Pokémon Nostalgia

Like a lot of people my age, I'm a fan of retro gaming. When you grew up on something, it just hits you in a way that news things--however well-made--can't. 

So I was happy to learn that Nintendo has started rereleasing some of their Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles through Nintendo Switch Online. Once I finished replaying Link's Awakening, I began to wonder what else might be on the horizon. Titles like Super Mario Land or Metroid: Zero Mission--although not officially announced yet--seem like no-brainers. And yet there is one beloved, influential game (or two, it's hard to say) that I have been wondering about more than any other.

I was already in my early teens when the original Pokémon Red and Blue hit North America, so I was a bit older than the target demographic at the time, but I still loved them. I always liked monsters--especially cartoonish, goofy monsters--and had long wanted a game where you play as the monsters instead of against them. Pokémon, with it's large, appealing variety of creatures, quickly became one of my favourite games. I'm not as hard-core into Pokémon as I was back then, but I still play some of the newer games, and have a strong, nostalgic glow for the older ones.

So, like a lot of people, I was hoping that the first two or three generations would be added to the Nintendo Switch Online. (Also like a lot of people, I was not surprised when that didn't happen.) I have been reliving my youth through the Virtual Console release of Pokémon Crystal, but I haven't sprung for Red or Blue yet; for me, they exist in that narrow financial space where I want something, but not quite enough to spend extra.

My nostalgic memories of Pokémon end around Crystal; I was heading off to University around Ruby and Sapphire's release, and it wasn't possible to transfer Pokémon from the second generation to the third. I admit that neither of these have anything to do with the quality of the later games, but they were enough for me to drop from a dedicated to casual fan. The first two generations are the ones I remember most fondly.

Since then, I've noticed that a lot of Pokémon fans are very vocal in their dislike of the earlier games--especially the original Red and Blue. "They're full of glitches," the fans say. "The balance is terrible." "They're slow." "The remakes are better."

"They haven't aged well."

All of that, and more, is true. Those games are a mess, and I'm not even sure how much I'd enjoy them if I replayed them. (That's why I only bought Crystal on my 3DS.) But then the most innovative works are often the ones that "don't age well," simply because they creature the foundation that everything else builds off of. In fact, compared to Mario or Zelda, it seems to me that Pokémon has changed remarkably little in the last twenty-seven years.

So I guess that's the funny thing about nostalgia. It can create illusions, but then those visions are based in truth of a sort. I'll admit that the earliest Pokémon games aren't as polished as some of the later ones, and, if I replayed them today, they'd probably suffer by comparison. But I still remember how much fun I had playing those first games way back when there weren't any other Pokémon titles to compare them to. I don't think that any of the newer, better Pokémon games brought me as much joy as Red and Blue. 

Sometimes, originality just means more.