Well, I decided this month to write about a craze that's going across
the country in gaming. Normally I'm
against crazes whole heartedly, but I have been sucked into this one
and it's pretty cool. What I'm
talking about is the craze of monsters that came here from a crazed
Japan. No, not Godzilla, POKÉMON!
What is a pokémon you ask? A pokémon, pocket monsters in Japan,
is 1 of 150 different
collectable little monsters in a Gameboy game. This game is the perfect
game for anybody: it's got the RPG
element, the collecting and trading element, cute little animals and non-cute
animals. It's got something for everybody. Simply put, I
like it because I wail on cute little animals till they are weak
enough to capture. Once captured, I bend
them to my will and turn them into non-cute animals, and then use them to
again beat the crap out of cute
animals! Well, if that was all the game was, it would get boring real quick
but that's not it. You want to
become the greatest pokémon trainer ever, and along the way get every
one of the hundred and fifty
different ones. That's not all either: through the whole game, you have to fight the
evil team rocket (a group
of evil pokémon trainers bent on taking over the world), and your
childhood rival and constant foe is
always one step ahead of you and a pain in your side throughout the whole game.
Did I mention if you have the game, you can't capture all 150 on that
pak alone? You see, there are
two versions of the game, red and blue, and each one only has 139 monsters maximum that
you can get by playing the one
pak. Each version has 11 exclusives that are only in that version or
the other. To get all 150, you must trade
pokémon back and forth with a friend. Here's another catch: you can't
get all 139 in one play, there are
points in the game where you have to chose between one or the other, so
there's a replay value.
Pokémon has refused to stay on the gameboy and has invaded other
media. It has a successful
television show, it's in comics, and it even invaded KFC. The TV show is
Anime. I have only seen the first three
episodes on video because they don't show the show where I live. It
seems to be a kiddy show to me;
teaching moral values, talking about friendship and so fourth. I have
been told by others that down the line it
gets a little less preachy and gets a little better. I wouldn't know
about that, though. Pokémon also has a
comic out from Viz Comics. Viz are the people that do the Dragon Ball
comics. The comic book follows
about the same story line as the TV show, but is aimed at older readers
and doesn't preach, doesn't teach
lessons, and has more mature humor. They had pokémon bean bag toys at KFC
for a little while.
Well pokémon is a craze, no doubt about it. If you still don't believe me,
Topeka, Kansas was renamed Topikachu,
Kansas for a day when some of the new VW bugs that looked like
Pikachu (the most popular pokémon),
came though letting people sample pokémon. Now that's nuts!