Pokemon Heartgold: Initial Impressions

My brother and I are eight years apart in age. When he was obsessed with yo-yos and Power Rangers, I was obsessed with jazz band and boys. When he was collecting Pokemon and pogs, I was collecting yearbook signatures and college application forms. In some ways I thought of him more as a son than as a brother. I have trouble remembering what interests he had at what age, but I know that he was a Pokemon fanatic. I remember, in particular, a poster he had hung in his bedroom. The poster pictured row after row of labeled Pokemon creatures. I remember being really impressed with my brother because he had learned the names of every single one of the Pokemon on the poster. I also remember being annoyed with the marketing of Pokemon products to my brother. The Pokemon tag line, Gotta Catch 'Em All should have really been, Gotta Buy 'Em All because that's what my brother really wanted to do. Posters and cards, plush toys and video games, he had to collect all the Pokemon paraphernalia. Pokemon was like the McDonalds of toys. They wanted to make kids stuff their fat faces with Pokemon products and then beg for more. Because of that, I've always been a little anti-Pokemon, other than thinking some of the creatures on my brother's posters were cute.

While we were dating in college, Ben bought a Pokemon game because it was really cheap and because he thought buying it would be funny. He has a really sick love of purchasing things he thinks are gross or stupid or at least so gross or stupid they're funny. The half empty box of stale, green-colored-cream filled Shrek Twinkies are one example of a joke purchase. The picture on the side of the box is what really secured the sale:



Like those Shrek Twinkies, most of Ben's joke purchases end up photographed, tweeted about and then relegated to a shelf where they'll sit until we move again and I make Ben purge. Occasionally the joke purchases actually see some use. He bought a pair of really gaudy red and yellow flowered swim shorts as a joke once and they have, since, become his main pair. He allocates very little time for clothes shopping and I think he feels he put in his quota of swim trunk shopping time already so he just wears the gaudy ones. A few times the joke purchases have surprised him by not actually being as terrible as he had expected. He bought the game 50 Cent Blood on the Sand as a joke and I think he actually ended up playing it a lot and liking it! Pokemon is a rare example of a joke purchase that turned into one of his favorite purchases of all time. That $13 Pokemon Ruby game purchase created a lifelong Pokemon fan. (or should I say, addict?)

My brother and my husband both love this darn Pokemon World. How is it possible? What is it about these bizarre little creatures with their equally bizarre names and their evolutions and inexplicable need to battle each other that is so appealing? In order to discover the answer to this question, I will have to delve into this Pokemon World for myself like an undercover secret agent. It's like an episode of Alias over here. In order to infiltrate this Pokemon World I am going to have to compromise my moral code. I'm going to have to play a stop-and-talk-to-everything game...the kind of game I've carefully avoided these past 29 years. I don't have the patience ot the interest in playing games where you have to stop and talk to every Tom, Dick, and garbage can you come across. It's especially infuriating when half the things you stop to talk to just want to give you a bunch of small talk. “Hi Jess! Don't you just love Pokemon? Your Chikarita is so cute. I wish I had one.” Thanks, lady, for taking up 10 seconds of my life. I still have a tree and a mailbox to talk to before I hand this mystery egg over to Professor Oak and you have not provided me with any useful Pokemon hints or given me any free potions or antidotes. Thanks a lot.

Also: can I become so engaged in collecting and naming Pokemon that I don't mind playing the run-around-a-town-to-complete-a-pointless-mission sort of game? Can the Pokemon's cuteness be enough to get me to overlook those dreadful battles? I can't find anything interesting about slowly taking turns hitting and being hit by attacking enemies. It's like watching chess on TV. It has to be the most boring thing about any video game and yet so many video games are like that. Why? I also want to find out what the goal of this game is. Is there ever an end? Can I like a game that is never-ending? I tend not to. Also, why do I have all these game prejudices? Why is it that I can play Picross, Lumines, and Guitaroo Man for hours and not consider it a total waste of my time like I do so many other games? How will Ben and I play this game together? I hear something about trading Pokemon, but I'm an hour in and I only have one and I barely know how to play. This game is one big time suck! And why are Pokemon games named after the contents of a jewelry box (emerald, ruby, diamond, silver, gold, etc.) These are just a few of the questions I will try to answer on this undercover operation. Fifty-seven minutes in Pokemon World has not yet provided these insights.

That aside, this game has some temptations that might turn me into a double agent. Pokemon is easy to play (relief!) I have already completed my first mission with great success and, as a result, I have been awarded a Pokedex with which to keep track of all my Pokemon encounters. The Pokemon and the little villages are cute and fun to discover. Pokemon World is an imaginative and relatively charming world, despite being completely silly. I find myself laughing a lot at the dialogue in this Poke-centric world. Humans and Pokemon apparently co-exist, but it seems that humans in this World are completely obsessed with Pokemon. Pokemon are all these people talk about. You can just walk in and out of stranger's houses and all they'll do when you walk in is tell you about how to keep your Pokemon happy or how to help your Pokemon evolve by being extra nice to it. It's like if we all suddenly had lots of dogs and all we talked about were our dogs and all we do all day long is keep our dogs happy or train our dogs to be the fiercest fighters and then fight our dogs against other dogs. Our dogs go with us wherever we go and we only carry things around with us that will help our dogs in case they are sick or tired or need something to help them fight better. Speaking of which, my dog could be a Pokemon. I mean, look at her!



The best thing about this game is the ability to name everything. I love naming things. I could name things all day long. I've decided to name all the people and Pokemon in this game after famous basketball players. So far, I have one Pokemon, a Chikarita, named Carmelo and then there's Kobe, the villain boy desperate to become the best Pokemon trainer in the world. For some reason, this really cracks me up. The cuteness of the Pokemon and my interest in naming them will hopefully keep me going through those long nights of unthinkably boring battles and missions.

Is Ben hoping Pokemon will be my gateway drug to other, more grown up RPGs like Final Fantasy? I imagine him in the dark hallway outside our bedroom door. He sneaks a Pokemon Heartgold DS case out from under his dolphin embroidered I Heart Florida joke T-shirt and whispers, “Here, little lady, give it a try. Don't worry. This one's on me. I think you'll like it.”

So far I've avoided dabbling in games like this like I've avoided dabbling with cocaine. I've seen what Pokemon does to people and have found it best to steer clear. But I have a duty to perform here, people. I have questions to answer. I have a Chikarita to battle against a Rattata! Go, Carmelo! Go!

If you don't hear from me in a week's time, start to worry. In the meantime, I have Pokemon gyms to infiltrate and Pokeballs to fill.