this Startegy page for one of the 493 Pokemon around. Newer Pokemon games that few critics of Pokemon have played include Pokemon Contests a type of competition introduced into the system. Well, I don't think children's games like "Disney Sports" have such depth and not to mention, insane programming.The last game which I felt had superior programming was Roller Coaster Tycoon, written entirely in ASSEMBLY and fed with C++ to interface with Windows.However, I do agree that Pokemon has more tedious coding rather than breakthrough Algorithms. Nevertheless, Pokemon has pushed the boundaries of early handheld technology, especially the Original Gameboy. Japan Top game charts shows that Pokemon has always topped the sales charts for Nintendo products. Pokemon is indeed the main profit machine for Nintendo, that amount of money is definitely no child's play.

All critics of Pokemon who think that its "Kids-only" have only watched the Anime which was targeted at Kids, not the Games that are meant for a General Audience. Also, they often use the poorly made censored Americanised Pokemon cartoon as a way to distort the image of the Pokemon franchise. Even if the cartoon was terrible in English, this does not mean the original uncut Japanese Anime had the terrible squeaky voices. I have to pull out this banned clip that was aired in Japan to children to show how much fun comedy was withheld. Oh and definitely a lot of entertaining bits were lost in translation as well as the superior voice acting of the Japanese like this clip. Basically, the Japanese Anime targeted at a general audience (i.e. suitable for kids) but the Americans made it only for kids. But then again, the main flagship product of Pokemon are the games, flawed argument again, I suppose. The anime has nothing to do with the Games besides using the same characters, the story and the battle mechanics are totally different, in fact many game fans dislike how the anime diverge from the games.

Oh and religion has to meddle with my beloved Pokemon franchise. Religion always has to meddle with the stuff I like, and its just a fantasy, I guess they don't want Pokemon to take over their own fantasy; at least Pokemon does not come with caveman doctrines.

So now, can you guys appreciate what Pokemon really is and has to offer. Most children don't read much but they have to read to play Pokemon, its definitely helpful to improving one's language. The Japanese versions of Pokemon does not use Kanji so its easy for Japanese kids and novices to learn the language. The amount of tedious programming work and bug catchers is a mark of professionalism and workmanship not seen in many games (*cough*eagames*cough*).