Don't know and didn't really cared for almost 20 years honestly, and yet this garbage-tier franchise is essentially my life support unit.
Because a daily dose of quality smut featuring cute & funny friend-shaped magical critters is the only reason I haven't killed myself yet for the past 9 years, or maybe even longer than that.
Thank based God and Anime that poke'slop now has actual competition besides Digimon, who had utterly failed on that front as early as 1999 and still keep fricking up. I had to post this somewhere quickly because my phone is at 1%
Why aren't simply happy that your life isn't as misarable as others? Some people here went through abuse their whole life, suffer from mental health problems they can't afford to fix etc. Instead of thinking "Oh others have the same life as me they are just crybabies" consider that others aren't as lucky as you are.
That Anon has been miserable for over 9 years, that's enough time to fix any problem you could possibly have in your life
But no, they just want to cry like homosexuals instead of actually bothering to fix their issues
It was one of the best executed monster capture games with Gen 1 (simple graphics, simple goal to collect monsters and easy to play and understand) and one of the first monster capture genres to go all-out in the west with marketing which really got it going. Both of these really hit home with kids and made it a craze.
It also was a handheld game that encouraged trading with your friends which is magic for kids. Combine that with the show and the cards and you've got yourself a fad.
marketing and merchandise
gen 1 is genuinely the only memorable generation throughout the world. anyone who disagrees with this is lying to themselves
guess which generation was marketed the most: gen 1
they even made pokerap and ads that were targeted to americans
stuff like this really matters
i can see why palworld became a hit. it has monsters carrying guns and the trailers show nothing but chaos
The game maps, in particular the first three generations, were very large and diverse for the consoles they were on. It tapped into your childlike lust for adventure and exploration, making it feel bigger than it actually was.
The monster designs are exceptionally good. There is a diverse selection of monsters to choose from, and there is always a type of Pokémon that appeals to someone. The franchise has an art style that is simple, but allows for detail when needed, and therefore, they are not stuck working with a certain level of detail that needs to be achieved for every design. Tyrantrum doesn't feel out of place when stuck next to Snorlax.
Not only that, but the customizability offered to players was unheard of at the time, and is still one of the main appeals of Pokémon to this day. It's not like picking three generic weapons and going about your day, you have hundreds of unique monsters to discover, catch, train, and grow with. Your Pokémon felt like yours. This is something that is well executed in Pokémon. Evolution is something to work for and rewards growth and bond with your Pokémon.
The music is excellent. Simply put, a good soundtrack is memorable and stands the test of time. It's no wonder so many people have strong memories tied to certain Pokémon tracks.
Dropping the Ganker facade and giving a real answer:
It used to be a game about FIRST AND FOREMOST bonding with imaginary monsters and going on an adventure which was all aided by the severe hardware limitations of the Game Boy. So much had to be left to imagination and filled in on your own as you looked at the charming sprites, schoolyard sessions were filled with rumors that couldn’t be proven wrong with a google search, link cables were tangible strand like connectors, physical things that added to the experience. TCG and merch was not as prevalent in the machine of making the games come out every year, neither was the anime, the games were king. Then somewhere around the time XY hit and the online aspect hit Pokémon became about autistically minmaxxing genned spreadsheets instead of bonding with imaginary monsters, and now all anyone cares about is battling cheated mons together for nonexistent clout. The entire thing about transferring Pokémon upwards with you is lost as well, because you can just make a shiny ribbon master from an old game in seconds. Somewhere in the transition everyone forgot that you’re supposed to see Pokémon as imagination vessels, not numbers, and then Palworld comes along where all the Pals feel alive and have purpose and it’s not surprising why it did well. I’ve been playing these games for as long as they’ve been around and think the whole loss of imagination is super sad and pkhex killed off the soul of the series.
This anon isn't. Wrong. Huge part of the community is minmaxing homosexuals. I'm an autistic 30+ homosexual who is still attracted to the idea of living symbiotically in a world of magic creatures where their existence is tied to the very nature of the universe and we need to learn to love and empathize with those complex differences. Pokemon needs a fricking social game similar to harvest moon or something where you can just live in a community of pokemon owners and live a domestic pokemon life.
They’re working on a 3D nonlinear pokemon mmorpg where you start anywhere you want in the pokemon world. All the regions are connected. You can trade and battle with other trainers. All the routes are redone to add extra space. The gyms scale to the pokemon you choose for the challenge.
It's having a megacorp as backing and enough drones who have never touched another video game in their life reorienting their whole personalities around it.
It has nothing to do with Pokemon's actual quality. It has everything to do with the fact that westerners are addicted to cheap fast food since the moment they're born and they're also an easy source of toys for kids. It's a two for one deal especially as parenting is failing and childcare has been gutted successfully. No need to cook, no need to go to a retailer to make little Timmy happy.
Add in the sheer variety of Pokemon that could be used for toy models, the anime also being a megahit coinciding with cartoon networks importing anime from Japan because of the floundering popularity of their own shows, plus the fact that earlier monster collectors like Megaten obviously failed to catch on to a "collectible" market due to Satanism and adult themes, and you have the recipe for success. All the money gets dumped into merchandising and multimedia and the games act as an advertisement for all of it.
Now that Japs just mass buy all the new plushies or whatever they don't even need Westerners at this point, so they don't even care what you think kek
Here's a question, was pokemon deer good? Pokemon the game is highly customizable but as an rpg it isnt even the most remarkable, the anime is obvious capitalist slop meant to make toys, the tgc, well idk about the tcg is it any good?
They were never demanding games, but they used to be enjoyable before they started treating players like mentally deficients who need to be forcefully handheld throughout the story.
For me, as an unironic autist, it's the soul or monsters. I can enjoy GPX+, messing around with Pokémon addons in Garry's Mod, romhacks and fangames but I can never get into Pokémon-killers/competitors as they're simply not Pokémon. I feel like it can be compared to retro-inspired things vs things that are actually old or media like Disco Elysium that take place in a world inspired by our own vs a historical strategy that is real history.
there's an appeal for everyone. Some people liked the series because the monsters were cute, others liked it maybe because of the battling etc. it was one of the few franchises I remember as a kid that almost everyone regardless of gender was into and there was no "ew you like a girls/boys cartoon gross!1".
Also you didnt need to play the games to be into it either, you could have a kid that's only watched the anime and a kid that's played the games be able to stay on the same page when talking about the series.
It was an extremely accessible franchise pretty much.
Think about it. All Pokémon media could be destroyed right now, and Pokémon would still exist, it would exist in the hearts and minds of millions of people. Every single Pokémon is someone's favourite, and favourites can be recalled easily. Believe it or not I met a dude earlier today whose favourite was fricking Raticate.
The power of character is strong. This also explains why the primum mobile of the franchise in terms of money-making is merch.
Honestly, considering the fact that it ran on hardware that was less powerful than the NES, Pokemon Red and Blue handled random encounters a lot better than similar turn-based RPGs released around the same time (Chrono Trigger being the exception). You can only encounter wild pokemon in caves, grass or water. Compare that to Final Fantasy VI (which ran on superior hardware) where you are constantly swarmed with monsters outside of towns.
I appreciate Pokemon's "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude. Even with all the gimmicks and bullshit it's still the same game under the hood. And on the rare occasion that they DO experiment with a different core gameplay style, it's very clearly a spinoff.
I loved Digimon, Medabots, Monster Rancher, etc but they could never pick one genre for the mainline games to be, and you had obnoxious shit like DW1 being a monster raising sim, DW2 being a dungeon crawler, DW3 being a blatant pokemon ripoff, and DW4 being the worst Diablo clone ever made.
Digimon was originally a monster raising sim, it's not that "they couldn't decide". It's the best iteration because it was pure and as intended. It's the other stuff that came after that was trying to ape other games that ruined it.
Now, even the fricking remake/spiritual sequel to DW1 was poisoned by multiple party members and gay dragonfurrywaifus ad nauseum.
It's a world kinda like ours but a little different and you can have fantasy monster pets and travel around instead of sit inside and go to school all day. You choose your companions and their abilities. Fun puzzles. For me the Sugimori art really brought my imagination alive while playing.
It's merchandising.
Pokemon is the video game equivalent of disney.
Every year, you get a game.
Every year, you get a movie.
You got cards, manga, anime.
Every major store has merch and plush.
It's everywhere. It's always in the current world.
Name another franchise that has anything like this that isn't on pokemon's level.
An addition to what I said here because it made me think of something.
Five nights at freddies is as popular as it is, because it churned out rapid content.
Skibidy toilet, makes new episodes constantly to keep kids entertained. they were both huge.
Where things like Baldies basics ultimately fell off to the way side despite the massive popularity the game initially had.
You need to produce content as fast as humanly possible, it doesn't have to be good. You just have to keep making it.
It's the monsters. They found the perfect balance of cute, cool and weird to captivate a universal audience, and with an initial roster of 151 unique monsters, there was practically a guarantee that at least ONE would speak to a child on a level that they HAD to buy the game to get that monster or they HAD to buy merch of that monster.
Don't know and didn't really cared for almost 20 years honestly, and yet this garbage-tier franchise is essentially my life support unit.
Because a daily dose of quality smut featuring cute & funny friend-shaped magical critters is the only reason I haven't killed myself yet for the past 9 years, or maybe even longer than that.
Thank based God and Anime that poke'slop now has actual competition besides Digimon, who had utterly failed on that front as early as 1999 and still keep fricking up.
I had to post this somewhere quickly because my phone is at 1%
I genuinely don't understand why you morons want to have a nice day
You homosexuals are genuinely just crybaby drama queens
Why aren't simply happy that your life isn't as misarable as others? Some people here went through abuse their whole life, suffer from mental health problems they can't afford to fix etc. Instead of thinking "Oh others have the same life as me they are just crybabies" consider that others aren't as lucky as you are.
That Anon has been miserable for over 9 years, that's enough time to fix any problem you could possibly have in your life
But no, they just want to cry like homosexuals instead of actually bothering to fix their issues
You sound like one of those Black personnoggers that go "just stop being sad" when someone has depression.
>You sound like one of those Black personnoggers that go "just stop being sad" when someone has depression.
just get some sunlight bro
>I genuinely don't understand
I know normalhomosexual tourist-kun
It was one of the best executed monster capture games with Gen 1 (simple graphics, simple goal to collect monsters and easy to play and understand) and one of the first monster capture genres to go all-out in the west with marketing which really got it going. Both of these really hit home with kids and made it a craze.
It also was a handheld game that encouraged trading with your friends which is magic for kids. Combine that with the show and the cards and you've got yourself a fad.
I don't know anybody who traded
marketing and merchandise
gen 1 is genuinely the only memorable generation throughout the world. anyone who disagrees with this is lying to themselves
guess which generation was marketed the most: gen 1
they even made pokerap and ads that were targeted to americans
stuff like this really matters
i can see why palworld became a hit. it has monsters carrying guns and the trailers show nothing but chaos
The game maps, in particular the first three generations, were very large and diverse for the consoles they were on. It tapped into your childlike lust for adventure and exploration, making it feel bigger than it actually was.
The monster designs are exceptionally good. There is a diverse selection of monsters to choose from, and there is always a type of Pokémon that appeals to someone. The franchise has an art style that is simple, but allows for detail when needed, and therefore, they are not stuck working with a certain level of detail that needs to be achieved for every design. Tyrantrum doesn't feel out of place when stuck next to Snorlax.
Not only that, but the customizability offered to players was unheard of at the time, and is still one of the main appeals of Pokémon to this day. It's not like picking three generic weapons and going about your day, you have hundreds of unique monsters to discover, catch, train, and grow with. Your Pokémon felt like yours. This is something that is well executed in Pokémon. Evolution is something to work for and rewards growth and bond with your Pokémon.
The music is excellent. Simply put, a good soundtrack is memorable and stands the test of time. It's no wonder so many people have strong memories tied to certain Pokémon tracks.
Dropping the Ganker facade and giving a real answer:
It used to be a game about FIRST AND FOREMOST bonding with imaginary monsters and going on an adventure which was all aided by the severe hardware limitations of the Game Boy. So much had to be left to imagination and filled in on your own as you looked at the charming sprites, schoolyard sessions were filled with rumors that couldn’t be proven wrong with a google search, link cables were tangible strand like connectors, physical things that added to the experience. TCG and merch was not as prevalent in the machine of making the games come out every year, neither was the anime, the games were king. Then somewhere around the time XY hit and the online aspect hit Pokémon became about autistically minmaxxing genned spreadsheets instead of bonding with imaginary monsters, and now all anyone cares about is battling cheated mons together for nonexistent clout. The entire thing about transferring Pokémon upwards with you is lost as well, because you can just make a shiny ribbon master from an old game in seconds. Somewhere in the transition everyone forgot that you’re supposed to see Pokémon as imagination vessels, not numbers, and then Palworld comes along where all the Pals feel alive and have purpose and it’s not surprising why it did well. I’ve been playing these games for as long as they’ve been around and think the whole loss of imagination is super sad and pkhex killed off the soul of the series.
Seems like a you issue. Just don't use pkhex
This anon isn't. Wrong. Huge part of the community is minmaxing homosexuals. I'm an autistic 30+ homosexual who is still attracted to the idea of living symbiotically in a world of magic creatures where their existence is tied to the very nature of the universe and we need to learn to love and empathize with those complex differences. Pokemon needs a fricking social game similar to harvest moon or something where you can just live in a community of pokemon owners and live a domestic pokemon life.
Monsters and setting for me.
I played A LOT of monster catchers. Pokemon still have best designs.
Words of wisdom.
They’re working on a 3D nonlinear pokemon mmorpg where you start anywhere you want in the pokemon world. All the regions are connected. You can trade and battle with other trainers. All the routes are redone to add extra space. The gyms scale to the pokemon you choose for the challenge.
NTA but source?
The collective dream since GS
the anime was as popular as the games and its decline following gen 2 was one of the reasons for why pokemania fizzled off
>Then somewhere around the time XY hit
Pokemon lost whatever the frick you're screeching about way before XY.
pokegirls sexo
It's having a megacorp as backing and enough drones who have never touched another video game in their life reorienting their whole personalities around it.
Fast food toys.
It has nothing to do with Pokemon's actual quality. It has everything to do with the fact that westerners are addicted to cheap fast food since the moment they're born and they're also an easy source of toys for kids. It's a two for one deal especially as parenting is failing and childcare has been gutted successfully. No need to cook, no need to go to a retailer to make little Timmy happy.
Add in the sheer variety of Pokemon that could be used for toy models, the anime also being a megahit coinciding with cartoon networks importing anime from Japan because of the floundering popularity of their own shows, plus the fact that earlier monster collectors like Megaten obviously failed to catch on to a "collectible" market due to Satanism and adult themes, and you have the recipe for success. All the money gets dumped into merchandising and multimedia and the games act as an advertisement for all of it.
Now that Japs just mass buy all the new plushies or whatever they don't even need Westerners at this point, so they don't even care what you think kek
They're fun
Here's a question, was pokemon deer good? Pokemon the game is highly customizable but as an rpg it isnt even the most remarkable, the anime is obvious capitalist slop meant to make toys, the tgc, well idk about the tcg is it any good?
Was pokemon *ever* good
They were never demanding games, but they used to be enjoyable before they started treating players like mentally deficients who need to be forcefully handheld throughout the story.
For me, as an unironic autist, it's the soul or monsters. I can enjoy GPX+, messing around with Pokémon addons in Garry's Mod, romhacks and fangames but I can never get into Pokémon-killers/competitors as they're simply not Pokémon. I feel like it can be compared to retro-inspired things vs things that are actually old or media like Disco Elysium that take place in a world inspired by our own vs a historical strategy that is real history.
there's an appeal for everyone. Some people liked the series because the monsters were cute, others liked it maybe because of the battling etc. it was one of the few franchises I remember as a kid that almost everyone regardless of gender was into and there was no "ew you like a girls/boys cartoon gross!1".
Also you didnt need to play the games to be into it either, you could have a kid that's only watched the anime and a kid that's played the games be able to stay on the same page when talking about the series.
It was an extremely accessible franchise pretty much.
It's the monsters. Or rather, the characters.
Think about it. All Pokémon media could be destroyed right now, and Pokémon would still exist, it would exist in the hearts and minds of millions of people. Every single Pokémon is someone's favourite, and favourites can be recalled easily. Believe it or not I met a dude earlier today whose favourite was fricking Raticate.
The power of character is strong. This also explains why the primum mobile of the franchise in terms of money-making is merch.
Honestly, considering the fact that it ran on hardware that was less powerful than the NES, Pokemon Red and Blue handled random encounters a lot better than similar turn-based RPGs released around the same time (Chrono Trigger being the exception). You can only encounter wild pokemon in caves, grass or water. Compare that to Final Fantasy VI (which ran on superior hardware) where you are constantly swarmed with monsters outside of towns.
It's definitely not soul because that's long gone
I appreciate Pokemon's "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude. Even with all the gimmicks and bullshit it's still the same game under the hood. And on the rare occasion that they DO experiment with a different core gameplay style, it's very clearly a spinoff.
I loved Digimon, Medabots, Monster Rancher, etc but they could never pick one genre for the mainline games to be, and you had obnoxious shit like DW1 being a monster raising sim, DW2 being a dungeon crawler, DW3 being a blatant pokemon ripoff, and DW4 being the worst Diablo clone ever made.
Digimon was originally a monster raising sim, it's not that "they couldn't decide". It's the best iteration because it was pure and as intended. It's the other stuff that came after that was trying to ape other games that ruined it.
Now, even the fricking remake/spiritual sequel to DW1 was poisoned by multiple party members and gay dragonfurrywaifus ad nauseum.
Because it was created before 2000
It's a world kinda like ours but a little different and you can have fantasy monster pets and travel around instead of sit inside and go to school all day. You choose your companions and their abilities. Fun puzzles. For me the Sugimori art really brought my imagination alive while playing.
It's merchandising.
Pokemon is the video game equivalent of disney.
Every year, you get a game.
Every year, you get a movie.
You got cards, manga, anime.
Every major store has merch and plush.
It's everywhere. It's always in the current world.
Name another franchise that has anything like this that isn't on pokemon's level.
An addition to what I said here because it made me think of something.
Five nights at freddies is as popular as it is, because it churned out rapid content.
Skibidy toilet, makes new episodes constantly to keep kids entertained. they were both huge.
Where things like Baldies basics ultimately fell off to the way side despite the massive popularity the game initially had.
You need to produce content as fast as humanly possible, it doesn't have to be good. You just have to keep making it.
The pokemon designs are the reason it is so popular, they have a wide appeal.
It's the monsters. They found the perfect balance of cute, cool and weird to captivate a universal audience, and with an initial roster of 151 unique monsters, there was practically a guarantee that at least ONE would speak to a child on a level that they HAD to buy the game to get that monster or they HAD to buy merch of that monster.
At this point it's mostly brand recognition, everything else has gone to shit.