Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, we’re rejoined by a previous guest for a deeply cursed episode. So Jay, would you like to introduce yourself again? Hey, I’m Jay Baylis. I came on last time to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog, and I regret to inform you that I am back to talk about more little cartoon men who live in the video game. Yeah, I’m an indie developer. I make video games. I guess this is kind of a more relevant one than last time. So I’m working on a game called Cassette Beasts, which is a monster-collecting RPG. And if you haven’t heard of Pokémon, that is also, I guess, in the same genre space as that. Yeah, it’s awesome to have you back, Jay. I kind of like… This episode was partly inspired by the fact that whenever we’ve talked about Pokémon, when we’ve, say, been ravaged by angry elephants in Age of Empires IV or playing Risk of Rain 2, you have had good high-level thoughts on the Pokémon series. So I was keen to get your take on it. Sorry, Matthew, go on. No, I’ll just say that it’s really good to have some high-level thoughts to cancel out my very low-level, low-effort takes. Yes. I like the idea that anyone can have, like, high-level thoughts about, like, Pikachu, like, just like a general concept. I think people do. So I feel bad for Matthew Castle, who doesn’t know much about Pokémon, and I’ve kind of inflicted this on you, Matthew. How are you feeling about the fact that we’re going to do an episode about Pokémon games? Are you good? Are you OK, pal? Yeah, my only nerves are that any end-gamer readers or O&M readers listening to this will realise how very little I knew when I was writing quite a lot about Pokémon as part of my job. Probably my least favourite bit of my job, as we’ll get to in a bit. Apologies to people who read my takes and thought I had any clue what I was talking about. Even worse than writing magazine box-outs and captions, Matthew? Even worse than that? Well, in terms of, like… I re-read my Pokémon Black-White review. The fact that I reviewed that game is preposterous, and the fact that I sort of offered my grand takes on where it fit into the Pokémon series. I mean, it’s ludicrous. I mean, it really is, you know, mad, but luckily it’s very, very hard to find online. So that’s good for me. Ah, it was a decade ago. I mean, Jay, you were quite plugged into the O&M scene at the time. Do you have any memories of reading Matthew’s writing on Pokémon and being offended by his writing? Oh, I think I mentioned this last time, but the O&M kind of online forum community has become kind of this weird origin story for a lot of people who work either in-games directly or kind of very game-adjacent. I have quite a few friends and contacts now who are just people that I used to speak to when I was a teenager on a forum. I don’t know if that’s cool or if that’s very sad. When it comes to O&M, it was Nintendo and then it was Pokémon, and they were in equal weighting with each other in terms of how big and important they were. I can’t say I recall the particular coverage in the magazine. I feel like it was one of those magazines where it did manage to successfully blend everyone’s voice into the O&M voice at large. I don’t think it was the kind of magazine where you’d highlight this particular person, like, oh, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I didn’t do much Pokémon stuff in O&M. It was mainly in Gamer where I did an awful lot, considering my general level of expertise. I think whenever we did it on O&M, we tended to get Chris Scullion to do it because he was naturally into Pokémon and that made sense. Also, I don’t think we had a big, big Pokémon release while I was on O&M. Maybe X and Y. My timeline of Pokémon gets a little hazy after black and white because that was the one I was really in the trenches for. X and Y, that happened in… That was late 2013, Matthews. That would have happened while you were on there, right? Right, yeah. OK, that makes sense. Yeah, that sounds about right. I have a very vivid memory of… That broke the release date by one day, and I was more hungover than I’ve ever been. And I woke up in university, someone informing me that Pokémon has just come out early, and I had to, in a horrendous state, drag myself down to game. I think that memory sticks with me more than the game itself. I think we’ll go into this, but they all blend into one in a little bit. I know, in terms of high-level thought, I will preface that I think I have a measured take on it. I’m not a huge fanboy on it. I like to think that I have a clinical take on Pokémon. Positive and negative. So we’ll go into that. Yeah. So to give people a breakdown of what we’ll do in this episode, the first section, we’ll talk about Pokémania, the rise of Pokémon as a phenomenon in the late 90s, because that’s the area that I have the most knowledge in, and Jay has lots of great knowledge around that space too. And we figure it’s probably the best fit for our listeners in terms of what we perceive as their age group. That’s not based on any data, really. It’s just me looking at faces of people on Twitter. So that’s good audience research by me. We’re doing this episode to mark the release of Pokémon Legends Arceus, or I don’t know how you pronounce that, Jay. Am I correct there? Is it Arceus? I feel like they changed it at some point to Arceus, maybe just because they didn’t want Arce to be in the title of their game. Wise, yeah, we’ve not played that. Because I’m a PR now, I didn’t feel like I could reach out to Nintendo and ask for a copy because it’d be too weird, so I just didn’t know anything around that. But that’s fine because I kind of wanted to just talk about some older stuff anyway. But a real good treat and a deeper dive into the series is coming in part two of this episode where Jay will talk about the best Pokémon games across different categories. So I’ll just say what the categories are now, actually, because I think they’re really good, Jay, you came up with these, so thank you so much for that. There’s the best gateway into the series today, the best story, the best world to discover, the best roster of monsters, the best spin-off title, and the best retro title in the series. So instead of trying to rank them as a series, we thought that might be a bit arbitrary, we take that approach instead. So yeah, I’m looking forward to that. But Jay, let’s talk a bit more about Cassette Beasts, because people can wishlist this game on Steam now, right? They can, indeed, yeah. Yeah. And do you want to talk a bit about formats and how the game is coming along, that sort of thing? So we’ve announced it for PC, Switch, and it’s coming to Game Pass, which is very exciting, at an indeterminate future date. So it’s interesting kind of talking about making a game in this genre space, because I think so much of the culture around it is tied to kind of fandom and fan expectations. So we kind of came in it kind of like this roundabout place, rather than being like, hey, we love Pokémon, we want to make a boat game like that because we love it, which probably isn’t like the best way to like kind of structure your business, which ultimately like making games is. I think it kind of hinges on this theory almost that Pokémon’s success, because Pokémon is the biggest, most successful media franchise in the whole world, which is kind of a little bit balmy to think about. And kind of we were like, what if people who love the games love the genre as much as they love the brand? And therefore maybe this is an underserved, you know, like genre of games that you can do some cool stuff and explore. But it’s interesting to kind of work on and work with and kind of discuss with, because we have like a community online, are people who are talking to us about what’s going to be in the games. And we get questions like, okay, so how many gym leaders do you have? Or like, do you have like an Elite Four or like an equivalent of Elite Four? And we’re like, no, that’s like Pokémon. They do that. Like we’re kind of approaching this structurally very different. The game actually isn’t structured like a Pokémon game. But I think so much of the genre in people’s minds is tied to that one brand. And it really kind of shapes how people think about it. Like kind of one of the kind of big thematic changes or kind of like approaches we have is that when we were discussing this, we were like, okay, if we want to make something that’s a little bit more grown up, the one thing people joke about constantly, it’s been like, man, isn’t the fact that Pokémon is just about slavery kind of messed up? You know, you’re kind of capturing these like canonically sentient beings. So how we kind of the premise of our game is that your characters use like a tape recorder to record the kind of forms of creatures in the world, and then they kind of transform into them Power Rangers style. So you’re playing as a person who turns into a monster rather than like playing as a thing you netted. And that kind of also leads into kind of one of our big kind of poster features is like this fusion mechanic, where you have like an NPC partner, and you have yourself, and then in your monster forms, you kind of like fuse together, like kind of do like a bit of a Dragon Ball Z fusion dance kind of thing to become one kind of big monster. And we have this kind of procedural system that creates like a new monster design that looks like both of your previous monster forms. And that kind of taps into like a little bit of a fan culture, kind of like people who like love to draw, like what if these two Pokémon crossbred and stuff like that. Right. And that also leads to kind of some fun story stuff because like there’s something kind of like very personal about like fusing with a human being and then like you kind of build relationships with characters and stuff like that. So yeah, I guess I was like I got a wider project. It kind of comes from a love of Pokémon but I don’t think I would say it comes from we’re big fans and we can only recreate a version of Pokémon that we’ve invented in our heads. Sounds quite different to that thing that came out on PC a couple of years ago. Temtem? Temtem, which is just like straight up Pokémon, right? Yeah, I definitely feel like I think I haven’t actually played Temtem. I think their pitch was like what if we take something that feels very much like something you recognize immediately but it’s like an MMO. Pokémon MMO is always one of these things that has been thrown around like when it’s like a dream thing they could make and in reality like I don’t think they’ll do that. I don’t think anyone wants to see Pokémon actually make an MMO but it’s kind of like one of these like dream game ideas and they really tapped into that. It’s sort of weird that you’ve got this game which has so many fans and so many vocal fans but there does exist like this massive almost like market research sort of accidental market research just because there are some people telling exactly this is what I do and they can be very precise in their breakdowns of like I want this feature this feature and this feature you feel like there is a version of Pokémon where you just delve into all that stuff and you give people exactly what they want that would be like lethal. I feel like Legends Arceus might be kind of tapping into that to some extent because everyone’s going to be framing this and once the reviews come out I am very positive it’ll be framed around like this is Pokémon plus Breath of the Wild because everyone loves Breath of the Wild and like since Breath of the Wild came out people were doing like unreal engine mock-ups of like what if Breath of the Wild but it’s Pokémon. I actually think this is one of the kind of more unique points in time where they’ve pivoted very heavily to like this is exactly what the fans are asking for. Broadly they kind of do their own thing and I have my theories on that we can talk about that a little bit later but this is kind of an interesting point where they’re like let’s pivot to something that is actually quite driven by this collective subconscious imagination. I think as well like is it at Bit & Studio on Twitter? Twitter slash BYTTN Studio and yeah we post updates and stuff. Last year we announced, like kind of since our last podcast, we announced we’ve got a partnership with a publisher called Raw Fury and they’ve been super rad to work with and it’s a little bit more kind of exciting to feel like you’re working on like a published game. Yeah, I think it’s gonna, I think people who are expecting something very close to Pokémon maybe will find it’s not like that but maybe that’s good. I think that maybe that’s like good in terms of sticking around in people’s minds. I feel like there’s a lot of like weird Britishisms as well. There’s a monster that I designed that’s kind of like a nightmare version of like Mr Blobby. There’s a few things like that so hopefully it has its own kind of like identity. I like that you suggest a nightmare version Mr Blobby as if to suggest Mr Blobby isn’t already a nightmare creature. This conversation is going to be so confusing to people who are not familiar with Mr Blobby. I think like in general this episode is going to like be a big kind of European Pokémon extravaganza as opposed to something that’s like broadly universally recognizable to people. Just because I think Jay when we were talking about this episode beforehand we had some very specific British cultural touch points with Pokémon. The rollout, yeah, the rollout across kind of the brand. So the brand kind of starts in Japan and then like rolls into America and then hits Europe and it kind of has this kind of rolling effect. So I’m sure there’s some crossover with how it like quote unquote went down in America. But yeah, there’s some definitely unique anecdotes that kind of we ended up with just by brainstorming like what it was like at this time. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, Nightmare Mr Blobby very good. So yeah, I do recommend going on to the Twitter page and taking a look. Jay’s art is absolutely beautiful. I think the game looks fantastic. So yes, excited to see it come to fruition. So one tiny bit of housekeeping before we get into the episode then is Matthew, we haven’t talked about the Wii draft results yet. So how are you feeling about that? I won by I think like 66 to like 34 percent, something like that. Tough. How are you feeling about it? Yeah, tough. I mean, like I was I’ll be honest, I was expecting to lose. I wasn’t expecting to lose to that degree. Like the idea that people could shrug off Galaxy 2 so easily was surprising to me. I if I could do anything again, I would take Skyward Sword instead of Red Steel 2. Red Steel 2 is just it’s a sit in there like a big old turd in the middle of the lineup. I think that’s that’s the game that people get to and they’re like, no thanks. If I had another Zelda on there, it’d be fine. I don’t really regret any of the other picks at all, but that’s the swap I’d make. As always, people can’t look past the Zeldas, even though there’s no way you’re playing a whole Zelda on a mini console, because no one ever has and no one ever will. But listen, let’s not be bitter about it. I think someone would have played a Link to the Past on SNES Mini. Don’t you think that’s plausible? Yeah, maybe, with the quick save feature, making it a bit easier as well. Yeah, that’s probably plausible. But I think people have this idea that they want these massive games where actually I think you’d have a better time. Like, this is going to seem preposterous based on that poll, but I really do think I know best what’s best for our listeners, and they have rejected what is better for them. And that’s OK. Hilariously, someone tweeted at me from this Danny Man, said I was tweeting when I was tweeting about, OK, you’d rather go round to Sam’s house and play with his old Zelda’s. It had the big energy of that Come Dine With Me meme of the, that guy who loses and then goes off on one. Have you seen that? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, have I seen it? I am that guy, Matthew. Yeah, he said it had big, what a sad little life, Jay. Yeah, I would love to see the Photoshop mocked up of that somehow. And it did have that energy. I seemed like a sore loser in the tweet, but genuinely, people have missed out on a really great wee mini. But that’s fine. I have, like, tried to restrain myself a little bit from gloating, because I’m very conscious of, like, I don’t want you to be upset because I want to keep doing these. Honestly, it honestly doesn’t matter. I was surprised a little bit, but I honestly don’t care, which I know is, again, another tweet. What’s that? I’m not something. I’m not crying. Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah, okay, like, well, I won this one, so that makes it 3-2 in the drafts. I was wondering, Jay, you follow the podcast a little bit. Did you have any take on our draft picks or that kind of thing generally? I feel like Samuels was the rational choice, and Matthews was kind of like the esoteric, perhaps more deranged kind of build. Like, if Nintendo released that, people would be much more upset, but there’d be more to talk about, potentially. Yeah, if they released it, and they released both of them, but mine was labeled deranged edition. And then your grandma gets you, like, the wrong one for Christmas. You’re like, oh, grandma, you brought me the deranged Wii Mini. Why did you do that? I said I wanted the good one. Your son’s desperate. He was desperate to play the last story. Now he’s got hydroventure. I was surprised how many people were like, oh, yeah, the last story, the last story, that was a big factor. And you’re like, that is as obscure as a lot of the stuff that was on mine, I would say. But whatever. I think a lot of people like Ghost Squad as a pick as well, man. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah, maybe maybe I picked the wrong stuff. Maybe I was just maybe Other M is a bit too contrary. But I feel like I need to force people to play that game and re-evaluate it, you know, from a seven to an eight. I do think the appeal of Metroid Prime Trilogy or Other M in terms of, you know, catering to a Metroid fan, it’s definitely a challenging swallow perhaps. It’s big like Lee Carvalho’s putting challenge versus Bonestorm. Yeah, very good. So yeah, a lot of fun there, Matthew. Thank you to our listeners for voting on that and sharing their thoughts. Be kind to Matthew. He picked a Wii that he would love and I respect that. So yeah, so begins a period of detente and things will eventually be fine. So good. Okay, right then, on to the rest of the episode. Let’s start with Pokémedia then. So got a little pocket history here, so to speak. I’ve written down some notes after doing some very last minute research here, because I forgot I did this in the Sonic episode and I was just ready to start rambling about why Voltorb looks shit, but I thought I should do some actual research and not just chuck out some opinions. That’s good. So Pocket Monsters Red and Green were released in Japan in 1996 after six years of on-and-off development. Satoshi Tajiri created a games fanzine called Game Freak when he was young, which became pretty popular. It’s here he first worked with artist Ken Sugimori. He eventually became a video game creator and Game Freak was named after his fanzine. They took on work for higher jobs to keep things ticking over while they finished the game. And it was released quite late in the Game Boy lifespan, but accumulated popularity. It would be released in the USA as Pokémon Red and Blue, but that’s where the Pokémon abbreviation comes from for the localization. And an entire year later in Europe in 1999, there’s like a year separation there, which would be like you’d never see that sort of thing these days, of course. But the game was inspired by Tegiri’s experiences living in rural Tokyo, which was disappearing throughout his youth as the city became more modernized. He used to collect bugs and other creatures, and the game was once known as Capsule Monsters in its initial pitch. Jay, you’ve also been doing some research. Have I got anything wrong there, and is there anything to add on that front? I do think it’s a very interesting story because like, so I was reading the Asuka Water Book and he talks about how he got into game development. And he was like early enough that he was getting involved with like the Famicom as it began. So he kind of like jumped in to create the stuff that people would be fans of. You know, Satoshi comes in later. He’s like a bit younger. You know, he starts as a fan and he creates this like this fanzine of like the games that he’s playing in the arcades and stuff that he’s a huge fan of. I just think it’s so interesting for him basically to go be one of these earliest stories of like someone who is in their youth, a fan of this medium that is very established at that point and later goes on to create Pokémon. So he also he starts pitching Capmon in like 1990. Nintendo aren’t keen on it. No one’s really keen on it. He’s got this idea that like there’s something really good here. And it took him six years between like coming up with the idea when he was 25 to like finishing it. And apparently a big hinge point in this was that Miyamoto eventually went to bat within Nintendo and were like basically was like this guy, this guy’s got something here. And then he just like crunched and stressed himself out to like actually knock out the game. They actually released so there’s Pokémon in Japan, there’s Pokémon Red and Green, which is technically an entire different game to Pokémon Red and Blue, which came out over here. So Pokémon Red and Green is an earlier version of the game we saw. We technically never saw Pokémon Red and Green. And it’s essentially the same game but boogier with worse art. They would redraw all the Pokémon sprites and make a third version called Pokémon Blue. And then Pokémon Blue was split into Pokémon Red and Blue to release over here. So it’s kind of interesting that there’s a whole prior worse version of this game that we never actually got to play. So Pocket Monsters Red and Pokémon Red are not the same game basically? Well, it is, but then Pokémon Red in Japan was not Pokémon Red that eventually hit the West. Our Pokémon Red is essentially a new game they built off Pokémon Blue. It’s kind of confusing, but there’s basically two versions of this, one is slightly better than the other one, and then they released the slightly better one. Pokémon Deranged Edition. Is there anything interesting or notable about that art, Jay? Are they quite cursed looking designs of like things? So the designs of like the monsters and stuff was a lot more fluid and a little less like kind of defined. There’s definitely like an indie sense to it. Maybe a bit more like a punky kind of like almost some of those some of those early sprites are really cursed basically. Pikachu has a cigarette. And I think I feel like by the point of Pokémon Red and Blue, they had standardized the designs and came like this is okay. This is what Ghastly looks like. This is how you draw Pikachu. Everything’s a little bit more like set. And they were kind of working on the anime and stuff around that point. So there’s definitely a point where they were like this is what everything looks like. We’re sticking to this. And early on, it was a little bit more freeform. I would definitely advise if you’re a fan, you weren’t super aware of this. Definitely look up like the original sprites. They’re a bit more manic. I see. I didn’t know they were entirely different games. I think maybe I knew that at the back of my mind, but like, didn’t know how much they sort of changed along the way. So I think that is interesting. I mean, that is a big gap as well, like two years between them releasing in the US. So like, I don’t know, it’s interesting that they were confident enough to release an original Game Boy game at that point too, because I think you had the Game Boy Color kicking around at that point. But I guess they thought, well, you can play it on there anyway and give it a try. Another big thing that Tajiri was into was the idea of using the link cable for trading. And I think it was Miyamoto who suggested that there were two versions of the game, Jay. Is that right? I don’t know that particular fact, but I could imagine that totally. Yeah, I think that was from a Did You Know Gaming video I watched to research this. So hopefully it’s true. If it’s not, blame them, not me. Good research. So I suppose that if we… Let’s go into like our first encounters of the series. This is where we can talk about Matthew encountering Pokémon and his indifference, which, you know, I’m definitely keen to get into. So Matthew, why don’t you kick us off? What’s your first encounter with Pokémon as a young man? It’s through my brother, Alex. He had Pokémon Red at the time. So my big thing with Pokémon, I think the three, four year age difference between me and my brother is like the defining feature here. I think this thing comes along in 1999. He’s into that. I was watching the fucking Matrix. And, you know, the difference in, you know, I just associated it with. I just found it very childish, like off the bat, like at that. And that has always been, that is my big, very simple, very basic Pokémon take, is I find it, I find the world of it incredibly simple and basic, and I don’t get it. Counter to that, several of my peers, who are exactly the same age as me, or a year or two older, are really into it. So my grand theory that it existed in this slightly younger generation, which I think is partially right, because, you know, I’m slightly older than both of you two, and I think that has a big defining factor on it, and I kind of carried a lot of that sort of prejudice with me to Endgaper. Not prejudice, you know, I wasn’t like, you know, anti, I just didn’t, I just had nothing to do with it. I didn’t, you know, it just wasn’t for me. And then when we were on Endgamer, I remember the dreaded day when Nick Ellis, the editor, came back from a meeting with our publisher and said, oh, now the Pokémon’s, now the mag’s got a regular Pokémon section, and none of us particularly cared for Pokémon, and we were like, oh, why is that then? And they said, well, you know, they want to have a regular Pokémon hit on every bag. Like, we always want to have Pokémon on the bag. I don’t know, I guess it had done well for like one issue of O&M or something. And so they, you know, in their infinite wisdom, decided that we would now be, you know, pivot to Pokémon. And so was born World of Pokémon, which was a six page regular section at the back of the mag, where we had to talk about Pokémon. And I had to kind of like throw myself into Pokémon culture without it being too sneery and snide, because, you know, that would be counter, you know, intuitive and not what we were promising on the bag. So I just had to do my best, kind of hold my nose and try to kind of sink into Pokémon culture. Some of it’s cool. Like, as with anything Nintendo, I love the fandom around something. You know, I love the creativity of the fans. I love like the weird internet humor of the fans. That stuff’s all great. I just felt that the fans were a lot funnier and more savvy than the games that they were celebrating. That’s what I could never understand. Like, I think at the heart of Pokémon is the least interesting thing, which is the Pokémon games. And around that, there’s a lot of cool stuff. That’s kind of my that’s my big take. Yeah, Matthew Castle, big Detective Pikachu guy. Oh, fuck that. Anyway, yeah, big Bill Nye as the villain, who’s not actually a villain. Bill Nye is voicing a Mew. What a world we live in. What a time to be alive. Jay, let’s start with you, because you are younger than Matthew and me. So I think you probably, Pokémon hit you at probably an even better age than it hit me. So how about you talk about your experience with it? Okay, my notes say Pokémon ruined my life. I feel like it’s kind of one of these hinge points in reality where if Pokémon didn’t happen, there’s a whole different version of me who’s into like sports or something. I don’t believe that. There’s a version of you that just won the Australian Open. Yeah, and maybe I’m really into like cross country, you know. But Digimon would have happened anyway, Jay, so there was no escape for you. But would Digimon have happened if Pokémon hadn’t happened? See, now you have to start thinking about like a domino effect of all this. Wow, yeah, this is like the plot against America on HBO. It’s exactly the same. The stakes are higher though, because Digimon was much worse. We can discuss Digimon in like year five of the podcast, when you bring me on to do a better Digimon games. Yeah. The podcast is like so steeped in like meta irony that someone new tunes in. And then like they’re expecting like Pokémon discussion, but we’re just talking about like kebabs in Bristol for like two hours. We were already at that point. I was about six or seven when Pokémon like hit, which is like the right age for like my developing child brain. And I distinctly remember catching it briefly on TV, like the second episode had just aired. A big crucial point in this actually is that over here, the anime hit first and almost became like a pre-advertisement for the game that hadn’t released yet, which is kind of interesting and kind of unique. And kind of it’s kind of like a product of it’s like the time. It wouldn’t happen now. But I think it’s a very interesting prospect because I distinctly remember like seeing this on TV and being like, oh, this is something that’s like tapping into like every aspect of like what I’m interested in and what I like in things. As someone I used to like love drawing and stuff and like creatures and things. So it was like, oh, heck, like this is this is going to be bad for me. I like the idea of a seven year old thinking that it’s very sophisticated, deep thoughts, very self-aware. It’s the weight of like feeling like the timeline change around me. Oh, Jay, you’re in trouble now, he says to his seven year old self. The fact that this is happening in like Northern England feels very Doctor Who as well. Yeah, so it’s like hard to overstate like the impact that like, I guess, like Pokemania had. It like became this big anime airing on TV. I guess another part of this as well is that it got syndication on like all of the channels. So this wasn’t like you had to have cable, you had to have like sky satellite to watch this. This was airing on like CITV, which is kind of like the if you don’t if you’re not from the UK, that’s kind of like that everyone has that channel, the ITV channel. So suddenly there’s this big thing. It’s new, it’s exciting, and it’s on your TV that everyone can watch. And it’s like the game hasn’t even come out yet. But then like there’s this big, this is exciting cartoon essentially. And then the game hits, and then suddenly it becomes apparent that all this is multimedia around this one game, and the game’s at the core of it. But I think what’s so interesting as well is that the game becomes kind of a multimedia experience in itself as a game, in that you’re learning about the creatures in this game. So like nowadays, I guess we take for granted like, okay, the new Pokémon game comes out, you go online, you know what all the Pokémon are. I think the very, the cusp of the pre-internet era where Pokémon launched meant that like, there is a real era of mystique to this. You’d learn about like a new Pokémon from someone telling you about the Pokémon they saw on a t-shirt in a shop, or like maybe you go to Woolworths and you see an action figure for a new Pokémon. And now you have that knowledge that you can transfer into your game’s progress. Because you’re a child and you’re not very good at the game, so it takes a lot longer to finish. There’s this kind of sense of like, you’re learning about this world and bringing that knowledge from all this merchandise. It’s like a perfect storm of like, selling things to kids. And every like, bit of thing that you’re sold, or like you see, or discuss on the playground, or these Pokémon cards, you bring that knowledge back to the game. So like, the cartoon was like a genius in terms of like, it teaches you the rules of the Pokémon. They have a storyline that explains that like, oh no, Pikachu can’t use electric attacks on ground types. And then you’re playing with the game, and you can go, aha, that knowledge that I learned from this cartoon on TV can now be transferred into my own game, and I can win a fight. And I think like, at an age where games were at at the time, like that’s so, it’s impressive that they pulled that off. And it does feel like a happy accident of a lot of things coming together, like it’s such a successful manner. You know, and also like the timing of like, it dropping just before the internet really goes mainstream. But yeah, it was huge. I don’t know if that kind of mirrors your experience, Samuel. Oh, yeah, I mean, it does, actually. I think the sense of mystery aspect is very true. And I think it massively helped that the game was, it was out there as a phenomenon in the US a year before. So it was like this big thing you sort of knew was coming. My first encounter with Pokémon was there was a future mag, a spin off mag from N64 called Planet Game Boy. I think I only ran for a few issues. And I bought it because it came with two free batteries on the front cover, which of course was, you know, a great, great value. Just what the editorial team wanted. And inside it was a massive feature on Pokémania as a thing. And it broke down the anime side of things, stuff like that. I remember there was like a long box out on the three starters and how they interacted and how whichever one you picked, your rival picked the stronger one elementally and all this stuff. And it was, I remember being like hooked from that. And that was Summer 99, I remember that came out. So the game was already out in the US. And it did seem really exciting and sort of strange. And I guess I did think the monster designs were cool. The difference is that age wise, I think I was 11 when Pokémon came out. So it hit me just before I aged out of it, I would say. So that’s why I have like a really concentrated interest in the sort of red, blue, gold, silver era that kind of dissipates once the Game Boy Advance comes along. And I’m playing like GTA 3 and stuff. But I echo what Jay says about the relationship between the anime and the game. When I actually emulated the game after I read about it in Planet Game Boy, because Game Boy is like one of the easiest things you can emulate, you know, back then. And I downloaded some GeoCities looking site, Pokémon Blue. And yeah, it seemed really exciting to be playing it before it was out. But the cartoon was on. And I remember like, looking for bits of the elements of the game as represented in the cartoon. Like all the episodes I wanted to watch in the anime were like gym leader battles. And like, oh, well, I know this, this gym leader has got a right shoe. So I want to see what happens there. And there’s this bit where, you know, your character gets on a boat, and then Team Rocket are there and all this stuff. And like, I was kind of like looking for those parallels. But the anime would also have lots of like, time wasting bullshit episodes, where just nothing would happen or something cutesy would happen, or it’d be like an episode about some Brock or Misty personal life bullshit. And like, it’d be a character who wasn’t in the game. And like, yeah, I think what I realized was, I was slightly too old for the anime, but I was the right, I had the right age, and I was the right age and brain basically for the year for the game. Because I think as well, it was kind of kind of my first RPG as well, Pokémon. That’s the other big thing. And so yeah, I became massively into it. And I would say, the sense of mystery element kind of rolls over to gold and silver, where there are these other versions that exist in Japan long before. But by then, there is an emerging internet and like a massive fan interest. And this stuff like starts to slowly creep out as information. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But that was my first encounter with it, Jay. Any kind of reflections on that from you? Anything that sounds familiar? It’s interesting. I feel like they had probably a lot of free reign with the anime. You know, the game had been a hit in Japan, they commissioned an anime studio like like make 40 episodes or so. Originally, they hadn’t intended to carry on like, keep it going. It was going to be like a one and done. I do remember reading that, like, if it had of ended, it would have, you know, just it just one and done it. And then it didn’t do the future seasons. The anime supposedly might have ended with Pikachu launching like a rebellion where all the Pokémon rise up and overthrow their masters. That didn’t happen. Yeah, they would go from kind of adapting elements of the game. So you’d like have their interpretation of like a moment like a gym leader or like a dungeon fight. And then they’d have an episode where everyone goes to like Las Vegas, which doesn’t kind of geographically make much sense. I never understood why the anime had quite a good sense of humor to it. It was quite surreal, Team Rocket. There was a lot of surreal stuff with them and none of that seemed to come from the game. The games are so plain in terms of their writing. Interesting hearing you going from one, you’re going from the anime to the games. I’m surprised that wasn’t more like jarring that that like the tone of the world wasn’t as well reflected. I mean, maybe that’s, I don’t know. Part of that might just be like the expectation of what you can convey on like a Game Boy or a Game Boy Color. I do wonder if part of it might be that like localization limitations meant there was only so much text they can put in. I wouldn’t be super surprised. I probably should have looked into this. I wouldn’t be surprised if like the Japanese version is a bit like snarky and stuff like that. It’s also quite interesting that the game, like the anime versions of the characters aren’t quite the same versions of the characters in the games. And over time, they’ve like continued to like make this divide where these things exist in their own parallel universes with their own characters. I feel like if this had happened 10 years later even, they would have been, it would have been like a much more one-to-one adaptation and they would have kind of like had a bit more of like a unified brand vision with kind of its characters and its tone and things. Not to keep banging this drum, but like it is odd to me that of basically all the big Nintendo franchises, Pokémon is the one which resists the kind of slightly surreal modern humour of the other Nintendo localisations. I don’t feel like you’ve, you don’t, it doesn’t feel like the Nintendo Treehouse lot. I don’t know if it is, I don’t know if it’s a different group that localise it, but it’s pretty straight-laced for a Nintendo game. You know, it’s very, you know, there’s no like, I’d love a Pokémon which had like the energy or the weirdness of an Animal Crossing, say. Do you know anything about that, Jay, the localisation side of it? I see Pokémon as a Nintendo game, but also kind of it’s doing its, it wouldn’t surprise me if they had their own entire approach to like how they think about things like that. I almost feel like it’s quite separated from the rest of Nintendo, as much as like they have like a stake in it. I feel like that shows with them kind of dipping into like multimedia stuff or like, you know, doing mobile games first and stuff like that. I feel like maybe that the nature of how big the brand is kind of means it’s quite separate from the rest of it. I wonder if that has a part of it. I wonder also if part of the appeal of Pokémon is, I mean, we’ll talk about this in a bit, but like the, there’s kind of a blank slate nature. And I wonder if part of like the genius is that they don’t go too hard on a particular vision. And they’re kind of expecting players, and particularly younger players, to kind of project their own vision of like, what’s happening, or how like, what the tone of this is onto the games. And they leave it quite bare bones, like as like a tactical decision, essentially. Yeah. And then also you get Pokémon Yellow a little while later, which kind of like tries to find more of a middle ground of in terms of storytelling with the anime features like Jesse and James and changes like some elements of the game to give you the Pokémon that Ash gets in the cartoon, sorry, in the anime. So yes, it’s like, they do find ways to kind of bridge that gap. But I agree with the projecting thing. I will say I slightly preferred the tone. In fact, I definitely prefer the tone of the games to the anime. I found the anime like quite shrill, hard to get on with. And if you look at them as very isolated products, you can see how one informs the other and that like, you know, Miss Brock and Misty are just the first two gym leaders you fight. But I feel like an executive when well, they can be like the sidekick characters. And instead of just being a guy who has rock Pokémon, Brock can be incredibly horny every episode and have some and have some siblings he needs to raise. And like, that felt I prefer I slightly prefer Misty’s thing of like, she’s got three slightly bitchy sisters who she’s quite jealous of. And that’s, that’s better, I think. But horny Brock was definitely a choice. I want a really horny localization. Maybe there is a fan hack of, of definitely is the horny Brock version. You’ll get put on a list if you download it though. But yes, I don’t know, I sort of like, I guess like, you know, Brock’s doing his thing. But yeah, every time he meets like a nurse Joy or an officer Jenny, he just loses his shit. And it’s just, you know, we’ve all got a mate like that. But it’s just, you got to dial it back, man. But like, that’s why I think, I think the other interesting thing actually is that for me, that that was my first exposure to anime. And it gave me like loads of sorry, I just excitedly jumped in because I think this is part of the broader appeal of Pokémon. And maybe part of the importance of Pokémon as a franchise is that it’s a lot of people’s gateway into everything. It’s a lot of people’s first RPG. It’s a lot of people’s first video game. It’s a lot of people’s first like anime and like kind of like looking at like Japanese like pop culture. I feel like because of its success and the kind of format of it, and I kind of like it’s, you can do a Pokémon thing with any device now. There’s like a spin off game or whatever, or like a YouTube video series. Any electronic device you have has something Pokémon on there. And as a consequence, it’s become a lot of people’s first exposures to like a lot of the stuff that we are just kind of like full time kind of in that world of essentially. For sure. I think like as well, like it’s easy to forget how gamey the first game is. Like it’s like it has dungeons and stuff, you know, like Silph Co is a dungeon and like the Dark Cave you go in as a dungeon and like it’s a bit more structured like a triad RPG than you maybe think it is when you reflect on it. Just because you’ve seen the template done in so many different ways. It was so many like the same way so many times that maybe you don’t think about it as much of how they originally did it. But I certainly found Red and Blue to have quite a sort of triad RPG arc. The thing I really loved about it was just that it basically put choice in the hands of the player to like build a party, an RPG party, the one you wanted and to customize it the way you wanted. And that that seemed very exciting with these monster designs that were like variable in quality. But like there were some like really nice ones and ones that I found I liked as as an 11 year old for sure. So, okay, like I want to jump ahead a little bit here just so we can get to your list, Jay. But like, so a really weird, an interesting moment here in the height of my Poker Mania personally was that slightly pre-internet moment before Gold and Silver released. You would hear about Pokémon, that new Pokémon that were in this game. And some of the information was real, some of it was fake. But I remember being obsessed with the idea that when there were new Pokémon I didn’t know much about. And there was this game, this full Game Boy Color game that had all of this on it. Do you remember that moment as well? Because I think we talked about this off podcast and like, yeah, we seem to share this a little bit. I definitely remember there was like kind of like a temporary cottage industry of Pokémon fan magazines, unofficial ones that you get on newsagents like shelves. And I just, I definitely remember buying a lot of these because basically the appeal was, hey, these magazines have printed images of sprites from games that haven’t come out yet. And they’d have big splash things talking about like, it’s like, Pokémon mag, unofficial, look at the new Pokémon. And then you buy it for two quid because they’ve got like four sprites they’ve managed to rip and print. And then have a little box out that says like, we don’t know what the names will be, because it’s in Japanese right now. And there was this very exciting time of like, there’s more coming. And I definitely sent like the whole broader Pokémon kind of appeal, especially at that point was this mystery element. And I feel like that started early with, you know, so like red and blue had like the secret Pokémon Mew. And that was kind of like a last minute developer edition. But suddenly the idea of like, okay, there’s 150 Pokémon in this game, except there is not there is 151. At which point, anything is possible, you know, like all bets are off. And it comes to like the kind of like the playground rumor aspect. You know, you can’t guarantee the full contents of this game that you own. And I think there’s something like massively appealing that massively tapped into for a lot of people. And then the idea that as an extension of that, like, there’s a new Pokémon game coming out with even more Pokémon. I definitely remember the first time I ever used a computer was being at like a family friend’s house and like seeing the kids be like, oh, there’s a website, you can go on to it. It shows you like all the new Pokémon. And just the idea that you can go on the internet and learn all this knowledge. I think that actually might be the hinge point that set me off on this path. Yeah, it’s sort of like I remember my mind being blown that there was this blue version of Pikachu that would be a turn out to be Marill. Oh, Catherine was talking about this morning. I didn’t realize the fans thought that was a blue Pikachu. Yeah, you can sort of see why in retrospect. But yeah, like informally referred to as Pika Blue in internet circles for a long time. But yeah, that was that was like a thing for sure. My brother, I asked my brother about Pokémon because he was into it. I was like, do you have any sort of big memories from that time? And he mentioned an urban legend that Mew lived under a truck under the truck. Yeah, so this is like a big famous one. There is when you go to SS Anne, which is the big boat, Samuel mentioned, there is a in the harbor, there is like a truck tile. There’s like two tiles that are just like represent a truck. And if you sequence break, you can get there early by surfing across to the truck. But it doesn’t do anything. But these tiles don’t exist anywhere else in the game. And the rumor was like, okay, Mew is in the car, you have to find the key to the car. And then it became like, do you use strength and push the truck, which I remember trying to do and failing. Do you have to beat the final boss with only Pikachu, and then Giovanni gives you his car keys. But the thing is, like, why would there has to be a reason as to why that truck was there, right? It’s kind of this big question. Like, if you’re a kid, it’s a valid point that the truck doesn’t appear anywhere else. And the answer is it doesn’t do anything. That’s the secret. I don’t actually know why the truck is there. In future games, they actually reference this by putting like a hidden, like a potion that you can get by like pressing A on the truck if you manage to sequence break and get there. That’s good. I should have looked up why there’s a truck tile in the game. Maybe they just thought it would be funny. I don’t know. What did blow my mind is years later when I was playing the virtual console, red and blue, is that you can make Mew appear without like a GameShark or anything like that. You could just do it. I think there’s like a near Lavender Town, there’s like a thing you can do to make Mew appear. It appears like a level five Mew and you just you catch it straight away. And like I only did that like three years ago. And that felt like an entire part of my brain just opened up. Because I was like, I thought I knew everything about this game that I rinsed as a kid. And I had no idea that I could just go and get a Mew at any time if I knew how. And like Mew to me was a thing that I remember watching SMTV, which is like a kids show that was hosted by these presenters Ant and Dec for any non-UK listeners. They were like these kids entertainers. And they flew to Japan and got a Mew along with this like competition winner. And I was so fucking jealous. I think you’re right, Jay, that like that, that like mystery aspect just created like a next level of like, intrigue that’s like perfect for a kid’s growing brain, I guess. It’s such a perfect thing. So I guess like part of my like, my pitch on this whole podcast is that Pokémon, red and blue. So like, in a way, I think there’s an argument that it’s hard to rank these games linearly, we talked a little bit about doing like what’s the best Pokémon game. And it’s a bit boring to talk about because they’re all like the same, but with a few changes. But I feel like, in a way, every Pokémon game is just a remake of the first. And it’s more about maintaining this very particular experience. And I think, I would maybe posit that Pokémon is like the perfect video game, like full stop in terms of, I don’t know, I defended Sonic Adventure 2 last time, so I’m, I’m gonna shoot my words carefully. But like, if you take games that are kind of built around like a world you want to inhabit, as kind of one of the pillars of like, what makes this medium good. There’s something so interesting about the idea that Satoshi Tajiri stuck with this for like, like almost a decade to try and make this, because there was something so appealing in it. And you talked a lot before about how you build your own party. And I think as well, like, it’s not just that you customize your own party, it’s that like, the party you create tells a story, you know, if you have a manky early on, that says, okay, you went off the beaten path, you went like to a side route and like found manky early on. And that’s like, it tells a story by just having that in your party. And it almost becomes like the monsters you have tell a narrative of what your journey through this game has like been. I think there’s something so fascinating about that. And I think there is something so like deeply appealing about the fantasy of Pokémon that has caused it to become like the biggest franchise in the world. You know, like there’s just something innately appealing about this is like a kind of like a blank slate world. You start a journey in that world. You project onto that world like how dark or comedic it is or how child friendly it is. And you find these cool creatures because you know, everyone just likes to see like a cool little guy and they become your friends. And then you win the game and how you encounter them like plots your path through this world. And there’s something so like beautifully genius and beautifully simple about that whole premise. And I think as a consequence, maybe framing it around like every game is just a, it doesn’t have to, you know, you don’t have to advance Pokémon. You don’t have to make the new Pokémon where it’s really edgy and you’ve got a gun now or you don’t have to make it an MMO. I think Pokémon is maybe about like, they’ve created this franchise that is everyone’s entry into RPGs. It’s people’s first anime and it’s always accessible and it’s a new fresh take and you can jump back into it if you want as an adult, but it’s not necessarily made for you anymore. But it captures something so perfect in that first time you have that experience going through that world that like, it doesn’t need to change. Like it’s, it’s like fantastic. That does make perfect sense. And I would say that if you don’t have that emotional connection or that initial emotional connection, which I don’t, I don’t think there’s much else. Like I don’t think there’s like a safety net of like, like an engaging story say, or you know, you know, visually it’s so sparse and you know, they haven’t, they haven’t like pulled out all the stops to kind of really update it. I’ve always thought this is a series that has rested on its laurels. It isn’t, you know, but maybe if, if what it’s actually resting on is this, this sort of more profound emotional connection that I don’t have, that makes more sense how people can sort of forgive that stuff. I always think you have to forgive a lot about a Pokémon game and that’s, that’s what I can’t do because I don’t have that, that connection. My sort of theory from afar was always that I knew that there was this overarching collection element in that you brought Pokémon from a previous game to a next game and I always rather snidely again thought there was like an element of sort of Stockholm Syndrome that people had just invested so much time in building their Pokédex that they got to a point where they could no longer remove themselves from Pokémon, like they had to like Pokémon forever more or it would basically render all that previous time they spent like a waste of time and that’s that’s how in my head I’ve always, whenever I see someone my age who likes Pokémon I think poor them they’re still kind of deceiving themselves because they don’t want to think it was all a big waste of time. That’s my very negative take. It’s also like, it doesn’t make any sense because I know that there were big cutoff points along the way where you couldn’t transfer, you know, like really that’s a Game Boy thing. That’s right, isn’t it? There’s like a break between Game Boy and Game Boy Advance where you can’t transfer. Like, for a long time I thought you could transfer, I thought people were sitting on like ten years of work basically but I don’t think that is true and maybe it is more just that, like you say, that raw emotional connection, you know, it’s less about the the mechanical act of collecting because I think a lot of people are doomed by collections, like outside of games as well. I think you, if you buy enough of something, you kind of commit to buying it all. It’s like, that’s the great trick slash scam of amiibo, you know, you buy the initial amiibo and then you’re basically doomed to buy them all because otherwise what’s the point? You know, it’s the same with Funko, it’s the same with football stickers or fucking monsters in my pocket when we were kids. But yeah, maybe it’s not as sort of cynical as that. I think if Pokémon were to do what a certain generation of like a millennial fan would want which is to like adult up and become a big boy franchise, I think that would mean that something would be permanently lost from the game ecosystem. I think Pokémon’s place is as like your gateway into this whole world. When people ask like, do they make a Pokémon for grownups? The answer is like play other RPGs, right? And I think there’s something hugely valuable in having that franchise of like, hey, this will get you as a kid into RPGs, and then you’ll grow up and you’ll experience like more mature and more complex RPGs. And maybe you’ll attach to the story side of things. Maybe the mechanical side of things is important to you. I was talking to my brother about this because he’s five years younger than me again. And he was playing Sword and Shield. And he was like, the gameplay is crap. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’m going on a journey in collecting monsters. The fun comes from like, you put this like team together and that team reflects your particular interests with like what kind of monsters you like. If you want to go for the underdog team where you only pick bad ones and kind of rise up anyway, and you kind of craft your own fun out of it. I thought that was quite an interesting take on it. I do if I can like give a throw a bit of criticism back at Pokémon here. I wouldn’t say that like over time Jay has softened off the harder edges of it. I quite like some of the harder edges. So the rivals get nicer. The games get easier. Weirdo stuff like the Porygon episode of the anime that like caused seizures. I recommend like one of the best Wikipedia pages around is Banned Episodes of Pokémon. That’s great. And it’s like there’s an episode where like James has like a pair of breasts and a bikini and stuff from Team Rocket. And like it’s like, you know, which is, I don’t know, it’s just, it just there’s an interesting like collection of of like stuff there. And, oh yeah, that was something I thought over time, Jay, that like the those hard edges were softened off a bit and it became so gentle and so kiddy, that maybe there was an element of that that I liked in the earlier ones that was kind of removed. What do you think that? It’s hard to know. It’s hard to know if that’s responding to criticisms over time. We haven’t even touched on like the American like satanic panic angle of this because it didn’t really hit us. But in America there was this big fear that like Pokémon was a cult and Pokémon was making your child love the devil. Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe there’s a part of it where the games have gotten easier because attention spans have gotten shorter and maybe children are so like the brains have completely fried because they’ve had access to YouTube since the age of like six months old that they need a game that’s even lighter on them. I do agree there is something lost in the kind of odder early Pokémon even just down to like I think like the lore changed like Pokémon Red and Blue is very clearly set in this world where it’s like this is set on earth and this is just like a weird Pokémon land that exists on earth. You can go to like a museum and you can see like NASA spaceships and stuff and the Pokedex just talks about like the rest of planet earth like it’s there and over time they’ve kind of like retconned it and made it like this is like a parallel world with the differences that they have Pokémon instead of animals. So they have like adjusted the brand I guess essentially from what we would have known when we were much younger. I wonder if they’ll keep changing it as sensibilities change. It’s hard to know really if it’s just the people involved are playing it a bit safer or they’re a bit what their opinion on what kids want has changed. There’s definitely an angle of that I think. You know, I’ve definitely spoken to this on this podcast before but like the couple of times I’ve met Game Freak people to interview, I’ve met Masuda a couple of times, I was always slightly thrown by how young he kind of aimed a lot of his answers and like how he talked about it. And I’m not saying that’s an indicator of how he thinks about it, you know, I’m sure behind the scenes it’s a lot more complicated than this. But the worldview that they put out in their answers in those interviews was, I thought so safe and sanitized, you know, where he was like, when you’re asking about like the inspirations behind the designs, it’s like, you know, cool cool Pokémon for the boys, cute Pokémon for the girls. Yeah, I mean, that’s funny, because I’ve got like, a 30 year old flatmate who’s got these theories about like the deep mechanics of Pokémon. And here you are basically saying, oh, yeah, we make a baby toy. Like, that’s what this is. This is this is for toddlers. And I took great pleasure in that because I could rub that in the face of people my age and say, well, it’s funny, you know, you say it’s sophisticated, they talk about it in these really infantile terms. And I do wonder if some of my Pokémon thinking is influenced by the ones that I have played more, which is basically HeartGold forwards for work, mechanically were very, very soft. I don’t know how they stack up compared to their original versions. But like a beef I had with this series was that basically the six Pokémon I took through HeartGold and then Black and White were the first six Pokémon I found. And they were just a higher level than everything. And it was like, well, I didn’t have to engage with any of its systems, this whole elemental thing. It doesn’t matter. Like it literally makes no sense because you can cancel that out just by being having a natural level gap. And Catherine when it was then saying, oh, they changed the leveling on the monsters and how your party levels and that has a big impact. It used to be a lot more strategic. But, you know, coming to it in the modern age, you have a very different perspective of it from from how other people have described it to me. Yeah, I do wonder if it is. There is some things like still like Pokémon has brand managers and stuff. And this smart people who has paid a lot of money to think about this stuff all day. And I think there’s something kind of wise about saying this is our target audience. Let’s not age up with it. And I think conversely, a good example of if you do the opposite of that is like, what happened to the entire American comic book industry between like the 60s and today, where, you know, these were comics made for like, six year olds, you know, like your earlier like Superman’s Batman comics. But rather than stick to that age group, they got taken over by the people like the people who ended up working on them were the people who grew up with them as kids. And they wanted to make Batman and Superman for them now as adults. And then gradually, you end up with today where you have like 18 rated movies featuring like characters who are made for babies. And ultimately becomes way more of like a niche market. I think there was something wise in Pokémon saying this is what we’re good at. This is who we’re for. This is as complex as we are. And like if you want more than that, maybe you should like try all the Nintendo games. Try all the Roppi Cheese. I kind of admire them for not caving into like a fan demand for an older Pokémon. And as much as the fans say like that, maybe there’s fans who are like implying a decline over time. The new one, Legends Arceus, will probably sell more copies than anything. I don’t know. Like, I’m sure it will stay very successful. Yeah, I think that’s a fair point about comics, Jay, because like you say, that market kind of has become like an island of like, basically men in their 50s who buy the comics, and they’re the people who need to be appeased. So anytime they do something quite wild to try and like get to reach new fans, they’re very vocally upset, and then things get like, dialed back, and then yeah, but then like that market just shrinks all the time. And all the new readers are coming in to read like Image Comics or Manga or something else. So that’s a very fair point. So I can see the the aspect there of like, renewing what Pokémon is for different generations. I do like the idea of them making a Pokémon where like all the monster designs are like aimed at like now 40 year olds, and they just really sort of mundane kind of like, you know, here’s like a food blend. I guess a food blender was one. That was a terrible example. Do you want like divorced Pikachu? Yeah, it’s like Miracle Man, but with Pokémon. It’s just like, yeah. But yeah, I did want to touch on like a personal element of like how I fell out of love with Pokémon because I think it’s like, it’s definitely tied to age, but it was it was a meaningful experience to me. So I got very big into gold and silver, of course, that came out and that had the miracle of like having this, this all new world to explore, but also let you explore the world from red and blue as well. So you had like double the amount of cities and gym leaders. But when I finished it, I felt like I was sort of spiritually done with Pokémon because the the last fight in the game is your new protagonist fighting the protagonist from red and blue. So it’s you fighting yourself. And like this this other version of you, this this red character has like Pokémon that Ash did a dozen the cartoons basically like a really high level Pikachu and stuff like that. And so I felt like in the like in red and blue, he doesn’t say anything when you meet him. It’s just dot dot dot. And then the fight begins. And then like that ends that game. And what the game ends long before that actually, but like that’s like the end games end. And like, I think I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I. Like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, Big moment. I remember, I was hushed playground talks of like, you can meet the original you and you can beat him. He’s really, really he’s the hardest Pokémon trainer of all time. I do actually think that in a way, red slash blue and gold slash silver act kind of like a duology. And I have seen it said like, if Pokémon ended with that duology, that would have felt quite complete. And it only is that it was so successful that it carried on, that we saw more. But there’s maybe like an alternate universe where those were the Pokémon games. And that wrapped it up. And that was kind of like the full stop on the franchise. I think also quite famously with gold and silver, they managed to put the entire world map of red and blue in it as postgame, in this like insane technical maneuver, which was famously made possible by Satoru Uwata, who was like an absolute like genius at like compression, who like compressed the work so much, he was like, okay, you’ve got all this room, what do you want to do? And then they just like stuck it in last minute. They’re like, we want to have another lorry tile. It’s almost a Kageyama-ish twist that, you know, that at the end you fight your former self. That’s like something people will be writing 20,000 word essays about now, if Kageyama did that. I’m sure essays on that moment definitely exists somewhere. I’m sure video essays as well. I like that it’s a warning. It’s like this is how it’s like saying to Pokémon fans. This is how this ends for you. Like you’re obsessed with this game. You will end alone in a cave. Well, no, because he’s like the champion of all champions at that point. It’s like almost like a Kurt or Kurt style figure in the Pokémon world of like, you know, this is like the guy who beat everyone and you’re kind of like following his trail basically. And like, yeah, I don’t know. It’s good. And I think that’s the other thing, Jay, is that like when I came to play, basic first of all, like my interest in Pokémon faded in the noughties when the GBA games came around, but that also coincided with Pokémania dipping a little bit. And then the DS comes along. And I feel like because the DS is so massively popular and at that point, there’s a little bit of a nostalgia factor that leads to Diamond and Pearl becoming massive. And then like it all kind of kicks off again. And now it’s never really gone away. So I think that’s like another thing that happened. I think that’s quite good. I feel like, so you had your big boom. I think once Gold and Silver came out, there was a sense like culturally, like this isn’t mainstream anymore. Like the first two films came out in like cinema. I actually have an anecdote where I very vividly remember my friend from school’s mom took us to see Pokémon the movie and afterwards was like, that was the worst thing you’ve ever made me go and see. But yeah, there is a sense that like, okay, this as a broader cultural thing, it was like over. We’d like wrapped that up with gold and silver. Ruby Sapphire came and then like, it kind of had a bit of a comeback. And then maybe there’s just like a sense of like, you hit that singularity moment where there’s enough fans that this can just become self-sustaining forever as long as there is high quality content. Because you’re right, once you hit the DS, okay, now it’s an online game, which means there’s like, and then that’s kind of like, you’re talking then about like the mid to late 2000s. So like online fan culture, you know, they got like Tumblr and stuff is very big. YouTube is kicking off. Fan culture can kind of become this self-sustaining thing. And now, I don’t think Pokémania as it was in the 90s. And if you’re young, if like, anyone like younger than us is listening, like it’s really hard to convey like, just how omnipresent it was, because nothing can be like that now. We had, there’s too much like stuff. There’s too much like media in the world. You can like have, there’s all these subcultures that we’ve never heard of that have, they are like self-sustaining, but there’s just so much stuff in the world now that we’ll never hear of it. But at that moment, this was like a pre-internet, pre-social media age, and there was just Pokémon everywhere. It was like so big. Yeah, it was a proper like kids on playgrounds trading Pokémon cards thing. Like it was, yeah, it was just everywhere. My parents hated it because it was everywhere, and it seemed very cursed to them. And so yeah, yeah, it was definitely like just so, so enormous. But I agree, it’s become self-perpetuating. Like I think Sword and Shield are actually two of the highest selling entries in the series, and obviously that coincides with the Switch being massive. And I will say that after the DS games for the last time, I really love the aesthetic of these games. Like I think that they look really nice in the DS ones. But I think that the Game Boy ones, and the DS ones, and the GBA ones, they all looked fantastic for the time. They were like as good as they needed to be for the hardware. Jay, I want to get to your best Pokémon games. So the last thing I want to ask you about before we have a little break is, you worked on making a Pokémon fan game, and this has O&M connections. I know that the fan game rom-hack scene generally is quite an interesting side of subculture of Pokémon, I guess. Do you want to talk about that a bit? Oh, yeah. Nintendo have a very fraught relationship with fan content creators, especially fan game creators. There is like a scene around, this kind of branches into two split kind of like paths when it comes to Pokémon. You have like a rom-hacks where essentially people like patch existing roms. The idea is like you download an emulated rom and then they’ve put this patch, then it will turn that into a new game. That will add a new Pokémon, it will add new moves, it will like rearrange the world and that can be as drastic and as like small as you know you want. So like some of the fan patches are just like, okay, we make it so we add all the Pokémon that you know, because there’s the two, with the two versions, you can’t connect every Pokémon in one game. So sometimes it will be like, okay, we fix that and we make it so you can get all the Pokémon. And then like some people have done like rom hacks that are like entire games essentially like remade using the engine. And then on the other side of that, there’s like a set of tools called Pokémon Essentials, which is it basically is like you’re not using rom hacks so there’s no like illegality side to it. Oh, like kind of like legally gray area to it. It uses RPG Maker XP, which is like an old build of RPG Maker. And there’s all these tools, basically they’ve recreated the engine, like very impressively. And using that about like 12 years ago, there was on the O&M forums, there was like a fan game project to make a game. It was called Pokémon Dawn. And I ended up spearheading it because I was a moderator and I knew how to make games, unlike most people who were just like kids, who would just like the idea of making a game. So for about a year or so, I was in charge of putting together O&M’s premier fan game. I think I released one demo build that had like the first two towns and a gym leader. And then it never got any further than that. And the idea was that we’d crowdsource designs from, like people would submit drawings, then someone else would do like a sprite version of it, and then I’d stick it in the game. The problem was that they didn’t look very good. And yeah, it didn’t get very far. I think it was a great learning experience for me in terms of, wow, actually, it takes a lot to make a game. And I do actually think there’s maybe a seed of Genesis there in terms of, like with Cassette Beasts now, like this is like my second run around having this genre. So in a way, I kind of like had a bit of experience from doing that the first time around as a teenager. So yeah, something very brazen about doing it in the O&M forums right under Nintendo’s nose. Yeah, I think the key was that we were like, we’re not going to do a ROM hack because we don’t want to upset Nintendo on the official Nintendo Magazine Forum. So we’ll be using the RPG Maker engine, which is, technically it’s a fan created thing, so it’s technically not like a emulation. It’s just like sprites and stuff. But yeah, I remember it. I was fond of the memory of it. I think in retrospect, it probably was awful. But yeah, I think that the fun game scene has definitely been a big part of this. And Nintendo are very famous for kind of like ceasing desisting anything they think is stepping on their toes too much. I just sent to my coworker a video of someone who made a fan game and posted on Twitter where you kill all the Pokémon with guns and it’s an FPS and people were just replying to it saying like, this is going to get Ceasing Desisted so hard. Like, Nintendo is going to like Mario is going to bust down your door like a SWAT team. We used to, whenever we had these really strict brand guidelines for and if we ever did anything official Pokémon like even on Endgamer, I think if we did free gifts, you’d have like quite strict brand guidelines. But there was always these really weird ones like Pikachu can’t be seen to endorse like the boy scout movement. Someone I know at some point had had access to like a handbook of like branding and what you’re allowed to do. And one of the things is like Pikachu and Pokémon cannot do drugs. Yeah, they can’t have opinions on religion. God does not exist in the world of Pokémon. Pokémon cannot have their own alt-right Twitter accounts. I just like the idea of a Pikachu with a cigarette going like the scouts is cool. Jordies are not allowed to rap about this ever again. There is footage on going back to the SMTV live link of Ant and Dec rapping with Billy Piper of Doctor Who and Pop Music fame doing like a Pokémon rap. I feel like the VHS recordings of those are such cursed objects you’d find them in the oldest house from the game Control. Just see all the volume of the box. Yeah, I didn’t really go into that too much, but a big part of the Trojan Horse of Pokémon culture here was SMTV. They would preface every episode with this fake Pokémon battle between Dec, one of the hosts, dressed as Misty from Pokémon and doing this screaming voice. They had this weird running joke where Misty Dec was obsessed with Brian from Westlife, a boy band. And then there would just be this chaotic health bar on screen. It was really random and strange. SMTV was actually probably as… If you’re a kid in the late 90s, early noughties, as close to alternative comedy as you could get on terrestrial TV, it was quite anarchic and strange. But I imagine to anyone who wasn’t there to look at any of this footage, they’d be like, what the actual fuck is that? Yeah, explaining to people younger than us that drag acts were a key part of the Pokémon branding for us for the year 1999. Yes, absolutely. That was totally part of what it was. Among the less successful skits on that show, I would say Deck, Says and Chums were mostly superior SMTV segments, but to each their own. Matthew, anything to add there? Or should we take a break and come back with the second section? I just want to say how much I love the Michael Cain Muppets Christmas Carol meme. Yeah, I did want to recreate that on this podcast somehow, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the last bit. I think that is about as good as it gets Pokémon memes-wise. Yeah, I thought I could cut in. Who’s that Pokémon? And then me just going, it’s Diglett. But I couldn’t work out how to do the last bit, so I just thought I just won’t bother. There you go. Okay, that’s… Oh no, it’s my grave. Very good. Okay, well, that seems like a good point to take a quick break, and then we’ll come back with Jay’s countdown of the best Pokémon games across different categories. Matthew, do you feel like I’m drawing you into it enough? I keep feeling like I’m worried that I’m excluding you. Yeah, well, I hope I’m not just turning up to be the fucking, you know, dunk bot. No, I appreciate that you asked your siblings about stuff. Apparently, my little brother, like, much younger brother, Will, when he was playing the DS version, my brother Alex looked at his copy of the game, and he’d renamed all his Pokémon incredibly sinister stuff. And the one my brother remembered was that he had a bud you just named Flesh. Well, we have to keep this in the podcast now. You know that, right? Yeah, I’ll wrap it in somehow. That’s got, like, big mindhunter energy. Do you know what I mean? When the older guy’s son turns out to be a psychopath, like, it’s that kind of thing. Welcome back to the podcast. So let’s go through some of the best Pokémon games across different categories, leveraging Jay’s expertise, which he’s kindly brought on to this episode. So, Jay, why don’t you kick off with your first game here? Cool. So I think my first point was, like, what’s the best gateway into the series today? So, like, if you were wanting to introduce, like, a fresh player, they haven’t got too much experience with Pokémon, what you would recommend to them to jump in? And I don’t have a singular answer, because I think what I would say depends on your circumstances. If you want, if you have kids, I think that… Did you play Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu slash Eevee? No, I didn’t. So I didn’t actually know. Oh, no. This was great, actually. This is a really solid kind of remake of, like, Red and Blue. It was them doing, like, the nostalgia throwback. But again, they’re keeping in that mentality of, like, this isn’t for the people who grew up with this, as much as it is, like, this is bringing a version of those memories to new fans. A lot of people early on, before this was out, like, theorized they’d do, like, a dark, you know, like a dark interpretation of those games for older fans. But they’re, nope, they were like, nope, this is even more for kids than ever. So they’ve even, they’ve simplified it more. So catching Pokémon is about, like, using motion controls to throw a little ball. And they’re kind of tying a little bit into the branding of Pokémon Go with that, where there’s like, the battle isn’t really an aspect of it anymore. But I thought this was actually like a really solid game. It actually looks good. It looks, I’d say this has like the nicest graphics of a Pokémon game up to this point, in terms of like fidelity and lighting and going into the 3D aspect. It’s just like a really lovingly recreated version of those original games. It’s almost like doing the, like, this is how you remember them, but looks nicer. It has this peripheral, right? Yeah, it has this little ball. It has like the Pokémon ball controller, which you connect to your Switch. And it’s got a joystick on the button on the Poké Ball, and you essentially use that to control. It’s a really fun novelty, and then it hurts your wrist after about like 45 minutes. Great. But it’s great. I mean, in terms of if you frame it as, like you’re a kid, you want to get into Pokémon, and then you get this game that comes with a Poké Ball, and then you can throw that Poké Ball without letting go, to catch a Pokémon. I think that’s just like a… How many TVs got shattered because of that? It’s definitely in league with like Wii Bowling for sure, I reckon. The power rankings of like televisions destroyed by Nintendo peripherals. So in terms of like, if you’re approaching this, like, okay, I have kids or like younger family members, I want to just like have a fun time playing this. I definitely think let’s go on the Switch. Other than that, so you’ve got kind of branches into two different branches now. You’ve got, do you want to jump straight into like Sword and Shield? Which is kind of like the big bumper pack of like, this is the Pokémon game. We just threw everything in. It’s the same format as previous games, but it’s like, the appeal here is like, there are so many Pokémon. They’ve just like stuck them all in. There’s these big wide open areas they call the wild areas. And you can just collect, you can just catch like, monsters from across the entire kind of like, history of Pokémon. Is that the England set one? Yeah, there is a town based on Bath in this game, if that catches your interest. It’s got Jaycee’s kitchen in it. I don’t think there’s any user reason to be honest. Oh, well that’s, they obviously haven’t been to Bath. That’s like, it’s the finding feature. It has a really wonky English localization where everyone just says mate. Very much not bade my English man at all. I think as in terms of like, if the appeal of Pokémon is like, I wanna maybe I’ve dropped off for a while. I wanna jump in and just have a game that has like a load of these guys in. I just wanna catch a load of Pokémon. I’d go with this. I think this is one that had a lot of controversy when it came out because it didn’t have enough Pokémon in. Dex it. Yeah, Dex it. So I guess part of the long-term appeal, we touched on this briefly, is that you can always catch every Pokémon, you can always get every Pokémon in every Pokémon game through transfer. So you can theoretically keep your same team in each game. And the controversy with this game is not every Pokémon was in this, only most of them. And I just feel like that’s fine. Games are hard to make. This is a lot of legacy content to support and it’s probably only important to like 1% of the player base. Yeah, but unfortunately they’re the 1% who are writing all the articles online. It’s true. But then at the end of the day, this sold so well. So I don’t think it actually held them back from buying this game. Plus the DLC added a bunch more. Yeah, yeah, it’s true. This is just a good… This is a fun, like, if you want that, like, the broad newest Pokémon experience, you can jump in. And then other than that, Diamond and Pearl. I’ve realized at this point, I’m just listing the Pokémon Games that are available on Switch. I rate Diamond and Pearl, too, because I felt like… Because that was obviously the first Pokémon that came out when I was on Nintendo Max. And it didn’t seem to have, like, it didn’t seem to sort of stick around that long. Like, it didn’t feel like people were talking about it much. I think it had a long tail when it came out because it kind of tapped into, like, the online aspect. So I think there’s a lot of, like, there’s a lot of, like, love for Diamond and Pearl. And the remakes that just came out, a lot of people don’t love the art. I think they’re definitely going for that, like, an interpretation of the Game Boy style. So if you’re someone, I think if you’re someone who is, you’re big into, like, I want my Pokémon people to be tiny little Lego men on my screen. I want to have that top-down look. I want it to feel like that in terms of how you play, very much like assigned to a grid. They kind of kept the feel of it for better or for worse. And I feel like if that’s a part of the appeal to you, ultimately all these games play, like, as solidly as they will play. They’re all pretty solid. And you can have a fun time with all of them. And I think to an extent it taps into, like, the question is what you want out of a Pokémon game. I would say as well that, like, I would say that Sword and Shield is the one to get if you’re, like, a lapsed player, just because I actually do think it looks, like, reasonably nice. I think it looks nicer than this new one does. Like, I think that they took enough inspiration from the UK in terms of, like, giving this world some character that I think it looks, it doesn’t look too sparse or too disappointing. It is cool to see the Pokémon on the screen in front of you as you’re exploring these world areas. And, you know, it is very easy still. It has other nice things, though, like the whole, like, trading with strangers thing where it’s like, I’ll just throw a Pidgey into, like, a box and then, like, get back, like, you know, like a Bulbasaur or something like that. And I thought there was a nice, like, community element to that that made it feel like there was, you know, a nicer player base out there making it nicer for new players. I think, I think it definitely taps into this feeling of, like, they make a Pokémon game. It’s kind of like a space you hang out in. And then, like, so they have these big areas and you can just, like, hang out and, like, find wild Pokémon. And you’re right in there, like, if you’re a lapsed player, there’s something appealing about seeing a bunch of Pokémon you don’t know. But then, like, you’ll see Gastly. It’s him. It’s Gastly. He’s back. And without being very nonchalant at last, Gastly is back. And there’s something very kind of, like, appealing about how nonchalantly they mix these, like, classic creatures that you might be familiar with, with, like, the new ones. It’s just like an ecosystem they create. And, yeah, I feel like Sword and Shield is maybe the best bet. But I think that also Let’s Go definitely got slept on, I think, online. I think it’s definitely got less for a lapsed player who wants to jump into something really hardcore. But I think it’s a wonderful kind of game they put together for, like, hey, everyone who was, who was that age with, like, with a kid when they came, when it came out, is now old enough to play this through with their kids. And I think it’s nice that Nintendo thinks about that kind of thing, you know, I think it’s nice that they think about, like, what, like, parents might be playing or what, like, younger players and younger siblings will be thinking about. They’re not just going for this, like, increasingly hardcore aging audience. Yeah. Does it have Missing No in it, Jay? Missing No is not back. I guess we didn’t touch on that. We didn’t have time because there’s just so much to talk about when it comes to, like, old Pokémon lore. Has it got Mew under a truck? You know, I don’t think it has Mew under the truck. I didn’t check. That would be quite funny if they added that. Yeah. Maybe you can edit this before it broadcasts to confirm that Mew is under the truck. Yeah. Missing No is another of those hard edges that they soften off that I was talking about. But, like, that’s an inadvertent hard edge. But, yes. So let’s go on to the next category, Jay. So the best story of the Pokémon games. Okay. So, Matthew, you said you reviewed Black and White, right? Yeah. What was your impressions on this game as someone who kind of jumped in maybe with not being super familiar at this point? I didn’t think it did much to disguise. It’s just the quite basic structure of the Pokémon game, which is go to these eight places and then this other place is really my take. It’s not very complicated, I’m afraid. That’s fair. So I think what’s interesting about Black and White is that Pokémon normally jumps up with a generation. And this was the one where they were like, okay, we’ve got two generations that are releasing on the same hardware. This was kind of a last hurrah for the DS. This was like, right, we’re going to finish off the DS. This has already had Diamond and Pearl early on in its life cycle. We’re just going to shift off those last DSs with Black and White. It’s not going to be a huge technical leap above the previous game. So we’re going to kind of do something different with it to kind of set it apart. Going from Diamond and Pearl to Black and White is interesting because Black and White is kind of like, what if Pokémon was a bit more of like a regular JRPG in terms of like how we approach like narrative and character. Like up until this point, we’re still running on that kind of bare bones logic of like, there’s a very simple narrative. You’re going across this world, meet these guys. You do kind of like a little story as you go. But Black and White was the first time they were like, OK, characters are much more central to it as an experience. And I think obviously it’s going to be less than it will be like if you’re like a Final Fantasy veteran at this point. But it is interesting to see how this one takes a bit more of a turn to the cinematic. The premise of this one is that the villain has essentially created his, like conditioned his own Pokémon protagonist. So you have this character called N who is like essentially your rival figure. But what kind of makes it a bit more interesting in terms of the wider kind of mythos of Pokémon is that he is like a figure who has been created to be a protagonist. There’s almost like a meta angle where the villains of the Pokémon world realize that the most powerful thing you can be is a 10 year old boy who loves Pokémon. So they create like their own version of that. So you’re kind of like crossing paths with this other figure as you go. It kind of like switches things up. So as you go to the Elite Four at the end, spoilers for this game that’s over 10 years old, like the villain, like the kind of villain like force in this game kind of takes over the league and it changes it into this big like castle dungeon that feels very Final Fantasy. And it’s a bit more set piece to this one. It ends on like a big set piece where both of you have to like get your own legendary dragon and it’s you and this rival and you’re kind of unopposing ends of this conflict. But you both have the same kind of like attitude. And this one, I mean, Pokémon Games will never be story first, because the story is you in this world catching these Pokémon. But this was an interesting one that feels like they were stuck in this generation and they were like, what can we do to shift, like switch this one up and make it kind of a bit more like apart from the other games. This is why you needed a Pokémon fan reviewing this game, because I literally wrote down this quote from my review because it made me laugh how dismissive I was. This is from my Black and White review. It just said, well, the yarn is the same old garbage. Yeah, and ultimately, the story is the adventure you go on. But I think this felt like the one they were like, let’s try and be a bit more cinematic. There’s cutscenes and stuff and it gets very, the story takes over the classic progression, which feels a little bit like, I mean, in terms of other video game series is not that dramatic, but in terms of what you expect from Pokémon, pretty exciting. Okay, I definitely didn’t get that context within Pokémon. In the context of all games, it’s still a yikes from me. It’s still a game for kiddies, sure. It’s still a yikes from me, Matthew Castle, very good. I didn’t know it was, is that a widely held opinion? I think so. I think black and white has become the ones people love online. So they actually followed this up insanely with black and white 2, which were just two separate, like second releases, which they released at the very, very tail end of the DS. And that was like, we’re really shifting these last units. And then black and white 2 takes all that, does a sequel story that follows up on the original story, and then ends on a massive end game where you have a world tournament that brings in every major character and protagonist and villain from all the previous games to have this big tournament arc. So I actually think black and white 2 is the big, if you go to like the long term Pokémon fan, they’re like black and white and black and white 2 of this like amazing duology. And I suspect we’ll see a remake of them eventually just to bring them into the modern day. Because again, they haven’t re-released any of these DS ones in their original forms. Well, maybe I will replay them and re-appraise them. You liar. Absolutely fucking liar Matthew Castle is there. I’ll tell you what though, Jay, I do appreciate, this is why I want you on the episode, because that’s the kind of perspective that me and Matthew couldn’t provide. So I appreciate the detail there. I don’t know that about Black and White. I did describe Snivy or Snivy, I don’t know how it’s pronounced. I think it’s Snivy, yeah. The grass Pokémon from Black and White, as having the air of Richard E. Grant about him. Very good. I don’t doubt this is a great piece of writing Matthew. It’s not, it’s dog shit. It’s like a review I remember being out of my depth on and like, oh boy, I’m just going to have to take a swing at this and offer my honest opinion. I gave it like 88. That’s why I can tell it’s bad, because I don’t like Pokémon and I still gave it an 88. That was me guessing at what a Pokémon fan would like. That’s how I felt when I had to review PES 2008. It was a tough time for Oksana Roberts. Great boots! The ball really goes in this one. So, yeah, Jay, I want to move on to the next category before I throw these. So, the best world to discover. Hit me up. This is a heart pick. Ruby and Sapphire was like… So this is the jump to Game Boy Advance hardware. Up to this point, so like, you know, red and blue and gold and silver, they were going for an aesthetic that’s kind of like not quite rural. Like rural Japan meets a little bit of like urban Japan. And Hoenn region was then being like, let’s do some, you know, this is like a full color hardware. Let’s do some fun stuff with this world. So the world of Hoenn from Ruby and Sapphire is my fave. As technology has gotten a bit like more advanced, like games like Sword and Shield by necessity have to be a little more linear. I think the apparent, like the linear nature of the world becomes more apparent, the more like high fidelity they are. You know, they’re not using a tile editor to like do this world tile by tile. There’s like, they’re a little bit more limited in kind of like the exploration aspect of this. I feel like Ruby and Sapphire was a point early on where like, you were still in that sense of like, Pokémon can be quite mysterious and it’s still a little bit more challenging than it would be later on. But also like, you can like do a cooler, do cool stuff with that world. So this starts you off in like your towns and then you’ll kind of like see yourself going through like kind of like a volcanic marshes and rainforests, which are really cool. And a big aspect of this world is this big kind of open ocean that has all these islands and stuff. Part of the love for this is that this is the point where they were like, we can start hiding cool stuff in the world. So Ruby and Sapphire came with a manual that has a Braille alphabet. And then a part of the end game of this game is finding ancient like tombs and deciphering Braille to uncover these like ancient legendary Pokémon who look like the Regi. And there are these ancient like stone titans that represent like the Stone Age, the Bronze Age. You’re like opening this like handbook and like you’re like deciphering things and going back to your game and solving these puzzles. And there’s an aspect of like going out into the world and finding weird like ancient mysteries. You know, there’s a point where you go to this big tower that’s not even it’s never you’re never like instructed to go to it. You travel up this like crumbling tower that has like floors like floors that like fall in. And then at the top you get like Rick Weiser, who is this big legendary dragon. And there’s just this thing really appealing to me about this world that’s kind of like it’s very varied in terms of the environments they can take you through and the towns they take you through. But it’s also early enough that they can like spend like development time on like hidden stuff and like kind of like hidden aspects to this world. Make it feel like it’s tapping into that early sense of like this is a world that there’s lots in there. Don’t know if either of you have experiences in this one. This is this is definitely the lull between Pokémon being huge and then kind of like having its resurgence. Yeah, I sort of missed this one. But I had like a sibling is very, very into this generation of them, particularly Emerald just massively into that one. And I was like, do you have like your own little homestead in like a little cave that you can live in? Yeah, this is this is so there’s a really cool system in here. This is something that never really got brought back. So you can in the game, like in the cliff like walls that you like pass, sometimes it’s like a crack in it and you can create a it’s called like a secret base. And it’s like there’s like a little decoration aspect where you can place like decorative tiles that you get throughout the game. But what is super mega cool is that so obviously they have like trading up to this point. They don’t have online yet, but they had something called like I think it’s like shared data where you connect to a friend’s account, like a friend’s game with a link cable. And it then populates the world with your secret base and places an NPC of you in the world with the party you had at the time that they can fight. So suddenly the world and this is like a pre internet game is like being changed and like adjusted by the friends. And like you can like fight your friends and like level up fighting the team they had. And then if you share with someone else all the friends that you have transfer as well. So like there was definitely I remember a playground aspect of this of like pretty if you like did the right link ups then everyone in the playground who had the game could then like populate your world. I think that’s a really cool idea. They never really brought that back in the same kind of way. Is that still in the 3DS one they did Jay? I don’t know. I haven’t played much of the 3DS one. I part of the pick of Ruby and Sapphire for the world is just the aspect of you know, like this is an easily accessible one now as long as you have a 3DS because you can get copies of that. That probably go for like a hundred quid now in CEX. But it’s technically an accessible game with the remakes of Alpha Ruby and Omega Sapphire. Or maybe it’s the wrong way around. But yeah, but I don’t know for sure if they have this feature. But I remember this being like a big cool aspect of like it’s just like clever engineering. You know, that’s like a really, it’s really cool that they had something like that so early on. It’s like what if someone visited your town in Animal Crossing, brought their house with them, never left when they disconnected, and you just went over and beat the shit out of them over and over again. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s good. No, that’s cool, Jay. And I agree that like the I thought the GPA art was just lovely. That was like maybe peak Pokémon art times. Like I said with the DS one, like it just looked really, really nice. So yeah, good pick. So your next category, Jay, talk us through it. Best roster of monsters. I guess like the question is like what makes a good Pokémon. Is it like the art director James Turner, who is I appreciate because he’s also a lanky British man who draws little guys. He said Pokémon have to look like a friend. And I love that. It’s such a cute like summation of like what is a Pokémon. Does Mr. Mime look like a friend, Jay? He looks like someone’s friend. I don’t know what kind of friend, but someone could be his friend. This got to be the original ones though. There’s something so enduring and iconic about like the generation one of Pokémon. And I think they know it because they always keep going back to it. And every time they go back and like add new forms and new like evolutions, they always do it to the original. It’s quite impressive how few of these were misses off the bat. Like you talked about like Voltorb is crap. But like they got like they managed to like get like a big kind of a kind of range of designs. And they really there’s not like a syndrome. There’s not like a sense of like an early design syndrome where they it was a little bit wonky to start with. And they kind of figured out like three games in. They like knew very early on like what like a Pokémon looks like and what it should feel like. I think there is something like impressive about that. I think there’s something impressive that like by and large they haven’t shifted too far from this original like Batcha Monsters. I don’t know what’s either of you have like a strong takes or feelings on the classic Batcha Monsters. I think at the time I thought like I was a mix of intrigue and finding them a bit strange Pokémon when I was a kid. But I do think that over time when you see, for example, Bulbasaur turn up in that Detective Pikachu movie, I think you said to me Jay, that was a big moment for Bulbasaur people. It was a big moment for Bulbasaur. He looked great. I think those have endured as like, I don’t know, they are part of the sort of pop culture canon, I guess. I find them endearing. When the Pokémon trainer was in Smash Bros Brawl, I thought it was awesome that the different starters were in there in different forms. And I thought that just showed that those were kind of immortal. And if anything, I think that it’s very much a diminishing returns on the new Pokémon. Like I’m very, I always think the legendaries look cool, but I think that some of the basic bitch Ruratata and Pidgey style Pokémon are a bit like, just kind of get weaker over the generations, sometimes highly variable. I don’t know if you agree with that. Yeah, I think it’s also interesting as well. So if you look at other games like, so if you take like Final Fantasy, what they’ll do is like redesign this monster can look different in this game based on the world of that monster. And there is actually something very specific about Pokémon where they like, right, Pikachu always looks like Pikachu. He loses a little bit of weight over time. But by and large, he’s Pikachu. That guy went on a diet for sure. They got him on Slim Fast. But by and large, they’ve like stuck with it. And I think you’re right in that there’s diminishing returns and you can see them trying to like tackle that. And one of the things they did like in the last, I don’t know, five years or so, is that they started introducing like the regional versions. So rather than introduce a new crap Ponyta like spin-off, they’ll be like, it’s a new version of Ponyta. It’s the same one, you know, but it’s like got a different fire. They’re focusing more and more on like different interpretations or like like variants on those classic monsters rather than add like a new type of character that you have to kind of get used to over time. The English Trubbish would just be a Trubbish with his guts torn open by seagulls. I actually I go for that for Trubbish. I think Trubbish gets a bad rap. But I think it’s just something there’s something admirable about the fact that they like nailed it off the bat and everyone still loves them. I think seal is crap. But by and large, I think you can’t really deny that the most enduring Pokémon designs are the original. As unexciting an answer as it is. I think they’re like I definitely have a bit of a place in my heart for gold and silver as well. Just because some of the weirder elements of that roster back when I was like, I just had my eyes on that game was just so so excited about it. They did seem very exotic and cool and interesting. Yeah, I think it also gold and silver’s roster kind of ties into that aspect of it’s a duology. A lot of them are kind of like evolutions or pre evolutions of the red and blue. And it almost feels more like this is the complete Game Boy set roster rather than it being two halves as much. Yeah, exactly. I think that is fair because they follow a lot of the same principles. Jay, what’s your best spin off title in the Pokémon series? So I could go for like a heart pick and then start talking about how great the Nintendo 64 Pokémon Snap is. But we have to mention Pokémon Go Mania, the summer of 2016, where everyone went nuts for Pokémon Go. I went on holiday to Stockholm just when it exploded and everyone was walking around with their freaking phones. It’s when I saw really old people doing it, I was like, oh yeah, this is massive. That was the moment it all kind of came together. I’ve not actually played one second of Pokémon Go. I have no idea what it actually looks like. It’s bizarre because it kind of became like the second wind of Pokémania in a more subdued platform specific sense. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why it took off as big as it did. I don’t have an answer on this one, but it was like it did. I remember them talking about this on British Morning Talk, like daytime TV, and one of the hosts talking about how they downloaded the APK for Android because it hasn’t come out officially on the European servers for Android Store yet, and about how mad that was. I did want to throw this one out there, but Pokémon Snap is a great one. Samuel, what’s your thoughts on Pokémon Snap? Why I liked it was the N64 games really vividly let you see more of what the Pokémon world you imagined was in the Game Boy world. Even though it’s really basic to play Pokémon Snap now, and obviously there’s the new Pokémon Snap on the Switch, which is far nicer looking, I do think that this was the thing. It was kind of crossing the world of the anime, getting you closer to the world of the anime and the world of the games combining, I guess. I liked that about it. It’s just quite a nice game as well. It’s quite passive. It’s a good fit for Pokémon. It’s a good idea for a spinoff, basically. Yeah, it definitely ties into what we talked about earlier, where everything was Pokémania, but also the games are a blank slate. And the appeal of this was like, this is a game that is a more real version of what the Game Boy is only able to portray in a limited sense. It takes you around little ecosystems and you see all the Pokémon moving about and stuff. And you’re right, it’s a very simple game. It’s a very short game as well. But at that moment in time, that was like the perfect kind of spin-off they could release. I also got a shout out to Pokémon Stadium because that kind of does a similar thing where it has an expansion pack for the N64 controller where you’d plug in your cartridge from the Game Boy, like one of your Game Boy games and load in your Pokémon. And it’s essentially a way of like battling with your friends but in like the HD equivalent of like the Blurry and 64 graphics. So something really cool in terms of the technology of like plug your Pokémon game into this other Pokémon game and use it as, I guess, like in the title, as a stadium. So you can like battle on the big screen. It takes it closer to the experience of like what the anime looks like. I think that’s a really clever usage of like the console platform, like the home console. Like rather than going for like, we’ll just do like a console RPG. It’s very interesting that they kept the main series to the handheld. For sure. No, I agree with you. That’s a good fit. It has some fucking weird minigames as well, Pokémon Stadium. So, Jay, we come to the final category here. The best retro title in the series. So really curious to see what you pick here. You’ll probably agree with me on this one. I think Pokémon Gold Silver is a really good… If you’re someone who can stick it out with the old-timey kind of inputs and kind of like the text size and stuff of Game Boy games, Gold and Silver holds up really well. I think Gold and Silver has become, in terms of the wider canon of fandom with Pokémon, has become the one people remember the most fondly, maybe perhaps more than Red and Blue in a sense. There’s just something about how this looks. This was the point where they jumped to a Game Boy colour. So you go from this very kind of like monochrome, simple style on Red and Blue, to this very rich coloured, unique looking game. And because again, essentially because it does contain the whole world of Red and Blue, it kind of covers all the bases if you were to jump into an old one. What did you make of the remake? Hard Gold and Soul Silver, I actually think, in terms of the DS titles, I rate them really highly. I think the DS titles look really good, because this is the point where they’re still using pixel art for their characters, but then you’ve got this kind of 3D world that adds some perspective. I mean, bringing this back to Cassette Beasts, the look of Cassette Beasts looks more like Pokémon Diamond and Pearl than anything, because we’ve gone for a modern day take on 3D worlds with pixel art characters, just because I resonate with that so much. So if you want to jump into a classic game, you can get the DS one, but then you could also go hard and go straight to the Game Boy Color one. I think this holds up really well. Of the ones I’ve played, HeartGold, the remake, is the best one I’ve played. I thought the pedometer was a really good match for it. I feel that had a big boom behind it, because I remember that being really popular. It does make sense, the idea of putting the thing in there, and the idea of when you were out walking, it was benefiting your creatures in some way. I thought that was a very neat thematic match. Yeah, it definitely goes underappreciated how much they use interesting hardware to aid the core experience. But it never changes the core experience, you know? The pedometer or plugging it into your N64 controller, or using the link cable in weird ways, they always use it to aid that core experience. And I think that’s really interesting. There’s something quite admirable. And even though, as I said before, that Pokémon feels quite separate from Nintendo, that joy in finding new ways to interact with this world they’ve created feels very Nintendo. There is something very Nintendo about that. A combination of Pokémon Go mania and spiking retro prices is made like heart gold and soul silver really expensive to get hold of, I think. So if you don’t want to spend that, 3DS can just download a virtual console version of crystal gold or silver and you can send your Pokémon from that to the future into Sword and Shield via quite a convoluted combination of Pokémon-related apps, but I did do it a couple of years ago. It cannot be understated how complicated it is to shift generations. You need to do subscriptions to services that might not even exist anymore. I actually tried to do this maybe in like 2019 and it was extremely difficult. It is wild though to like, this was really depressing, but I took my Pokémon Yellow Pikachu and sent him forward to Sword and Shield and like it left the trainer in that yellow with no Pikachu, which is the founding feature of that game. Where’s my friend? So I entirely stripped his like roster of Pokémon, like his Charmander, his Bulbasaur, all that, they were all gone. And all he was left with was like one fucking Rattata and like no Pikachu to interact with. And I just thought that was so bleak. That was like big kind of Jesse in Toy Story 2 vibes to that. I’d like it if the Pikachu turned up in the new game and just screams at like the graphics of the world. Just can’t deal with being in 3D. Yeah, I was never meant to see this. Where’s my master? But yeah, they’re still really pleasant to play the Game Boy ones. So yeah, if you’ve got a 3DS, then definitely just go and get Crystal or Golden. It’s also understated that as the series has gone on, they have like stuck with this kind of like aspect of like, there’s a big epic, you know, like side plot going on with a big monster that’s on the front and there’s a team that has like, there’s an enemy like faction that has something going on with them. But I think there was something so simplistic about Golden Silver and Red and Blue where the pitch is, you’re going on a journey because you want to be a cool Pokémon guy. Your rival is a bastard because he’s stopping you from doing that journey. Team Rocket are bastards because they’re slowing you down. Everything is just about this core story. They’re not like muddling it up and kind of over complicating it with lore about like ancient monsters and stuff. They’re just really going for that core. You go on this journey. Everyone that slows you down is your enemy. Go nuts. I think there’s something kind of like beautiful about the simplicity of that. It is iconic like what a bastard the original version of Blue slash Gary is where he’s like he’s got his own theme tune which tells you this guy is a bastard and like his little sprite models quiff goes from side to side when he walks just to remind you that he is a bastard. And then when he fights you, he’s just a complete dick. And you’re like, OK, yeah, this guy is a bastard. And I think that’s like, yeah, elegant, like you say. Nicely done. Because the arrivals get too nice in the later ones, I think. They drop it as a concept basically after gold and silver. Yeah. And the one in gold and silver is a nasty piece of work too. I’m quite into that. So, yeah, thank you so much, Jay. Like, I think those are some great recommendations. Really appreciate you coming on and talking about something you know so much about. No worries. I don’t know if you had anything to add on Pokémon, like any closing thoughts. If you’re someone who tweets on the internet about how they should make a big boy one for you, just play other games. I guess that’s my only request. I think Pokémon is doing exactly what it needs to do. And I appreciate it in that. And also, wishlist my game. That would be really nice. Yep. So Cassette Beasts. And you’ll be able to play that on Game Pass and PC and consoles. It’ll be good. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jay. I’ve had a great time. Always do. Oh, awesome. Thank you. We’ll definitely have you on down the line to talk about something that isn’t Pokémon or Sonic. Something good next time. What awful franchises can we dredge up? Matthew, do you have any closing thoughts on Pokémon to see us out? Oh, God. If the answer’s no, that’s fine. The answer might be no. I’m still thinking about my little brother’s Pokémon called Flesh. That’s a good closing thought. So Jay has life advice for people who can’t get over Pokémon not being for big boys, and Matthew is still thinking about Flesh, the Pokémon doomed to stay on a Game Boy cart. Thank you so much, Jay. Where can people get you on Twitter? You can follow our studio at BYTTN Studio on Twitter. Yeah, don’t need to follow me. If you do follow Jay, then you’ll occasionally see me tweet Bionicle memes at him, just to kind of get his opinion on them. Best Bionicle Games is coming in 2025. I’ll come back to the podcast. Yeah, for sure. So the podcast can be followed at Back Page Pod on Twitter. You can send us the letters and emails for the show at backpagegames.gmail.com. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? MrBazzill underscore pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts, and we’ll be back next week with an episode that isn’t about Pokémon. Thank you very much for listening.