What made pokemon a global phenomenon? Why didn't we see this happen again with another series?
Don't know, don't care. Next thread.
>>12484743You weren't there, got it.
Kid's media has been chasing the dragon You can't just make pokemon disappear It lingers and haunts above the media that came afterShaping it through market analytics and evolving demandsPurity has been lost and can only be reclaimed in fire
>>12484753If you have to ask such asinine questions then that says more about whether you were "there" or not (you weren't)
>>12484743You cared enough to reply.
>>>/vp/
>>12484857That's about the fandom more than the game
>>12484753You weren't there either if you can't explain it.
>>12484689>Why didn't we see this happen again with another seriesfortniterobloxminecraft
>>12484898That's some flaweless logic there.
Shallow thread
>>12485059It's/tg/ esque
>>12484689For one, it's a solid jrpg and that genre has very wide appeal that stretches into people who don't normally play a lot of games. Tied into that is the setting and anime that went along with it. That was when anime was really starting to blow up in popularity and a modern setting is also more appealing to average gamers than the fantasy settings of most other jrpgs. Next was the inherent trading and battling aspect made playing the game feel like you were a part of a community which increased that even more. It wasn't just a game you played, it was a game you played along with people you knew and interacted with. That was increased by it being portable, so it wasn't just a game you went home and played alone, it was a game you played beside other people and you saw all sorts playing it all over the place. I was in university at the time and the games were huge, it seemed like half the people in any given class were playing it, boys and girls alike, and if you saw someone with a gameboy it was a good bet it had Pokemon in it. I actually met one of my best friends that way because I spent a ton of time hanging out in a local coffee shop in those days and there was another dude, a few years older who was also a daily regular and was usually working on a book he was writing and would go out for smoke breaks and when he did he'd pull out a Gameboy and indeed it was Pokemon. That broke the ice and we found out we were also both massive Star Wars nerds and the rest is history. It really was a cultural phenomenon, even my mom got into it. She went off to teach English in Korea and I would get calls at like 3 in the morning because it was mod day there and the whole conversation would be "Hi! Does my Cubone want learn Focus Energy?" I'd say don't bother and she'd just say thanks and that would be it.
>>12484743>it's the "have a meltdown about thread topics and accusing people of being spambots" anonHow was your day?
>>12485049Guess you weren't there
>>12485014/thread
>>12484689>PAYING LESS FOR PRESCRIPTIONSwhat did they mean by this?
>>12484689>What made pokemon a global phenomenon?Sodabrained millennials
>>12484898to be fair i was there and don't even know why i liked it so much but reflecting back on it its probably that i was young enough and the anime really knew how to trigger strong emotions in me like when pikachu fight the spearrow,the charmander under the rain,the movie with mewtwo,the episodes with the psychic who turned her parents into doll spooked me a lot and stuff like that really struck a cord in my soul so i will always look fondly on pokemon.
>>12485082glad you and your boyfriend are still together after all those years anon.
>>12484689Timing.Pokemon appeared right around the time when interest in Japanese popculture was budding worldwide, but modern Internet was also just starting so availability of Japanese media was pretty limited.It also absolutely mogged all the 80s and 90s toyetic franchises from USA that basically spend like two decades copying the same concepts over and over again.But this was the stunt that could be done only once and only at that specific time. After Pokemon everyone tried to import more Japanese shows and while something like Yugioh and Beyblade stuck around, everything after that was just a fad no different from USA-created slop from the 80s and 90s. And more widespread Internet and understanding of foreign cultures made the novelty of exotic media moot and gone, too.It literally cannot be recreated, the environment that made Pokemon work is long gone.Maybe in few hundreds of years, when current world order will die and countries will be again more isolated...
>>12484689Tamagotchi had just come out as this virtual pet. Then pokemon comes out as this handheld adventure. And you get furby and digimon and so on. Pokemon has the anime that in many moments copies the games. It just clicked and worked and was fun. Rock paper scissors toy. Fun. Period.
>>12485285Lol. Ironically though we were both competing for the same cute coffee shop girl for a while. It used to be a prime hook up place, it was pretty common to hang out till closing and then go to the bar across the street with the staff. I miss the days when coffee shops were like that, covid pretty much killed it. That place closes at like 8pm now and every comfy chair has been replaced with these tiny purposefully uncomfortable ones so no one hangs out longer than it takes them to finish the shitty coffee.
>>12484689-triple threat of games, cards, and anime in quick succession-the perfect children's escapist power fantasy: don't have to listen to your parents or teacher ever again, instead go on an adventure with your friends, befriend and command being of immense strength, beat up bad guys, become a champion-excellent monster design: cool ones, cute ones, weird ones. absolutely everybody had a favourite-the pokemon that you keep on you (whether it was your party in the games, the cards in your pocket or just that toys you have) is your individual choice; it says something about you and appeals to kids' desire for identity-appeals to addictive collector mentality, especially the cards which are literally gambling for children
>>12484689Gen 1 Pokemon doesn't look very expensive, and the budget probably wasn't that high, but the amount of dev time invested into it was incredible.Around the time of its release, the average JRPG had a dev cycle of 1 to 2 years. Pokemon started development in 1990 and was released in 1996.The four extra years gave Gamefreak an incredible opportunity to refine the setting and gameplay, and particularly the designs of the original 151 Pokemon. As a result, it's one of the best first entries in a monster collector series to this day.It's also one of the best entry level RPGs ever, and you never forget your first RPG.Once the game had become popular through these merits, Nintendo took full advantage and made spinoff after spinoff to turn it into a massive multimedia empire. In particular, getting in on the ground floor of the emerging medium of Trading Card Games was crucial. Later on, it struck gold again by popularizing the AR mobile game genre with Pokemon Go.In short, they did every single thing right, and they did those things at the exact right time, and they got extremely lucky, over and over and over again.
>>12484689the anime
It was a well defined set of games with a gimmick that suited the medium perfectly, but most importantly, it scratched behind the ears of the growing autism population just right and cemented them as lifelong thralls with its multimedia blitz.
>>12484862Just like this thread
>>12485082Then the card game came out and people were bringing cards to school to show off. Then the movie came out and all the kids went to see it. It was like the perfect multimedia storm.
>>12484689The SNES was dried up, the N64 was tanking, and the Game Boy was where shovelware went to rot. Pokemon showed up when Nintendo was in a very bad drought of games and became the first killer-app in a while.
>>12487078> killer-appYou weren't around at the time.
>>12487090Oh, I was there. The Game Boy had fucking nothing through 96 and 97. Pokemon became the whole reason for its continued existence come 98.
>>12484689By the time it became a global phenomenon in 1998-1999 it had already been extremely popular in Japan for over 2 years and had built a ton of momentum with media outside of the games. So by the time the rest of the world got to experience it the foundation for the entire Pokémon monolith of merchandising was already basically done so it flooded the market and kids couldn't get enough of it. >Why didn't we see this happen again with another series?because we don't live in a mono-societal landscape like that anymore. If something is huge in Japan, everyone knows about it right away because we're connected to the whole world. The internet was still in it's infancy when Pokémon got big. For a lot of westerners it was the first time something from the east really took hold of western children and it scared the crap out of them.It's why South Park had that episode parodying it where it's brainwashing the children as Japan's revenge plan for World War II.
>>12487182> killer-appI too remember this nomenclature during the previous century, fellow historian.
>>12484689It was a great game, but also the perfect game for its era. When a handheld console (Game Boy) was relatively cheap and a bunch of kids had it (many more buying it for the game). The 90s, more than previous decades due to technology, had a trend kids carrying around little handheld devices. Tamagotchi came out in 1997, and already had been a fad in America among kids. Pokemon was brilliant for making a game that would become a social thing between kids, as was the plan from the start. It combines collecting, which all kids love, with virtual pets (already something people were getting into).On top of that, the anime actually aired a bit before the game here, so a lot of people started watching it and wanted the game because of that. Pokemon as a whole became big very quickly.
>>12487325>On top of that, the anime actually aired a bit before the game hereOnly very briefly before, to clarify. Both came out in September that year 1998, but the anime was out 20 days before the game - September 8th and September 20th.
>>12487325>The 90s, more than previous decades due to technology, had a trend kids carrying around little handheld devices.I think that's one reason you'll never see anything exactly the same. Smartphones and tablets do a million things, the era of carrying a simple handheld game and nothing more is gone now. You can't expect anything to get the same emotional attachment in this environment.That era of handheld toys/consoles was sadly a short moment in time that will never come again.
>>12487346>That era of handheld toys/consoles was sadly a short moment in time that will never come again.These are the sentiments that bring a lot of us back to this husk of a board. Its a common thing for generations to lament what subsequent ones lose, but there was a lot of magic in the 80's and 90's (even the early 00's, to a degree) that goes into this stuff beyond just choosing names from a list in an emulator. In a weird way, availability killed the medium to the point that environmental factors beyond simple nostalgia have become incomprehensible as time marches on. We can never go back to a world that no longer exists, but we can at least type about it on keyboards instead of touch screens.
>>12487325>On top of that, the anime actually aired a bit before the game hereYeah I remember seeing commercials hyping the anime before hearing about the game.
>>12484689Venusaurfags btfo
>>12487410>>12487369The anime at first also was a huge freaking deal here. It at first WASN'T actually aired in the kids block but at 9pm as the new quirky thing from Japan in a block where also other classic more "adult" animes were shown, like Akira or Ghost in the Shell.I vividly remember that's when I first watched the episode in which the find the group of Pikachus and Ash and Pikachu almost separate.
>>12488232What country? In America it aired at like 7am weekdays so kids could catch it just before school.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAEsVRp2vXk
>>12488237GermanyApparently Nintendo yet again kinda skipped over Europe at first and concentrated on America.That was still when Pokemon was mostly just known as "That weird show that caused seizures in some kids". It was not yet that big hit.I think it was RTL2, they had a weekly Anime night block where they would also air the latest Pokemon episode.Of course when Pokemania hit it was also quickly rescheduled to the kids block.
>>12488258Oh that'd explain it, yeah. I love this page from a UK video game magazine that was made after both America and Japan got hit by pokemania and it's just Brits seething because they don't have it. If memory serves, PAL regions got Smash Bros before they did an actual Pokemon game.
>>12488237in America, it was syndicated and had different airings depending on your region. Then it became a huge hit and kids WB bought it. Smartest thing the anime did was have the SS Anne episode be the first one. It shows off trading. It really roped kids into the concepts of pokemon right away.
>>12488269Brits hate everything that's not as grey and miserable as they are. Nothing new there.
>>12485014Pokemon was literally everywhere to the point where you turned on the TV, the anime played, you changed the channel, a news story about the franchise was airing, you changed the channel again, you saw a parody of it.You can't necessarily say that about that about those three games (though they are big), besides maybe Roblox, but only because it's embroiled in controversy... and even then, Roblox wasn't even an instant hit.
>>12484689The games are pretty good.It doesn't even feel like a Gameboy game. It has enough content to rival most PS1 game.What JRPG lets you access 151 fucking characters? It's also pretty open world. You learn fly pretty early and can go almost everwhere and if you can't its because you lack HMs. It's a game complicated enough to appeal to adults.
>>12489068Kids don't watch tv moron. Fortnite is all over youtube. You want to believe pokemon was bigger because of some weird ego thing but it's also a thing of you not being familiar with younger fanbases so you don't know what the fuck is happening.
>>12489376It must be hard to believe if you weren't alive at the time, but he's right. We're not even remotely in the same world that we were in the 90's.
>>12484689>Is it bad for them?kek, normalfags have and will take any opportunity to fearmonger
>>12489417I think Time Magazine even got to do an interview with Satoshi Tajiri and they tried their hardest to paint him as a weird creepazoid to the point that he now refuses to do any English interviews ever gain.
>>12484689Wasn't there? Fuck off.
