Key Examples of Why Pokémon Creators Ran Out Of Ideas... During Gen I - Guest Post by Tim Hutton

Today's Guest Post is by Tim Hutton:

Of all the people I consider my close friends, Lizzy King is one of the only who really doesn’t give a flying hoot about Pokémon.  Therefore her blog is, of course, lacking in Pokécontent and this is a terrible shame.  A terrible shame that I intend to rectify with my post:

Key Examples of Why Pokémon Creators Ran Out Of Ideas... During Gen I:

People on the internet give later generations of Pokemon a lot of flack because the creators have “run out of ideas” for new Pokemon. 

Vanniluxe is often considered the point at which Pokemon jumped the shark.

With Pokemon X and Y coming out this week, and with me unable to purchase a copy for at least 10 days, I thought I would cause a bit of an internet shitstorm by putting forward the theory that Pokemon, in fact, ran out of ideas all the way back in Gen 1 (Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow for those playing at home but not down with the cool kids’ lingo).

Example 1: Voltorb and Electrode

Voltorb is literally a Pokeball with a frowny face.  That’s it.  In the anime it’s most distinctive feature is that it explodes.  Hell, they didn’t even bother drawing a mouth on it!  Small children draw competent smiley faces.  And when you look at Voltorb’s evolution you don’t get much better:

Wow an upside-down Pokeball!  Much finesse.  Such sophistication of design.  Many... actually it looks a little too enthusiastic to be exploding there.  Never pick a fight with a man who has nothing to lose.  I would not pick a fight with an Electrode.

Example 2: Pidgey

Pidgey you are literally a pigeon.  I’m surprised your attacks aren’t “Fleas!”, “Fracking hell is that bread?!” and “Rummage through garbage.”

Example 3: Mr. Mime

Mr. Mime is the creepy malnourished clown who lives in your roof and sometimes knocks and you can hear him in the night but nobody would ever believe you.  His fingers are long with pads on the end.  Suitable for touching you.  Suitable for touching all of you.

Example 4: Magnemite & Magneton

 

Magnemite is a magnet.  Magneton is three magnets.  And they actually paid someone to come up with this.

Example 5: Diglett and Dugtrio

 

Diglett is... a mole?  A mound of dirt?  Nobody is quite sure.

Dugtrio is three... whatever Diglett is.

I sense a pattern.

Example 6: Jynx

Jynx is the unintentionally racist Pokemon.  Jynx’ original design featured a completely black face with big oversized red lips.  Yeah.  Oops.  Though actually Jynx was designed to poke fun at a fashion trend in Japan where women would bleach their hair but tan themselves really dark, it had an unfortunate resemblance to blackface. 

Despite all this, Jynx falls into Mr Mime’s camp of Creepily Proportioned Humanoids.  Not exactly a design revolution is it?

In Conclusion:

There are actually plenty more I can go on about here.  For example:

Squirtle?  Wow a turtle!  Caterpie/Metapod/Buterfree?  Holy shit it’s actually just a caterpiller.  Poliwrath?  More like Frowning Poliwhirl.  Bulbasaur?  What even are you?!  Seel?  They didn’t even bother changing the effing name.

What is my point?  Is it that I hate Gen 1 Pokemon?  No.  Of course not.  My point is that each generation has some stellar designs and some not so stellar designs.  Pokemon is, unfortunately, heavily subjected to nostalgia goggles and this is a huge problem in the gaming industry.  We want everything to be the same because it harks back to some time when games were pure, or some such nonsense like that.  The problem is that these games were objectively much worse than the games we have now!  It’s like the person who looks back and romanticises Medieval Europe but ignores things like the feudal system, or the lack of medicine. 

Tim Hutton was that kid in Grade 5. You know, the one who knew literally everything there was to know about Pokemon. Currently he is traveling the globe with not a care in the world! Except, you know, worrying constantly about missing flights and running out of money.

The Future

We enter through shiny silver doors and wait in a cramped box. Coloured buttons and lights blink on the wall. The box ascends, and comes to a halt. The doors glide open to reveal a busy, bustling place of white. White lights illuminate white walls and white tiles. Music blares from every corner. The beats conflict and the tunes clash. Clothes, make-up, perfumes, handbags… all can be purchased here from almost identical young women. Faceless, alien-like mannequins holding awkward poses display brightly coloured shoes and tiny dresses. One wears nothing but a hat and a single glove.

Dahrrrrling

We push our way through the throngs of people. Everywhere we look, signs tell us inexplicable things. Words about beauty and fashion, dad scents, points to be won. Is it some kind of competition? We make it to the doors and into an even grander and more confusing place. A hall filled with tables, food and people. Holes in the wall sell any kind of food you could want, from every place in the world. TV screens show images of India, China, Japan – “take your tastebuds on a tour of Asia!” Colours clash, lights flash and thousands of people cram themselves in tiny chairs to eat with hands, forks and chopsticks.

Here, a man with dreadlocks to his waist, there a woman in a dress that would shame the mannequins. In front of us a little girl squeals in delight at the distant sight of a shop that sells pencils in the shape of animals. A teenaged boy giggles with his boyfriend. A family sits down to a banquet of noodle dishes in cardboard bowls. All the while, glass containers move up and down the walls, ferrying people to more levels of shopping, other levels of wonder.

About 2 years ago, it started being the future, and none of us noticed. The scene I’ve just described could be from Doctor Who, but it’s from a shopping centre in Brisbane, Australia. All it took was 6 months away from this sort of place for me to notice: our shops look like something out of a film. And I’m not talking about old films that laughably tried to predict what life with flying cars might be like, I’m talking about films we watch every day. The glittering futures from our movies look exactly like the glittering present from our reality.

On the drive home from Brisbane yesterday, I downloaded an album of music to my phone. And even though we drove for 3 hours through nothing but fields and trees and cows, we were still able to listen to that whole album before we got home. I did not own that music when we got in the car, but I did by the time we got to Toowoomba. That is wizardry.

Even out in the country, it is the future. Farmers do their business online as much as they do it in the fields. Everyone knows that if you can’t buy it in town, you can have it mailed to you within a couple of days simply by clicking a few buttons on your phone. Meanwhile, Boyfriend and I are in a virtual band that we access via a gaming console in our living room. He’s lead guitar, I’m on drums: we’re doing a festival tour of America. When we’re not rocking, I’m an Assassin in Ancient Italy and he’s Batman, so that’s pretty fun too.

Today I hung out with seven awesome friends in my backyard. Two of them were in Brisbane, another in Canberra, one was in Hobart and the rest are in Newcastle. A dog barking in Newcastle made the ears of my neighbour’s dog prick up. So next time I’m whingeing that my wifi dropped out, or I’m an idiot for accidentally wiping the last 6 months’ worth of stuff off my iPhone (such a fail), I’m going to remind myself that I live in an age of fantastic, bizarre magic. And hopefully take comfort from that, while I rage and moan.

We take the future for granted, and that’s what makes it the future. 

Make. Believe.

When I was a kid, I loved ‘imagination games’. These were games predominantly in my head, and involved making up a story to act out. I particularly liked pretending to be a lioness, usually making a daring escape from a mean zookeeper with my lion cubs, who were played by teddies. I also liked to make up adventures in fictional, fantastical or historical places. Or sometimes I would use a book or movie to form the basis of an imagination game and would act out a story that could fit in that world. I know lots of kids play ‘pretend’, but sometimes I wouldn’t even act that much of the game out, I would just let it happen in my head.

I had a friend in primary school who was also into imagination games.  The two of us regularly ran a day care centre for imaginary children, or a shop, or other businesses. We had a purse full of coins from her mum and we pretended that 1c was a dollar, 10c = $10 etc., so if we ever found 5 or 10 dollars, for instance, we would be stinking rich and would take a pretend holiday. Sometimes our games were quite dramatic, I remember one in which I was her blind sister and we were trying to pay for my surgery. We never discussed it, but we only ever played these games when it was just the two of us. When we were with other girls, we played at make up and talked about boys and listened to music and pretended to be grown up. Which is sad, in a way, because we were only about 11. I also remember thinking around this time that I should grow out of playing pretend games, but I never really did.

When I was a teenager, I often used them to help me do things I didn’t want to. Bringing in the washing became harvesting fruit, I would pretend that jobs or homework I had to do were part of a race against the clock type gameshow. I remember spending school holidays when I was home alone, pretending that my life was something else. Not because I didn’t like my life, but because hey, I could be eating 2 minute noodles in the backyard OR I could be eating an authentic Japanese noodle dish in the Emperor’s private garden, awaiting his approval of my new kimono.

As an adult, I definitely don’t play games in my head as often as I used to. It’s sort of as if the kid in me has forgotten how. Or maybe that she’s just asleep, because sometimes I still do. She must wake up every now and again because sometimes I’m not walking down the street; I’m a trained assassin, following my next target. I’m not ironing my clothes, I’m ironing the Lady’s clothes, and if I don’t have all the creases pressed out she won’t look perfect at the ball tomorrow and it will bring disgrace on the house.

Actually, I’m very often living out Downton Abbey fantasies… I play them at work sometimes, when I’m setting up for a conference. All the chairs have to face a certain way, and I like to lay the tea cups out perfectly symmetrically, and all the while I’m not Lizzy, I’m Anna and I’m not setting them out for a client, I’m setting them out for the Crawleys.

I’m not sure if anyone else does this sort of thing, but I suspect it is one of the reasons I like writing stories so much. Do you still play pretend? Tell me all about it.