The 20th anniversary of the Japanese release of the original Pokemon came and went this week, and just about every outlet and podcast that I frequent posted their "Pokemon origin story," so I figured I'd go ahead and lead this post with my own.
Shortly after graduating college, I totalled my truck. Now I know that QA testers live baller lifestyles these days, but back then, my only choice was to get a bus pass and a Gameboy Color. After finishing Links Awakening DX and playing the excellent Mario Golf (GBC) into the ground, I went to the internet to see what the top rated gameboy games were and came up with Pokemon Trading Card Game (GBC). That's right, a gameboy game, based on a card game, based on a gameboy game. However, unlike the all-too-painful Street Fighter: The Movie (arcade), it was an excellent game with thoughtful design and compelling gameplay, along with the hook of link cable play for card duels and trading.
An embarrasingly short time later, I was hanging out in card shops, running my Rain Dance deck against ALL the 6-10 year olds in my neighbourhood. I even retooled my work schedule so that I could get to the weekly Pokemon TCG league (it was held after school on tuesday and thursdays). Not long after that, I ended up picking up a copy of Pokemon Yellow and the rest is history.
Until the last few years. My Pokemon addiction peaked with HeartGold/SoulSilver and has slowly been tapering off such that I skipped Black/White 2 and OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire. I just can't be bothered to collect all 8 badges, beat the Elite 4, become the very best like no one ever was, and proceed to spend hundreds of hours breeding and raising Pokemon only to get destroyed online by little kids and neckbeard bronys (Pinkie Pie 4 Lyfe).
The formula has become stale, and it's unlikely that Game Freak will do anything about it. As this is THE super kid-friendly franchise, we can assume that when lapsed pokemaniacs fall off, there will be more than enough in the way of younger gamers to come pick up the slack. The only problem is, when was the last time you saw anyone under the age of 12 with a dedicated handheld gaming platform?
These games NEED to acknowledge the impact of increased smartphone usage and Minecraft on the gaming habits of today's kids. Cater more to the established fans and give them more ways to enjoy the franchise, while leveraging Nintendo's unique market position, and appeal to the kids who think that video games are played by touchscreen alone.
While Sun/Moon was just announced, NX has been looming large over Nintendoland for the last couple years and it would be just money left on the table if these two weren't used to sell each other.
I would love to see a Sun/Moon companion app that allowed people to save multiple teams for wireless battle, along with some DeNA produced free-to-play games. If those games unlocked rewards in the 3DS games, there's that hook that Nintendo wanted to bring people to their core business.
Kat Bailey of USGamer suggested that the mainline series could/should undergo a major upheaval in allowing the player to become a gym leader after the campaign was finished, so you'd have to pick your gym type, decorate it, build and level your subordinate trainers teams, take on challengers, and manage other city-building elements. Game Freak is pretty conservative with their core franchise, however, and if something like this were to be released, I'm thinking it would be in a spin off.
Call the console game "Pokemon World" (because it's more pithy than "Pokemon Earth" and we should tie it in with Sun/Moon) and have people build and maintain different gyms, and have 3DS players go around collecting "World Badges" or whatever. Couple that with 4 player connectivity (for 3DS or smartphone) to the console version, and you have a great infrastructure for local battle, trading, or hidden info second screen games that would greatly expand the scope of the "Stadium" series of Pokemon games. We would get a new game type, the die-hards' hand held game is untouched, and Nintendo gets to sell everyone games on three platforms. Win, win, win.
Will it happen? Probably not. I've been a Nintendo fan longer than most, and I still have no clue what those people are thinking. Regardless, speculation is kind of the "third pillar" of videogame fandom, after playing games, and arguing with strangers about them, so I'd like to hear what you think Game Freak should do in these uncertain times. What is Sun/Moon going to look like? How can they use NX to support the franchise?
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