Why is Pokémon so Popular?

To an outsider, the Pokémon series must seem like an insane concept. A ten-year old child runs off to explore the whole world alone, with only one tiny monster for company and the best signal mobile phone ever. That child is constantly attacked by everyone and everything; from wild rats and fire breathing dragons to grown men dressed as bikers or breathing fire themselves. It’s a world where healthcare is free, waters costs £200 and everyone seems to only know a couple of sentences in English. We still wish we were in the world though, fighting colourful monsters and dominating people at the local gym. I for one would have happily stopped going to school in favour of befriending wild animals and exploring the whole country on my own.

Of course the Pokémon games have a wide variety of creatures to catch, from cuddly starter forms to massive hulking monsters. At last count there was over 500 monsters to collect and I’m sure this number will only increase as more games are released.

The big draw for these sorts of repetitive games is the offer that rewards are directly related to the time you spend playing. Other examples within video games are World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy which both have similar styles to these two dimensional top down RPG’s.

There is also the option for the more casual gamers to complete the story doing the bare minimum and not really trying to ‘catch them all’. Of course the more hardcore of us can spend countless hours exploring the world; capturing the next best creatures and training him or her up to a competitive level. For players less accustomed to Pokémon this can definitely seem like a tough task but to most RPG fans there are also a lot of familiar gameplay elements and common themes.

Another big positive for this series is the ability to keep monsters with you as the series itself progresses. You can transfer monsters to your friends or even over to the next game you want to play. You can connect wirelessly or via infra red to transfer creatures or team battle your friends. With the release of Pokémon Black and White this connectivity took an even greater turn and gave players the chance to jump online at any point during the single player quest. These features basically encourage loyalty to the franchise.

Obviously one of the other facts to show off the popularity of Pokémon is the renown of Pikachu – your mum knows him, your neighbour knows him and so does your best friend. He is probably the most well recognised video game characters since Mario. The electric mouse is cute, colourful and rarely angry which bodes well for his young target audience. Well I say target audience but we all know these games appeal to people of all ages.

The franchise itself has sold over 207 million copies worldwide which is more then Sonic, Tetris, Call of Duty and Halo. The cartoon series is shown in 74 countries still worldwide and has been showing for over a decade in most. Even the items available alongside the main video game series do well with over 14 billion trading cards sold to date.