Revisiting:Pokemon

I was one of the several people caught by the Pokemon wave. Like many, my obsession started with the "Vanilla" Pokegames for the Game Boy, Pokemon Red and Blue

(Fun Fact: There was also a Pokemon Green in Japan.

Pokemon Green was hard and had extended dungeons. Pokemon Red was

released as a whole different game about three months later.)

My first impression on Pokemon was that it was a decent RPG game with all the right ingredients for addictive gameplay like item collecting, backtracking, leveling up and a unique concept of using

monsters to fight your battles for you. What really caught my attention with Pokemon where the Pokemon themselves. The first 150 Pokemon were unique and quirky in their own little (or large) ways. From Bulbasaur to Mewtwo, every single one of them was so interesting that you really had to "Catch em all" (Hence the very effective catchprase.) Flash forward a year later, the Pokemon cartoon was released. The adventures of Ash Ketchum and his friends was the number one factor that changed my in

terest to an obsession.

From the games, I quickly branched out

to shirts, toys, books and also the trading card game made for Pokemon. I got so obsessed that I also wanted my bags, notebooks, pencils, socks( Hey, I was a kid back then, give me a break...) to be Pokemon.Everything just had to be Pokemon.

The Pokemon franchise has a creative and diverse environment. It's world is huge and it's very easy to get sucked into.

Unfortunately, evil business executives started to spam Pokemon too much and

they've made way too many games, way too may t.v. shows, way too many merchandise (Pokeunderwear,anyone?) and after the 2nd season of the Pokemon series, I just lost interest. Even though I'm not into Pokemon that much nowadays, I'm impressed that even up till now, Pokemon is still going strong with its seven-thousand version of the Pokemon cartoon, New released games of Pokemon such as Pokemon Black,White,Monochrome(?) and Rainbow(?!) and the market is still flooded with pokemon merchandise. In the end, I was glad that I got caught (and got out) of the Pokemon wave but I never regret that I got in it in the first place (I still enjoy watching the series from time to time).I will refuse to say that Pokemon was a fad because it's still here and going strong, lets just say that Pokemon say is "old new". Long Live Pikachu!

Pika Pika (Peace Out).

-Chady