The Phenomenon of Pokemon

I realized today that Nintendo may have created one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time. Not only did they create a completely amazing game, but an entire culture as well. Today the door to this world was cracked open just enough for me to peak through slightly. I found there on the other side to be a completely active living culture, one that most of us are completely oblivious to. And I now find myself completely fascinated by the world of Pokemon.

From first glance, Pokemon in a children's game. It's a colorful cartoon with cute animal-like mascots. Cheesy inspirational themes are played in the background while "life" lessons, like playing fair and doing your best, are being taught. We dismiss the game for it's appeal to kids and lack of maturity, but underneath the consumerism and marketing lies a game full of depth and strategy. I was given the task of putting on a Pokemon tournament today. I have had no previous experience with any of the iterations of the Pokemon games and have only seen a couple random episodes here and there. But because of the Pokemon Battle Revolution's ability to link up to the DS, Nintendo asked our store to hold a Pokemon tournament in order to demo the new software. Players that showed up today could load their Pokemon that they had captured on their own time onto the big screen to battle it out via the Nintendo Wii. The players would then battle it out using their DS taking turns selecting their Pokemon of choice and also which attacks to use. I was completely amazed at the depth of the actual combat. You really have to have knowledge of the Pokemon before even beginning to think about battling someone. There are all sorts of attacks based on their "type." There are 17 types of Pokemon each with strengths and weaknesses against other types. With the list of Pokemon now up to 493, I found that to be an overwhelming amount of information to remember.

Before the battle each player basically gets to look at the others hand. Out of all the Pokemon they have captured, they can now see which six each one is carrying into battle. This is where the strategy element comes into play. Depending on how the rules of the tournament are set up, each play must secretly pick which to battle with. So in this tournament we chose three Pokemon. So now it becomes a mini game of chess to see which ones you want to bring in and also to try to foresee which your opponent will bring. You could stack the deck and assume that they'll choose certain ones and try to pick ones that will counter those. Or you could bring in the most well-rounded and try to prepare yourself for anything. It was really quite interesting to see the kids make decisions on which strategy they wanted to go with.

Because of my lack of Pokemon knowledge, I made the mistake of allowing "Legendary" Pokemon to be used in the tournament. And although we set the rules to make all the Pokemon of the same status level, by the name Legendary one can tell that they are more powerful than others. I assumed that if anyone had put in the effort of tracking down one of these Legendary Pokemon, that they should be allowed to use them. But of course, thanks to the magic of Action Replay and other cheat devices, it turns out a pair of brothers had the most powerful Legendaries, some of which were not even obtainable in American but only in Japan through promotions, and used them to quite swiftly take out all the other competition. Now here is where I was completely blown away. The kids didn't complain. Although they were completely over matched, it seemed like they were being called to the challenge to face the overwhelming odds. It was as if they knew that to become the True Pokemon Master, they would have to overcome something like this. Every time someone would lose, the others would crowd around and pat them on the back for a good match well played. In between matches competitors would discuss strategy and which Pokemon they should bring out against who they were playing next. Some would have practice battles while others would negotiate trades. At one point a kid exclaimed, "I'm so glad I came today, I just got a ______(insert rare Pokemon name here)" The social aspects of the tournament were probably the most surprising. When everyone showed up they were complete strangers, five minutes later they were all part of this secret society, chatting it up while their parents stood around listening to the foreign language their kids were speaking in.

In the end, the brothers won first and third place. Miraculously, someone at the tournament through their extensive knowledge and skill was able to beat one of the brothers and had the tournament within his reach against the other in the finals. Unfortunately the odds were too great for him to overcome and he won second place. After the finals, the younger of the two brothers immediately turned around and looked at me to say, "See, I told you I would win." I was a little upset at the way the tournament played out and felt responsible that I let such an injustice occur. But then I looked at the boy that won second place. He was surrounded by his peers. They recognized the importance of the accomplishments he had achieved and they looked up to him. He had much more than a cheap victory obtained by hacked Pokemon. He had everyone's respect, including mine. I went up to him to award second prize and apologize about how things turned out. He looked at me, smiled and shrugged. "That's OK," he said. The boy next to him maturely added, "We had fun!"

I know sometimes we look at life and it seems unfair. But that's only because we look at it narrowly and only at the present. Over the long haul, I think that everything works out, as long as we put in the effort to make changes towards fixing things. Thanks to that kid's second place finish, I've been inspired to become the best Pokemon Referee that I can be. I put in the effort to study all the Pokemon and the Rules and you can bet that the next time there's a tournament, it'll be fair and that things will turn out the way they're supposed to.