What happened to Pokémon?

I know Pokémon hasn’t gone anywhere but I must admit that with age (in the franchise not personally) I have grown further away from ever wanting to play it. I remember a time when fans liked the game just to collect the monsters, to beat the Elite 4 and occasionally battle friends.

Pokémon used to be awesome and even when the game concept was the same people just kept coming back for more. Fans would always buy the next instalment even if it was just an aesthetic difference and we were all happy levelling our Dratini until we could blow everyone out of the water.

Now we have settled into the Black and White games people have either loved the new series or held themselves back pending another remake.

Something changed as the series progressed and the original fans either drifted away or used the excuse of growing up to stop playing anymore. There are several reasons why Pokémon has slowly lost its momentum and it’s mainly down to laziness on the developers behalf.

Firstly we all know which were the best selection of critters and if you say anything other then the original 150 you’d find it hard to argue your point. The new games have done away with all the old favourites from Pikachu to Squirtle and filled the gap with a whole new selection to catch. The issues is that how can people be expected to jump into a new game without giving them the ability to familiarize themselves with the monsters. It’s all well and good giving people some fresh ideas but who would really choose a Fire Piglet over a Fire Dinosaur? That’s right – NO ONE!

When the original series was released we all stood in awe of the brilliant names and ideas that the creative team used. Names like Bulbasaur were used to give people a straight up idea of what they were based on and their appearance. This particular Pokémon was easy with ‘bulb’ from plants and ‘saur’ like the end of most reptile names. In other words this was a Grass/Plant monster which looked like a Dinosaur. The newer names have no correlation with the monsters themselves and do not have the same creative stance as the originals. Can anyone explain how Aggron fits the character to me?

In the original games there were 150 Pokémon and each one had a factor that made players want to ‘Catch em’ all.’ As I’ve said before the originals made sense and were based on animals, elements or people. They all had the same basic concept that they must make sense. This has gradually had less of an impact over the newer creations and this can be seen in both the names as previously discussed and the character designs. What the hell is an Ice Cream going to do against a fire breathing Dragon? The other creature to grind my gears this year is a Bin Bag – and he’s no Muk that’s for sure.

As with all games Pokémon has evolved over the years and new gameplay introductions have been produced. From Physical and Special attacks to Effort Values and Levelling the series has seen almost a complete overhaul. It actually means that a player must put in hundreds of hours to get the best team and battle online. This is a detriment to the game that allow both a hardcore crowd and those more casual players to have fun. Why would a casual player ever want to venture online and in particular how does my 4 year old cousin cope with all these number crunching stats when all he wants is to have fun and play against some real people.

As the game has evolved statistically the new series has also watered down the games difficulty too. You can now battle the Elite Four in whichever order you like and also gives them a level which is easier to obtain during the gameplay. I know this means less grinding to level up your monsters but does it really need to be this easy. Where is the challenge of these games going?

I just want a decent remake of the original game where I can take my Charmander and smash everyone!