Pokémon, I Don’t Choose You!

What the hell is this thing even meant to be? It's bullshit, that's what it is.

I had to quit because I couldn’t keep it up.

By age 12, my frenzied passion for Pokémon was out of control – I was waking up at 6:30am every morning to record the daily episodes on TV, memorising the names and order of every Pokémon through rap songs, and spending every waking moment playing Pokémon Red and Blue. I may as well have been married to the franchise. We were joined at the hip; each of us never letting the other out of our sight lest we miss a special moment together. I lived and breathed Pokémon, only realising that I had gone too far when I started writing letters to my friends made up entirely of Pikachu-speak.

So, I decided it had to stop. Like a relationship gone sour, I needed to get out of this world – this marriage – that I had spent more than two years of my life in; this world where all I could think about was catching little monsters, where all my money went towards collectible cards, and all my energy was being spent telling everyone I knew how much better my exhausting obsession was compared to theirs.

I got as far away from the monster as I could, replacing Red and Blue with Age of Empires and throwing out my home-made Team Rocket costume, keeping only my original decks of Pokémon cards that were still in their shrink wrap (they were going to support me in retirement). That was, of course, until Pokémon Platinum came out.

After a ten year hiatus from all things Pokémon, I found myself drawn back to it, like a Venomoth to the flame.

Admittedly, I was apprehensive. We hadn’t parted ways on good terms. I’d severed our relationship abruptly and gone cold turkey, and the thought of allowing Pokémon back into my life was akin to re-friending an ex who had remained youthfully beautiful while my own appearance had morphed into squashed clip-art. I now had a job to hold down, a degree to complete, and a life to live – I couldn’t afford to reignite an obsession that would consume my life and render me incapable of being a normal human being. But my curiosity got the better of me, and before long I found myself gazing once again into the saccharine cuteness that won me over so long ago.

But something was different. It looked prettier and sounded far better than I ever remembered, but that wasn’t it. For the most part, the game was unchanged and still had the same aesthetic as the one I knew so well, but it just wasn’t the same Pokémon I had once fallen in love with.

There was a certain excitement that was missing; an excitement I used to feel whenever I encountered a new Pokémon, visited a new town, and defeated a gym. I swore I remembered there being a meatier storyline and a magical quality that had me hooked. But Pokémon Platinum had none of this. It felt empty.

It pained me to admit it, but it wasn’t the game’s fault. The more I played the more I realised that Platinum wasn’t a butchered version of Red and Blue, nor was it technically any less than its earlier iterations. If anything, it was a better game. But, like the relationship gone sour and the ex who remained painfully gorgeous, the attraction simply wasn’t there anymore because circumstances had changed and, more importantly, I had changed. It became clear that I only loved Red and Blue as much as I did because I could make a direct connection between the game and the cartoon series that I was watching obsessively.

Because of my compulsive cartoon viewing, the games back then never needed fleshed-out storylines because I used my knowledge of the series and my imagination to fill in the gaps. It didn’t need to develop characters because I had already become well acquainted with every gym leader and every side-character through watching the cartoon. Without the cartoon to supplement the game, Red and Blue would have only had a bare-bones storyline, a bunch of pocket monsters and a whole lot of grind with very little context to understand or appreciate it in.

After not watching the cartoon for years, playing Platinum made me realise that it wasn’t Pokémon: The Game that I fell in love with, but Pokémon: The World – the world that had story and substance that was populated by the manga, the card game, and the cartoon; not the The Game full of grinding, generic characters, and a barely-there storyline. I loved it for the complete package; a package that didn’t exist anymore because I no longer knew any of the Pokémon, and I no longer had a cartoon series to make me care. Without a reason to give this relationship another chance – grinding for eternity to level up Pokémon, spending a life-time wandering through ‘tall grass’ hoping to encounter something rare, and validating my existence through gym badges and collectible cards – I decided that this hussy wasn’t worth my time.

And so it has dawned on me that I have grown up and out of Pokémon. There are now people significantly younger than me who wake up each morning to catch the cartoon and get excited whenever they find Giratina, because that funny-looking thing is meant to be rare or something.

I’ve had my time with the franchise, and it was a good time at that. I’m too old for it now, and as tempting as a new Pokémon game may be, I know it won’t be the same because too much has changed. Where I once saved an extra deck of Pokémon cards just because I thought they were cool and I needed them, I now save them to put towards my superannuation. I’ve moved on, broken up for good, and walked away from the relationship. But that’s okay, because Pokémon isn’t going to miss me.

(This was my submission to the “Call For Writers” that Gamers With Jobs recently announced. I didn’t get through, but here it is anyway!)