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00:00:01
Our Pokemania Experience
274 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, Fraser (Satsunami) is joined by Craig to discuss the phenomenon of Pokemania during the 90s. From the anime to merchandise, the duo discuss the long reach of the franchise and how it took the world by storm.
For more Satsunami content, please click here!
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Transcript
Introduction to Pokémonia
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Chat Tsunami. I'm Sat Tsunami and joining me to be the very best like no one ever was is my very good friend Craig. Hey Craig, welcome back. Hello Sat Tsunami, it's me, it's me. I'm cuter than Pikachu, cooler than Articuno and I take more lightning damage than Gyarados. It's Craig you see, how's it going?
First Pokémon-focused Episode
00:00:40
Speaker
Okay, that is all the time we have left for this episode.
00:00:46
Speaker
Oh man, I workshopped that for a moment. I hope that was the best intro I've ever done. No, no, okay, you get a golf cart for that. Thank you. Yeah, how are you doing, Craig? I'm doing pretty good, pretty good, you know. Busy life, good in lockdowns. I don't really have much else to say. Good, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be chatting about Pokémonia, so I'll throw it back to you. How are you?
00:01:10
Speaker
I am very well and very hyped to be talking about Pokémonia today. Yeah, I was just saying that before we came on, the fact that this is actually the very first Pokémon-centric episode of Tratsanami, which is really weird considering the amount of times that we've actually talked about Pokémon, you know, like very indirectly, like kind of referencing that for like childhood games and things like that, but not actually being like
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, today is an episode all about Pokémon, so this is like the redemption arc of Chatsunami, where we can go back and just focus on Pokémonia, which is gonna be great. So yeah, before we dive into it...
Global Phenomenon of Pokémonia
00:01:50
Speaker
Okay, I'm throwing you under the bus slightly now.
00:01:53
Speaker
I was just going to ask, how would you define Pokémonia to anybody who doesn't know? Which I assume that's like a very small minority of people who probably wouldn't. Yeah, I can't. It's bizarre to me to imagine that someone wouldn't know, but you know, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. People will listen to you, I'm sure they're quite a lot younger than us. So obviously Pokémon can have a big deal and
00:02:21
Speaker
When we were growing up, I think it was about 98, 99. That's the 90s, obviously. 1990s, not the 20s, 90s. Not Cyberpunk yet. And that, when Pokemon started getting big and it didn't get big, it got...
00:02:36
Speaker
gigantic it got it turned overnight almost into like a global phenomenon so much so we'll probably get into them on the episode but like it changed television like television had to change and certainly in the UK there was an entire TV show based on the fact that they had Pokémon shown and once Pokémon was gone that TV show collapsed you know it was all sorts of things it was so huge and so all-encompassing
00:03:01
Speaker
for just our childhoods basically and then one day it just kind of got up and left. So that was poker mania, it was kind of like Beatles mania but unlike Beatles mania there was a lot less screaming girls and a lot less good stuff coming out of it.
00:03:17
Speaker
it's just as weird to think that when we were growing up and again we're probably showing that age here by saying there was like our childhood in the 90s but yeah it was like it was hard not to see anything to do with pokemon like even bootleg things or it's honestly like you can like go two steps without like a child who had like a pokemon backpack
00:03:43
Speaker
had Pokémon gloves and Pokémon. Honestly, it was almost as if the world was just... Actually, I was kind of laughing about this earlier, but I do feel kind of bad for the parents at the time.
Pokémon's Market Influence
00:03:59
Speaker
I know we kind of, or not us personally, but I know you see people who give kids who like, let's say Fortnite or something like that, whatever's popular, they give them a hard time and say, oh I don't understand all this dancing and all this and that. But they probably, like our parents and anyone
00:04:17
Speaker
quite old at the time probably thought the same for us when we were growing up in Pokémon. And it's weird, it's something you don't see through the eyes of a child, but when you actually get older and you see these trends come and go, you're like, oh my god, I am so sorry. And it's amazing because the Pokémon
00:04:39
Speaker
Fortnite's a great example of what's kind of a great thing now, but Fortnite's still a game that has the dances and there's some clothing, but it's not how all-consuming Pokémon is. We'll get to each branch of Pokémon, but Fortnite has a lot of catching up to do in terms of just sheer merchandise before it can catch up with Pokémon.
00:05:05
Speaker
I mean it's true, it's like, this is actually a fact that I honestly never realised until I started researching this. But the fact that Pokémon is like the highest grossing media franchise, like far above like Hello Kitty, far above Disney and things, which is something that completely blindsided me because I was like,
00:05:23
Speaker
There is no way but if you kind of dial back to the 90s when it was all kicking off and just the kind of like the rise of it throughout the years it is something that's never really left has it? Well it's quite funny because we like when I was kind of I was doing something I was reading to you and I was looking at the stats over the years and there's always peaks and valleys
00:05:45
Speaker
but pretty much I'm obviously skipping way ahead in the timeline here but it doesn't go away but it does go out of like the public psyche for a long time and it's not really well that's not fair it goes out of like general mainstream popularity you know for a lot of the other games especially once it gets onto like the stranger
00:06:04
Speaker
DS consoles and it's not really until Pokemon Go that the whole nostalgia wave kicks in. It's like round two and if you look at the numbers, it's like the initial rise is when they make tons of money and then they keep making money, keep making good money and then Pokemon Go comes out and the company just turns into just a monster. That's when it becomes the greatest thing, the highest grossing thing ever. It's just an absolute monstrosity by that point. It's incredible how they managed it.
00:06:31
Speaker
I have to admit, it reminds me of, and this is going to sound like a weird analogy, but it's something I'm going to get into a bit later as well. But it's like, as we were saying, although Pokémonia, especially in the 90s, early 2000s, was by far at its peak.
00:06:47
Speaker
and then later on it started to decrease in relevance. Well not in relevance but I think the more other series came out they were quite similar. In fact it was something that I found out today that it's called the Mon genre or something like that.
00:07:04
Speaker
where it's like all shows that are very similar to Pokemon. So you've got like Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Beyblade, you know, the whole like collectathons kind of thing. So it was like the more those series were kind of coming along, the more saturated.
00:07:19
Speaker
the market kind of became. It almost reminds me of like a very tall person walking in like a swimming pool and it's like you know how obviously you've got the shallow end and you've got the deep end and it's like although the person's like walking like along the head is still above the water and it kind of reminds me of that's probably how Pokémon is.
00:07:38
Speaker
Like although there's all this kind of saturation around them, they've still got their head above water and they're still, you know, they still don't want to make a bad pun and say head over shoulders but, you know, they're just still above, almost, in that sense. And they never really got drowned out though, did they? Like even when the mania died and everything, which is unlike a month later, but even when that kind of died away, they never fell under, did they?
00:08:05
Speaker
No, and it's something like, even people that didn't follow Pokémon, they'll still be able to pick out what a Pokémon is, you know what I mean? Like, if you were to show someone that hasn't followed past Gen 2, Greninja, or like, the mega evolution Pokémon, they'd be like, oh yeah, that's Gengar. Well, you know what I mean?
Nostalgia and Pokémon's Lasting Popularity
00:08:25
Speaker
Pokémon still kept a quite distinct style, and I think that's always served it very well, and I think it's always remained somewhat popular. The games have always been good,
00:08:33
Speaker
like good enough to keep getting fans and there's always been a TV show that aims at kids so it's never going to vanish. Like I said it's really like in the last few years it's exploded once again, partly in fact the fact that our generation's old enough to have money to spend.
00:08:49
Speaker
I mean, I have to admit, I think that nostalgia definitely plays a large part in that. The fact that Pokémon was definitely its strongest during Generation 1, and just the fact that it is weird because whenever you see any remakes or things like that, they always cash in on the nostalgia. And I mean, look at Pokémon Go, as you were saying, that's like
00:09:11
Speaker
I think I came out in 2016, and when that came out, they focused solely on just catching Gen 1 Pokémon, so they didn't introduce that. I think they're doing it slowly through phases every couple of months for each generation, but when it came out, it was solely Generation 1. And I mean, it's a great marketing tactic. Don't get me wrong.
00:09:33
Speaker
as genius as opposed to, as you say, capitalizing that market of people that are going to A, feel nostalgic and B, have money to spend to kind of... I mean you don't have to spend money on Pokemon Go, but you know, if you're buying extras or whatever.
00:09:49
Speaker
you know it's quite a good tactic but that is something that and again I know we'll talk about this later but it is something that I think they've maintained to a high standard I would say in terms of like marketing oh yeah for the franchise so speaking of marketing though I'll let you answer this one first I was gonna ask like what was your introduction to the series
00:10:10
Speaker
back in the day and i don't even know if i can answer that like it's one of those things it just was there wasn't it like um that's really tough i actually don't have an answer for that all right i did that i did have a wee thing before we started and um for me it was just always there i can't think of a distinct moment where it happens i remember just being like um i've always i remember getting pokemon yellow
00:10:30
Speaker
on the Gameboy colour, how must it have been? That was the first Pokemon game I got, but by that point I already knew it. So I don't even know where, like, how big it must have been by that point. I don't remember if I've seen my first episode or anything like that. No, for me it was always just something I knew of. What about you? I am exactly the same, it's so funny you say that, like, genuinely.
00:10:49
Speaker
Right, I was trying to think of this as well and the earliest memory I can think of is when I was playing, I think it was definitely, I was the same Pokemon Yellow, which apparently came out here and I could be wrong on this but I think it came out in the year 2000, which I thought it came out earlier than that. I was convinced it came out in like 1997 but I think that was more the American
00:11:11
Speaker
not American sorry the Japanese release and I think it was like 9 to 8, 9 to 9 that Red and Blue came out and then it was 2000 that Yellow came out which was based more on the anime so I'm thinking that maybe I watched the anime first. Yeah 100% because that's where I am as well because I knew like Misty and like the other characters by the time I played the game
00:11:31
Speaker
yeah so like i'd already seen the anime by that point it's also i'm gonna point this out before i start it's so weird to call pokemon an anime like i know it is and i just do not consider it to be an anime in my head it's it's just a cartoon but obviously it's a weird one yeah because the weird thing is like you know how it's gonna end like i always remember there was a guy that
00:11:53
Speaker
and I'm not calling them out for enjoying that or anything but there was a guy who used to know in university who was still at the time really into the anime and he would be like oh I wonder you know if Ash will catch this pokemon or catch this pokemon and all I could keep thinking in my head was at the end of the day I don't really think it mattered like there's no real stakes in it you know that like not enough that you're gonna go oh I wonder like as a kid obviously you'll think oh what's gonna happen next but as an adult you're like
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, they're gonna battle, they'll battle Team Rocket, Team Rocket will bugger off, you know, that's it. You know, there's nothing kind of substantial. I mean, especially in the early seasons, it's really just to sell toys, isn't it? Have you gone back and watched it? Some of them.
00:12:38
Speaker
See, the weird thing is, I didn't watch the typical episodes, I just chose random ones that I actually don't remember watching. So one of them was about, I think the three of them for some reason go to this town to watch a magician, and then this weird magician starts hypnotising them with an executor, and then he nearly causes a stampede. It was like a surreal fever dream watching it. I was just like,
00:13:02
Speaker
What is actually going on here? And it sounds like such an old thing to say. It's almost like I've gone back to that period of time where my parents have probably watched it and been like, what is this rubbish? And there was another one where it was like two rival gyms and for some reason Pikachu really loves ketchup, which I'm like, I don't remember any of this. It's just, it's really, it's bizarre. Like have you gone back as well to watch it?
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, me and my wife would do a Saturday morning cartoon thing we would do. So on a Saturday morning we'd get a bowl of cereal and watch some cartoons and we did that. That's how we watched My Hero Academia. That's how we watched bits of Clone Wars. We did that. We did a couple of various shows and various things from adult shows like kid shows and stuff.
00:13:50
Speaker
And it was like, we only got like five or six episodes of Pokemon. And we're like, no, this is dreadful. Like, it was so hard to watch. And like I said, we're not we're not highbrow people. We're not we weren't sitting watching like 2001 Space Odyssey every Saturday morning. It was just supposed to be Schlock to keep us entertained in the morning. And like, yeah, it was literally we got six episodes. I'm like, this is bone.
00:14:12
Speaker
I don't understand how it's so boring and how I loved it so much which is quite fascinating to like something that I thought like the nostalgia might carry me and it did for like the first episode and then after that I was like no I'd rather sit and watch Yu-Gi-Oh or something
00:14:27
Speaker
But that's the thing, did you ever notice, and again I'm not trying to critique the Pokémon anime here, but did you notice how there's no stakes or anything to it? It just almost feels as if they're plodding from City A to City B and then they're just like, oh we met a random on the way and it's like, this is so dangerous for children.
00:14:50
Speaker
I know that's like a kind of common thing where it's like, oh, you're 10 years old here, take a fire breathing lizard. But like kind of like going on that point, I remember you and I watched the first Pokemon film. Like it was a good couple of years ago now, but we both watched it. And I think we both agreed as we're watching it. We're just like, yeah, this isn't very good. We're not as good as we remember
Impact on Animation and TV
00:15:11
Speaker
it.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, I actually want to give a little bit of context for this because the context is quite funny. I mean, Satsy used to do like a bad movie club and we'd watch terrible movies and I proposed that we watched the Pokémon movie. It's on like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic or whatever at like 30 out of 100.
00:15:27
Speaker
And people were indignant about that. People were very upset that I would dare call the Pokémon movie a bad movie. And I was like, no, it must be. And everyone's like, no, this movie was one of the greatest moments of our childhood. There's no way this movie's bad. And I think we all sat there in silence and just hated it.
00:15:48
Speaker
I think the ironic thing was after we watched that we moved on to the Digimon film which was even worse. Which is another chat tsunami in itself like honestly that film is just like a gold mine of just what is going on here but
00:16:05
Speaker
yeah it's just it's weird because even with a film like that and with the anime there was nothing that could stop it and it was actually when I was researching this I was also thinking of the infamous episode that fortunately never came over here called Electric Soldier Porygon which is of course the infamous one where I think it was 97 I could be wrong but I think it was 97 where basically the premise is that they go into the Pokemon PC to stop Team Rocket and
00:16:34
Speaker
When they're in there, they have to stop like a missile blowing them up and they're on the back of this Pentagon and Pikachu ends up like blasting it causing these like red and blue lights to start flashing but
00:16:48
Speaker
many of you probably know this already but this caused like a lot of like epileptic fits and convulsions and things to Japanese children and that actually that's quite an interesting thing kind of beside that that it actually affected the way animation was done as well yeah like it was something to do with the I think it was 12 hertz or something that the flashing was going up
00:17:12
Speaker
So they had to revise the whole way that they did certain action scenes and the frequency that certain patterns could flash across the screen. Because I think they had to edit the intro as well, because there was a lot of strobe lights at the beginning. Which wasn't carried over to our version of it, fortunately. But yeah, apparently that was the case. I don't know if it affected other shows like Dragon Ball. I'm sure I heard someone say that.
00:17:39
Speaker
Because that is also a very flashy show as well, with all the energy blasts and things. But yeah, it was so big that it actually affected the way that they did animation, which I thought was quite interesting. And it goes to show though that it wasn't like one of these shows that that happened and people said, oh, it's a tragedy.
00:17:59
Speaker
and they never touched it again. It was like Pokemon still kept going after that and it just shows the massive nature of Pokemon that is able to have something so horrible happen to these poor kids and then it's just like yeah yeah anyway the games just keep going. It's absolutely insane even though as we were saying the show doesn't really... I wouldn't say the show holds up
00:18:27
Speaker
I mean I've even seen clips of like the later ones and I just remember them being just the same really, just a different region. Can we talk about though, this might be about UK centric, apologies people don't listen, but can we talk about what surrounded Pokémon, the Pokémon show in the UK? Because there was an entire like kids TV show around it, I think it was called SMTV Life. Oh yeah.
00:18:53
Speaker
featured in megastars at Ant and Dec and Kat Dealey. They weren't all megastars at the time, we're just like low people. They basically based that entire show on the fact of, by the way guys, we have Pokémon and like they would dedicate a segment before the episode to Pokémon, they would dedicate obviously the episode of Pokémon and then they would dedicate two segments or a segment afterwards for that Ant and Dec would do different skits about Pokémon and it was like
00:19:16
Speaker
They dedicated like an hour to an hour and a half of a free kid's show to Pokémon. That was how huge it was. And once Pokémon, I don't know what happened to the actual show. I don't know if it was between seasons or whatever happened, but basically it stopped airing on this SMTV Live and then like the whole show collapsed. It's like ridiculous how fast it all moved. And that just kind of shows you that again, watching it as an adult, maybe not a big deal, but kids were not missing that stuff.
00:19:43
Speaker
You know it's funny you say that because I don't know whether it's the same show or not but there was definitely a Saturday morning one I always remember when they were in like Johto and everything and they basically I can't even remember what it was but they basically were doing like a it was like a top 10 episodes or something of that region and it was really interesting
00:20:08
Speaker
because it was like yeah we're gonna do like the top 10 you know episodes back to back and it was like that was crazy especially to me because it was like I mean probably it was more acceptable back then because and this is kind of a like context thing as well the internet wasn't as big back then I'm not trying to make us sound really old here but the internet was definitely not as big back when we were younger like I think
00:20:34
Speaker
it wasn't until like the early 2000s that we only got dial-up internet and even then it's not to the same degree as we use the internet nowadays. There was kind of like a mystery to it, you know? It's like what you got was what was presented in front of you and anything like beyond that was just like, you know, like schoolyard rumours, wasn't it? And Pokemon had a lot of schoolyard rumours but it came to everything to do with the games and the shows and everything like that.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like a double-edged sword, though, isn't it? It's like, on the one hand nowadays, you don't have to waste your time, like, going to Bill to, you know, talk to him a hundred times to access his card. You know, you can just look it up online, but back then, there were so many rumours and things where you could just be like,
00:21:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, if you beat the Elite Four a hundred times you can kind of remember, you know, you'll get a special like Digimon or something, you know, like really ridiculous over the top things that would not be considered like rational nowadays.
Pokémon Card Mania
00:21:38
Speaker
Back then it's kind of like, oh yeah, that could be possible.
00:21:43
Speaker
You can still find, what's it called again? Is it Angel Fire or something? What's the name of it? It was like some kind of early phone. Someone will put it up and chat. And it was like the early game rumors for them. And if you see if you Google nowadays, even just like Pokemon Cheats or Pokemon Silver Cheats or something like that, it will come up. And it was like people would put up things like, oh, if you do, yeah, it would be like 400 times the patch of grass next to Pallet Town, which is kind of wall open up, but you can catch level 100 muse in it and stuff. And it would be on the internet. So it must have been true.
00:22:13
Speaker
and like that was just like even that kind of fact checking was huge as well yeah i always remember the what would you call that art it's like would they use text to make like the big pictures is it asking yeah we would have that and it would be like i don't know if it was neo facts or something like that but you know it was like those kind of websites but yeah i know exactly what you're talking about and it was it was like you'd be navigating all of these
00:22:40
Speaker
weird websites just to be like is this true can you get a level 100 mu under the truck or whatever there was so many and that was the thing though because as we said there wasn't a really a reliable source of internet and everything yeah it just added to that mystery that you wanted to learn more about pokemon both through the world and through you know the games the
00:23:01
Speaker
like the anime the sticker card game yeah oh jesus the card game now i did you get into the card game it depends what you mean by get into it because um i collected the cards i think like most people of age probably did but getting into the actual deck building game no way and i actually um i can't remember i was a few years ago now i was when i was at uni i went back and actually got my hands on a copy of the um there was a gameboy colour trading pokemon tcg game
00:23:32
Speaker
It's actually really good. The card game is really fun. It's quite simple which helps me because I don't have time to learn how to do a meta game. I just like it when a game gives me the answers and I just feel really smart. I never played the game properly as a kid but actually playing it as an adult is really fun. It was funny to experience that
00:23:52
Speaker
A lot of the cards that we've held in high regard as kids were actually terrible, like Charizard, the Shiny Charizard, the mythical Shiny Charizard is actually a pretty bad deck card for how you have to use it. Well, one of the best cards in the game is the Chop. He was the front man of every one of my decks in that game.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, I was in exactly the same boat as you. I used to collect them and I think I've only played a handful of games in my life and they were like some of the worst experiences I've ever had. Like, I don't know if I've told you this before about the time I gambled away a chancy card, did I?
00:24:32
Speaker
I think you might have done, but let's hear it. So yeah, just to explain, I used to have a quote-unquote friend, which you can't see, but I'm using their quotes here, who challenged me to a Pokémon card battle. You know, like, oh Yu-Gi-Oh style. I challenge you to a duo and it's like, you know what, I'm gonna go for it.
00:24:51
Speaker
because I had this chance, which I think it was like a holographic card, which was pretty neat, not gonna lie. And I just like pulled it out like one of the packets recently. So he was like, oh, if I win, then you can have my Charizard. And he had like one of the OG Charizard cards, you know, the ones with like, you know, basically the ones that everyone seems to be obsessed with buying nowadays. Yeah, if you got a mint condition, one that worth like 25 grand or something.
00:25:19
Speaker
yeah something like that and I was like right I'll you know I'll fight you with this chance. Flash forward and spoilers I didn't win. Got my chancee taken off. I was told you know I like to think I was a bit braver than my parents accounts telling me that I was crying. I was not happy either way that I'd lost this card. So remember going up to school to this kid the next day being like oh how's you know
00:25:45
Speaker
how's my card doing and he was just like he basically turned around and went oh i traded that off and i've just had that like better resentment since then not even you know like i haven't spoken to him for years so it doesn't matter that was my next question because yeah so this is a bit of a spoiler this is a bit of a spoiler as people listen i'll tread carefully here not to give anyway any details but me and sachs actually went to the same school so i'm genuinely curious who this was and if i can get in touch with him
00:26:28
Speaker
Well if it helps it was primary school.
00:26:40
Speaker
We'll sort this out, we'll get them sorted, we'll get them to get you a chance to come. Yeah, this is like, this is honestly like the taken.
00:26:51
Speaker
doesn't like the taking, but it's like, I don't know who you are, but you have my chancy. Yeah, that chancy is long gone. I always just felt really annoyed at that, but I mean, it's just like genuinely something that's like, you know one of those things that is like, it's a very, what's the word, you know,
00:27:11
Speaker
it's like it obviously is a very first world problem it's not like it's not something that like a lie in bed at night kind of you know sleeping and then i wake up at like three in the morning and go i should have never bet that card just be like you're talking to someone like oh you know um i think i better have a chance on that you're like chance i fancy what have i done
00:27:35
Speaker
just sitting there, just having a break down. Yeah, but I mean, Pokemon actually got so big in our skill that, I mean, do you remember the band on Pokemon cards? I do, and I also think I remember the reason why.
00:27:53
Speaker
Well, basically there was criminal organization was started up and I was skill Around Pokemon cards to do with trading the cards for money trading the card for food and people being beaten up Like it became what I was organized crime happened and I was skill all because of like
00:28:13
Speaker
Some idiot brought in a shiny charger and that was it man, like the school was in a meltdown, a locking down the door and everything man, it was... That's amazing. In fact, I'll go one step further. I remember parents calling one another. I actually, I genuinely remember mum getting a phone call because people were like giving each other like cards and things and being like, is it okay for Satsui to have this card?
00:28:38
Speaker
Things like that, you know, because I don't want to give it away. It's like, is that OK? It was an utter mess. I don't want to give the impression that we grew up in like the the pokehood. No, but this is important because this is important to give you the impression of. Oh, yeah. This is how this is how important Pokemon was. Gambling existed in our school, like something that is illegal.
00:29:07
Speaker
It can't happen to no school because of how obsessed we were with Pokemon.
00:29:12
Speaker
It's like, genuinely though, you could not walk the playground without people either playing Pokemon, talking about Pokemon. I remember once I brought in my Pokemon stickers, which, it was basically just like, do you remember these books? It was like a big, it was a really hard back because all the pages fell out, it was like really cheaply made. But it was like, you bought these packs of stickers, a bit similar to the cards, and you would just basically fill up each slot. I mean, God forbid trying to do like something like that, given the amount of Pokemon now, you would need to like,
00:29:41
Speaker
he went into like a bible size but yeah it was like the original 151 and yeah i think i filled up the majority of it there were a couple see this is the thing there was a couple i was missing but it was so long ago that there was a thing at the back it was like a forum you could fill out
00:30:00
Speaker
It's like I'm missing this card, this card, this card or this sticker and it's like oh yeah you can send that in and we'll send you the stickers for money and again this is like long before the internet and things and it's just yeah it's surreal.
Cultural Reach of Pokémon
00:30:15
Speaker
In Glasgow they were doing um they would be meetups.
00:30:18
Speaker
for the for the books for the sticker cards and for the cards themselves and people would go to like the supermarket the supermarkets would arrange times and dates to turn up and trade cards like that was generally what supermarkets were doing never mind um you know that's how crazy it was like there was um things not even affiliated with it like by the way it could come in here and you can trade cards you can buy them while you trade them and there's all this stuff like that's how I just want to get that across because even the sticker book
00:30:46
Speaker
had such an impact on the UK. Because I even remember one of the, there was a shopping centre years and years ago where I think it had just opened and in one of the stores there, it was like really long ago, they were doing like events for like Pokémon cards. So it was like you could battle when they give you like a deck and everything and you would just you know fight with them.
00:31:08
Speaker
It wasn't great, it was quite boring. It kind of switched me off the game because, I mean, I think I was in the summer boat when I was more into the games. They were a lot more engaging and it was something that I could play on my own. I didn't have to like... I mean, I probably could have played the card game on my own but I don't... It's not like solitaire. You can't like run from table to table and be like, I activate my Charizard!
00:31:35
Speaker
It's not the same. Whereas the games you can just flick it on. And my god, can we talk about the merch though? Because this is a question you asked in the Discord when you said, what is the weirdest piece of merchandise you've got for Pokémon? And I was thinking about it, and I was thinking, oh, I had the games, I had the plushies,
00:31:58
Speaker
cards, the stickers. I even had like a bouncy ball that had like a Pokemon inside of it.
00:32:05
Speaker
It was really weird, but then also something I forgot was I had the marbles what yeah marbles I'm not even kidding. It was like normal marble. I need to see if I can take them out but yeah, they were like marbles but with like Pokemon prints on them so it would be I'll need to send you a picture of it, but it's like they would have like, you know, they'd have like the big marble that I'm assuming you flick the smaller marbles on. I don't know. I never really played marble
00:32:36
Speaker
because it was pokeball and it was just like they had that yeah and they had like the big pokeball that you could stick them in to like hold them it's like massive what else was there there was the burger king the gold cards do you remember them yeah that was when i looked up today because i was like i should remember what that was yeah that was some pretty pretty interesting stuff that
00:32:59
Speaker
I remember years ago watching a video on YouTube and I feel sorry for him but it was this like child literally a child like holding up like one of these Burger King golden things going like into this potato camera being like oh hey YouTube what's up I think I found this solid gold bar
00:33:19
Speaker
Everyone in the chat is like, oh dear, I hate to admit it, but that is literally part of a burger kind kids meal. It's not gonna be worth much. I mean, maybe nowadays, yeah, but not like, you know, not the worth of gold.
00:33:35
Speaker
Even though it has the protective sleeve, although it did come with a really cool pokeball holder. Yeah, it was the pokeball I can remember the most. That was the bit I was remembering when I gave it. I was like, I remember the pokeball. I couldn't even remember what was in it. It was the pokeball I can remember. Because I've still got that sitting out in one of my rooms. It's like, it was a really cool, just having it out. But yeah, like those kind of things. I'm just trying to think what else.
00:33:57
Speaker
I had some pretty weird stationery, just like Rula's. What's the thing? Is it a compass? She used to draw circles. I had one of those that was like thick yellow plastic with Pikachu on it. And it was like, that's a spike on the end of it. What kind of merch is that? That Pokemon went, you know what? I'm going to slap a sticker on that.
00:34:21
Speaker
I mean, do you remember the toys you used to get where it was like the small plastic ones, but you could stick a pencil up them? Do I be a pencil topper? I swear to God, it's better than the way I'm describing it here. No, it's not. No, because this is the thing. This is the incredible thing about Pokémon. A lot of it was just trash. It was not better than you were describing it. OK, OK.
00:34:47
Speaker
I mean, it's a bit like, so if anyone listening to this has a misfortune of following me on Twitter, you'll have seen the picture that I posted about, I think a couple of days ago, and basically I made a joke. It was like a before and after picture of me in lockdown, but it was like two separate, um, poly, um, figures. So poly was a Pokemon. Sorry, just didn't.
00:35:12
Speaker
just throwing that out there before like some person is just going, the devil is a bully world. So one of them is just like the regular mould you know it's just it's in a regular stance and the other one is just this huge chunky boy with like a metal ball underneath it and the idea was to made like these chunkier Pokemon toys where you just like roll them into one another.
00:35:36
Speaker
And I don't know what the aim was, whether you were supposed to knock them down or a genial don't know. All I remember was I brought them into school one day and they got taken away because I left them in the playground and I had to go to the, I think it was the prefect or whoever it was of that year, like one of the older students and I went to one of the classrooms and they were just sitting there and I had to take them back. But it was, it was like, yeah, it was like that moment of, oh God, somebody stole them.
00:36:06
Speaker
But that's the thing though, throughout that period of the late 90s, early 2000s, Pokémon was just inescapable. And I'll give you one more example before we move on. I remember I went on a family holiday too. I think it was Gran Canaria. I could be wrong, but I think I'm convinced it was. And I remember we went by this market. And you know how markets in some places are like infamous for having like bootleg things are popular.
00:36:32
Speaker
of like pop culture and one of them was they had these pokemon e cards and i knew they were fake i still wanted them for some weird reason but i knew they were fake and it was like they're a lot thinner like in terms of when you're looking at them and you put them against the actual cards they're a lot thinner um i'm convinced they're just a sticker like a really shiny holographic sticker just slapped on like a really poorly printed bag
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah, they were awful. But it just shows like everywhere you went, even when you went in holiday, just Pokémon was there. It was something that, yeah, it was just something you couldn't really escape and I mean, carefully to them. That's one of the things that really fascinates me because it's not just like some phenomena are quite local. You know what I mean? It would be UK specific or US specific. Like Pokémon is huge globally.
00:37:25
Speaker
And that always kind of bothered me because that was kind of like, we talked about like how it was so influential and all the time in terms of the shows that it got picked up with as well and stuff. This was worldwide and their marketing is so good. The Pokémon Company, this is so easily a worldwide phenomenon with like seemingly by accident. Obviously it's not by design. It's everywhere like no matter where you went in the holiday, no matter who you met, no matter where they were from, like everyone was into Pokémon at that point.
00:37:54
Speaker
They had a finger in every pie, didn't they? I mean, they had music, they had anime, they had the games, they had bloody marbles as I said, they had the card games. They had board games, they had their own Pokémon Master board game things.
00:38:11
Speaker
Oh, I remember that. Are you thinking of the same video I'm thinking of there? Maybe. I can remember. I actually had the game. Oh, really? Yeah. We played it like twice and I realised it was difficult. Didn't. So to speak, it was very difficult. No, it didn't hold up when we played it at the time. Like, there was even the books as well, wasn't there? Where it was just really short recaps of the episodes and it was like, Ash was bored. I'm bored! And you're like, okay.
00:38:42
Speaker
This is the level of literature I have sunk into! Nah, jokes aside, it's... yeah, they were IN everything. And as I said, it's this weird thing that just crept in out of nowhere. Because when I was looking into this, I don't know how big it was in Japan when it first came out. Like I've heard it was kind of moderately successful.
00:39:06
Speaker
like it wasn't the same level like up until I think the anime came out I think the games themselves were received alright and that's why they put all their eggs into one basket when it came to Gen 2 with Gold, Silver and Crystal where they just thought oh this is going to be our final game let's you know pour everything into this and it was quite interesting
00:39:25
Speaker
I remember, as we're saying, the hype being huge, you know, Pokémon being everywhere, and I remember there being hints about a second generation, like, you know, in the very first Pokémon film, they kind of teased other Pokémon, like, from other generations, but they never really addressed it.
00:39:42
Speaker
Like I remember one of the characters, remember the character that replaces Broke in the anime, Tracy something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he just had like a model, the big blue mouse and nobody addressed it. They were just like... Right at the start of the movie they fight Pikachu fighting Don Van, is it Don Van? Don Van it is, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like right at the start of the film it's like, oh this guy's a new Pokemon? Everyone's like, what? That's not in the 151 poster that I have in my bedroom wall.
00:40:11
Speaker
I mean like even if you look at the short that comes before the film I think there's one where it's like you've got snubble as well and you've also got togepi as well yeah which is just introduced and they never address it until they get to Johto and it's like oh yeah it's a Johto Pokemon it's like what no you can just introduce a Pokemon and be like oh yeah don't don't worry about it I'm sure we'll address it a bit like the whole GS ball thing but that's another topic for another day
00:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was just weird, but I always remember the only reason I found out about Generation 2 was I was at the cinema, and I can't remember what it was I saw, but long short of it was I went out, and they used to have like these three postcards that you could take. I don't know why, they don't do it anymore. Well, they haven't been in years, obviously, because of the lockdown.
00:41:01
Speaker
but they kind of stopped doing that. But I remember coming out as a child and looking at this rack of postcards and being like, what is that weird creature saying come battle with me or come explore Rotor with me? I was like, what even is that? And I picked it up and it was like all of these Gen 2 Pokémon on the front being like, oh look, Gen 2? Gen 2's here? The next wave of Pokémon? And it was like, oh my god.
00:41:28
Speaker
Mum! It's funny because I remember almost nothing from the animation side for Gen 2. I was kind of going through trying to figure out where was my cut off for Pokémon. Like where does Pokémonia end? And I genuinely didn't see Pokémon 2000 in the cinema as far as I'm aware. And I don't think I ever saw it till years later. And I think I'm not the only one.
00:41:54
Speaker
Because if you ask people, so I'll quickly go back a bit, if you go and read it at any sort of places, like a large Pokemon fan base, there's a term called a Gen 1er, and that's the people like us, mostly, who played Gen 1, grew up with it, and refused to accept that the series got better after Gen 1.
00:42:15
Speaker
And but the reason that's such a big thing is because I can name you probably all 151 Pokemon from the first gen and My wife has never played any of the games, but just was part of the general consumer She can probably know about 50 of them with like very little difficulty She couldn't name a single gen 2 one and I could only know about 30 off the top of my head like compared to There's so many like weird ones I know there's only a hundred but there's so many ones I just couldn't can't think of off the top of my head part of that might be the Pokemon rap, of course, but
00:42:45
Speaker
I was going to say, did you not sing that? Yourself went back in the day. Gen 2, by that point, the magic was gone. It was such a weird drop off the game. I stuck with the games for a long time, until the end of the Game Boy Advance. But I think Gen 2 didn't actually do as good as Gen 1, and then it just vanished a wee bit. But I'm skipping ahead a wee bit.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. I was going to say, like, I have, like, very irrefutable evidence of me seeing Pokémon 2000, because upstairs I've got two Ancient Mew cards sitting in the draw. Yeah, so it's like, that's my retirement fund, you know? If streaming doesn't pan out of that, that's what I can fall back on. But, yeah, it's like, I think they gave out the Ancient Mewes during that film. And I think I saw the third one. I'm sure I did. I can't remember.
00:43:39
Speaker
That was the one with Entei. And the Unknown, which I liked well enough. A lot of people say, oh, that's my favorite. And it's decent for Pokemon standard. It is decent. But then after that, I kind of dropped off because this is a weird thing. I remember, as we've been saying, Pokemon in the late 90s, early 2000s, absolutely massive.
Rise of Other Childhood Crazes
00:44:02
Speaker
couldn't turn without you know getting slapped by a Pikachu doll or something like that. The games I'm in a similar boat and I think a lot of people our age are very similar in the sense that they stuck with the games but when it came to the anime like we got through the Kanto and the Orange Islands and then I think we all kind of got halfway through Johto or you know like saw snippets of it and then all of a sudden that like
00:44:27
Speaker
we just stopped watching it. Like I honestly don't remember watching the end of the Johto series because I remember apparently at the end of the Johto one, Ash goes to the league and he gets his ass kicked by a guy who's got a Blaziken, which is like a Gen 3 Pokemon, and I think that was at the time when Ruby and Sapphire were just about to come out in the West.
00:44:47
Speaker
And, yeah, that's the thing. Like, I don't remember that at all from childhood, which makes me think that I probably didn't watch it up until that point. I kind of dropped it. And I think that, I mean, this is me speaking completely subjectively and anecdotally, but...
00:45:03
Speaker
I feel personally it's a combination between being bombarded by too much of Pokemon, which I know sounds kind of ironic considering it's like the most, you know, the highest-grossing media franchise now. So they've obviously done something right, but it's the fact that like other shows tried to capitalise and pull people's attention away. As I said at the beginning, you had
00:45:24
Speaker
Yu-Gi-Oh had Beyblade, Digimon and I mean there were just so many people kind of capitalising on that craze but then again see the 90s I mean the amount of like crazes that we went through I mean like do you remember off topic but do you remember things like Crazy Bones?
00:45:43
Speaker
Yep, you also mentioned one-off hand when we talked before with Crazy Frog. That was like different types of ironic ringtones. That was like early noughties. I don't even know what my ringtone on my phone is, it's been on silent for six years.
00:45:58
Speaker
Yeah, that was back in the day when you needed, or not needed, but people wanted like a very obnoxious loud tone. Yeah, custom ringtone. Can I just spin it back round? Back to Pokémon? I do have a question for you and I've been thinking about this today so if you do panic, throw it back to me. I do have an answer. Why Pokémon? So why not Digimon? Why not Yugioh? Why not Beyblade? Why not...
00:46:20
Speaker
I don't know what else was around that time. Why does Pokemon become so popular? What's your thoughts on that? Why is it? Because it probably wasn't the first. If I'm writing my knowledge, Digimon actually comes out first. So why do you think Pokemon was so successful?
00:46:35
Speaker
I thought you were just going to end that sentence with why and then that was it. Why? Why are we here? Why Pokemon?
Secrets to Pokémon's Success
00:46:43
Speaker
I suppose it was just the... and again this is me just saying like five minutes ago oh the saturation probably killed the mania but I think it was because it was so inescapable and everyone I feel as if Pokemon is almost like that cup of tea and a very British analogy I know but it's like you know how when you make a cup of tea for someone just to
00:47:02
Speaker
you know you don't necessarily have to make a cup of tea for someone but you say like oh let's go in and get some tea or coffee or whatever you know it's just like a you know a saying to like come for a chat it feels as if pokemon was kind of that thing for kids when it was like it was something that even if you were shy or
00:47:20
Speaker
you were. I mean, like, compared to me, like, Little Satsu was a very socially awkward, not many friends, kind of shy person. But when it came to Pokémon, it almost felt as if there was like a unity. Like, every kid could be like, oh, I like Charizard.
00:47:37
Speaker
Oh, I like this or that. It was long before the days of, you know, people complaining on message boards nowadays saying, well, the IV of Charizard is terrible. You know, like, it's long before that. It was just there was no internet or little internet. There was just it was just you, the other kids, and just being able to bond over this kind of just this real fantasy. And I mean, a lot of other series did do that. I mean, look at Dragon Ball.
00:48:05
Speaker
like you had kids not like punching one another but like pretending and everything i mean you had that you had beyblade as well you know it was just it was just something that i think considering the popularity of it through word of mouth and everything considering the games at the time were really well made and
00:48:23
Speaker
it gave you that sense of adventure. And I think the anime, although like we say nowadays it doesn't hold up, I think that it definitely helped to kind of foster that feeling, if you know what I mean, that feeling of wanting to know more about Pokemon.
00:48:40
Speaker
So it was like, you would see Ash fight a random, I don't know, Jigglypuff or Aerodactyl, you know, like any Pokémon. And you would want to know more and be like, oh, they're a cool Pokémon. Like, I mean, how cool was Mewtwo in the film? As bad as that film was at points. Like, Mewtwo is still like a really cool idea. And it's one of my favourite Pokémon, I would say.
00:49:02
Speaker
Ah, you touched on it. I was waiting for it. So, this is why you activate my trap card. This is why I think Pokémon was as huge as it was. Part of it, like everything you said is totally correct. But anything could have done that. Like, why was it not Yu-Gi-Oh? They had a game. They had an anime.
00:49:20
Speaker
And the thing that I think is so special at Pokémon is that there's 151 different Pokémon out there for the first generation and every one of them could have been someone's favourite. Like even though the game, the anime, we all experienced it the same, we all had different output from it and I think that's something that I don't think how to word us but I think it's something that's extremely special that even though the experience is the same for everyone it's also kind of unique. So like I'm sure you probably drew up a team of six Pokémon
00:49:45
Speaker
I do have a team of six Pokémon, they're probably totally different from yours. Everyone's got a favourite Pokémon. I actually did some notes for this episode and I was going to try and make a joke here, like, oh man, something's, you know, everyone's got a favourite Pokémon, can't believe someone's favourite Pokémon would be Grimer or whatever. And I couldn't think of a single Pokémon that someone probably doesn't like.
00:50:04
Speaker
You know what I mean? Every Pokémon is probably someone's favourite, especially from Gen 1 because there's so few. And I think that's part of the thing that really makes Pokémonia so crazy. Everyone has this kind of unique experience with Pokémon because of what they loved from it. There was something in there for everyone if you like cute little plant Pokémon.
00:50:24
Speaker
The big scary dragon, the almost godly power created by a man that hates himself and all the life in the universe you've got Mewtwo, you know what I mean? You've got this whole, this incredible spread of Pokémon. I think that is part of the big reason for me that why it's so huge is that everyone can personally connect it in some way.
00:50:41
Speaker
I think one of the interesting things I actually read about it was, and I mean, even like to this day, we're still getting like leaks of the beta for Pokemon, like for Golden Silver. And some of the designs after that are amazing. It's like, it's a shame that they never got fully realised. But apparently for Red and Blue, or Red and Green over in Japan, apparently there was a lot of debate as to whether or not they should keep the like cute Pokemon.
00:51:09
Speaker
because they were like, oh, our Western audience is gonna like respond well to, you know, having cute monsters and things when we're all gritty and all this stuff. But yeah, they're like, it was all about marketing but they're like, are people gonna respond well to that? And it's like,
00:51:26
Speaker
Well, yeah, as you said, it's like there's something for everyone in Pokémon. I mean, one of my favourites, although at the time it wasn't really one of my favourites, I think my favourites just constituted as what was useful, if you know what I mean. So it's like, yeah, Blastoise is great because it's got cannons and it's like really, you know, it can learn earthquake or something.
00:51:47
Speaker
or oh I like you know Mewtwo because it's really strong but as nowadays I'm like yeah no shame I love Porygon or Farfetch'd because it's literally just a duck that holds a leek. That's exactly what I think is the great thing that you you liked and because of everyone in the game. One of my favourite Pokémon is Kingler, the evolution of Krabi which as far as I'm aware is trash in the game. But there's a great episode of the anime where Ash has to use a Krabi
00:52:15
Speaker
in a fight that he's never used before and it's never been out in battle and half of the battle evolves into Kingla and like the whole enemies based on this whole episode based on just one Kingla and it's like that's cemented it's been one of my favourite Pokémon forever and it's like this trash it's a bit like that memory that can that personal connection is so strong the reason that you've picked your six favourite Pokémon would be so entirely different from what I picked I think that's just such a fascinating part of it
00:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's like that whole lightning in a bottle, isn't it? Like, somehow they've just nailed it down. And I mean, it's weird to think that this all started because, so the creator, I think his name's Satoshi Tajiri, or Tajiri, whoops, you know, apologies if I butch of that name, but he was really into book collecting. And I don't know whether or not that is like a, that was like a pastime for, you know, like,
00:53:06
Speaker
certain people in Japan like whether they lived in the countryside or not but it seemed to be something that he was really into and he wanted to share that through like a game and it's weird how that just that hobby it's just suddenly evolved into this multi-million or multi-billion you know franchise that we still talk about 25 years today.
00:53:29
Speaker
It's absolutely insane but definitely the craze of Pokémonia was at its peak by the 90s and I think the early 2000s definitely. I think things started... so here's a question for you getting you back for earlier.
00:53:48
Speaker
When did you think the maniac kind of started to die out? Because I've got kind of a theory, like this is all personal, but I've got a kind of theory about why it might have started to kind of peter out. But like when and why do you think it started to kind of flat like, or not flat like drop.
00:54:06
Speaker
I think there's a few, so I think I went and had a look at the cinema entry for Pokémon Silver. The first Pokémon movie does insane numbers and by Pokémon 2000 the numbers is actually still good numbers for an open film but it's quite low compared to the first one and then by the time the third film comes out it's probably half what it was for the second film and then I don't think, I think you were saying the fourth one didn't even make it to cinema.
00:54:30
Speaker
So I thought that as well, but apparently, and I don't know if this is a fact, but I think it might have, but it was a limited release if it was. It might have been, but yeah, it's not the same as having that in the opening week as the first three films.
Evolution of Pokémon Games
00:54:46
Speaker
So a couple of theories. Theory one is there would have to be some kind of break when they made the Johto episodes of Pokemon because you mentioned making it halfway through the Johto ones. I don't remember it at all Johto and I only barely remember Orange Island. Like I knew the characters to look at but I couldn't tell you any of the stories and then
00:55:07
Speaker
I think the other big thing was the switch from the Game Boy Color to the Game Boy Advance for the games. Because a lot of my friends didn't get a Game Boy Advance and even fewer got a DS. So you know what I mean? The Game Boy Color was such a huge craze. Game Boy Advance, they'll say it sells 90% as well and then they'll say the DS sells... I'm making these numbers up obviously but the point is...
00:55:28
Speaker
The further down you go, the less people in handheld games. That was the DS with gangbusters over the years. But at the time, I think people just kind of lost their accessibility to it. I never got tired of Pokémon. It just, I couldn't afford a DS. So I just never played it. It just moved away from me, rather than me moving away from it. And that's kind of my guess. So I'm curious what you've got.
00:55:48
Speaker
See, I'm glad you brought that up, just about the Game Boy Advance, because I was thinking the same thing, because when Sapphire and Ruby came out, there was a huge accessibility issue. So basically, as you know, in Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow, and Gold, Silver and Crystal,
00:56:08
Speaker
you could use like a link cable to basically to trade your Pokémon over and obviously there was accessibility issues there like you couldn't transfer a Generation 2 Pokémon to Generation 1 but you could transfer like Gen 1 Pokémon or you could still have that connectability essentially to transfer your old Pokémon from Gen 1 to 2 but then there was like a link that was like completely severed like you could not transfer Gen 1 or 2 Pokémon onto like Gen 3 onwards
00:56:37
Speaker
And it's not until recently where, I think it was a couple of years ago, they brought out Generation 1 and 2 for the Virtual Console on the 3DS that technically you can trade those Pokémon on, but you can trade them through, you know, it's like Pokémon Home or whatever it's called and things. But back then when Pokémon was at its height and then they bring out this new technology, I think that definitely affected it that there was this kind of
00:57:04
Speaker
You know, like, I mean, I can see why from a technical level the reason obviously being that, you know, it's like, it's different hardware and I think it probably would have been a harder job trying to make it backwards compatible with the other games and the other hardware and
Changing Interests with Age
00:57:19
Speaker
things like that.
00:57:19
Speaker
I mean, between that and I think the other thing was just that we were getting older and this will kind of sound really weird in AJ. It's like, you know how when we were becoming teenagers and a lot of people were moving away from games like Pokémon? Because I know I did. When I was a teenager I still thought, I still had a soft spot for Pokémon.
00:57:43
Speaker
but I would still kinda think that, okay, maybe it's time I move on, I'm, you know, getting older, I should be playing. And this is a stupid mindset, but it is, like, my mindset as a teenager, I should be playing more mature games. You know that way where it's like, it's a silly thing to think, like, looking back, but at the time, it made total sense, you know, to stop playing. And your friends are moving on as well, and you have to find common ground to talk about. Like, you were talking about Pokemon before being the common ground, but it's no longer the common ground, and you've lost a big reason for playing those games.
00:58:12
Speaker
yeah exactly so yeah it's like you go from talking this is a weird thing because like you go from talking about pokemon for god knows how long like years and years of your childhood and then all of a sudden it's like oh yeah did you see the new halo game did you see the new you know fallout you know it's like just that total shift all one genre to the other
00:58:35
Speaker
I have to admit, I strayed away for a while. I got into FPS games a lot more during that time. And I remember I did pre-order Pokemon Sapphire. I liked it, but compared to the other ones, Pokemon Silver is by far... I have a real soft spot for it because I don't remember why I got Pokemon Yellow. I genuinely don't remember asking for it. I just remember it being there. And that was it. And then playing it on
00:59:05
Speaker
they actually played it in the N64 as well because you could play it in Pokemon Stadium and there was like a mode where if you had an adapter for your controller you could stick it in the bottom of it and you could play gameplay games through it. It was really cool but I remember playing it through that and everything and absolutely loved the game.
00:59:23
Speaker
When it came to that, there were less people playing Pokémon. So it was like, I was kind of playing it on my own again. Kind of like going into personal territory here, but when I was younger I was a lot more reserved and shy. You know, I'm still a shy person in real life, but more so back then. So I'm not like a person who would openly confess a lot of interest. You know, I wouldn't be like, hey did you catch a new Pokémon series, Chip? You know, that wouldn't be going up to random people. I know there are some people who do that.
00:59:53
Speaker
We were able to do that, but for me that was just like, I couldn't do that. I was just like, no, this is, it's like, no, no, I'll just take my Pokémon and just, you know, be silent in the corner. But as soon as Diamond and Pero rolled around, again, it was that idea of I didn't get it in release. I think I got it a few years later.
01:00:12
Speaker
And funny enough, I actually didn't realise that there was a remake of the first generation. So you know Fire Red and Leaf Green in generation 3? Like I honestly didn't know that was a thing. The only reason I found out about it was a lot of people had the roms that they were hacking to make their own series. So it would be like Pokemon Legend of water or fire or whatever. That used to be really popular but they would just choose like a Pokemon type.
01:00:38
Speaker
And they would be like the Pokemon master of that type. And it would just be really, it was on at some of them were hilarious because they would be like Dragon Ball Z ripples.
01:00:47
Speaker
but like the punching animations would essentially be them walking into, you know like in the games when you walk into someone but it's just a wee tiny hands going from side to side. And you would get like people commenting at the time being like, this is sick, this is cool. Probably was at the time, but that's how much I was dropping from the series. Cause you would think like I, you know, if I was like a huge fan at the time, I would have picked up on that and followed the news, but I just fell completely away from Pokemon.
01:01:17
Speaker
And I didn't technically come back to it slowly. Like I bought the games kind of after they came out. Like I bought Diamond, didn't like it at all. I'm gonna be honest, I am not one of those people that like is excited for Jane 4.
01:01:33
Speaker
Sorry. I think that's when my interest started waning in the series and I thought maybe I should just give it a buy. And then I played Hart Gold and Salt Silver and that kind of reignited my passion for it. But that's the thing though, it's like backtracking that's going back to that idea of just... it's just growing up really, isn't it?
01:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it's interesting because I think we both have some experience when you talk about sort of playing Ruby and Sapphire and realizing you're the only one
Adaptation Across Generations
01:02:01
Speaker
left playing. I think I had the same kind of thing. It's not just growing up in the sense of people are growing up, they don't play the games, but it's just like, I think we actually held on to the games longer than a lot of people did. A lot of my friends didn't play Silver, nevermind Fire and Leaf Green and Ruby and Sapphire. So I even think, not just growing up, but I think Pokemon grew old.
01:02:20
Speaker
in the sense of it was so huge and not that they could have. I still will argue with people for the rest of my life that Silver and Golden and later Crystal are the greatest set of sequels ever made for really any game in terms of actually being a sequel, not counting Persona 5 and that.
01:02:38
Speaker
And I'm sure the Hollow Knight sequel will knock it off the patch, but that's going to be one to look back on. But my point is, even by then, the idea got kind of old. I think they never really managed to progress the idea. And you could see what they were trying to do were things like Pokémon Snap.
01:02:55
Speaker
Coliseum, there's pinball games. They were trying to diversify it and try to get people in through different means. But I think the games, they were always going to have a short shelf life because of how similar they are and how big some of these games were. I'm not sure in the exact timeline, but I imagine Silver and Gold doesn't roll around until like 2002 in the UK or 2001 at least. It must have been years after Yellow hits in 2000. You know what I mean? So it's anything time. Time is the hardest thing to stay relevant.
01:03:24
Speaker
I mean, there's always so much you can do with the franchise. And I mean, that's what people keep complaining about. They keep saying, oh, Pokémon should do like this or that. But I mean, on the one hand, it's like, yeah, they do have room that they could take a risk and be creative like they have done for other games. Like, I mean, Colosseum's probably a bad example. Pokémon Snap, let's say.
01:03:47
Speaker
Mystery Dungeon. Mystery Dungeon as well yeah that's a great one but it's like at the same time Pokemon is like such a safe franchise like as you were saying before it's a franchise that has something for everyone you know in terms of like and I mean I have to admit like when we were growing up the tagline for Pokemon was gotta catch them all and that was that is honestly the most shameless I think
01:04:11
Speaker
like marketing tool, I don't give a ever seen. And it was right though, they were just like, oh yeah, you got the catch, you know Pikachu, you got the catch, Rhydon, you got the catch, this or that. Yeah, it's like, now it's like, oh the power of friendship, because it's like what, 900 border and on a thousand Pokémon or something like that, and you're just like,
01:04:31
Speaker
Oh no, oh no no no, we're not catching them all. Even though there is something for everyone, it's probably Nintendo just playing it safe. Or not Nintendo, sorry Game Freak. Playing it safe to be inclusive of, you know, like getting new audiences in and getting old. Because I think I've said this before, but I remember some of the people that I've worked with who have, you know, they've got children and it's weird to see them talk about how their children are into Pokémon.
01:05:01
Speaker
and I think I told you this one about the woman who pulled out a card from her bag and it was like a Lapras card like the way she described it was a what was it I said to you it was a turtle dinosaur it was dinosaurs one
01:05:16
Speaker
swan eyes like turtle dinosaur swan something it's just like really bizarre and then another person like saying oh my son or daughter wants this or that and you're like this particular pokemon but it was like from one of the newer generations so it's weird to see it from that perspective you know it's weird it's like as a kid you just get so lost in this huge world of pokemon and you know you want to play the games you want to be the very best
01:05:44
Speaker
and all of that but then as soon as you become an adult and it's almost like you're looking from the outside in and you're like oh no. I think one of the best comparisons maybe to make is what Alpaints must have thought about Star Wars and probably what actually Elden recently thinks of Star Wars as well actually and to a certain extent so you've got the big mania happens in Alpaints earlier years and then it gets rebooted
01:06:09
Speaker
brought back out for our generation and it's terrible in their eyes. But we, our generation, I've never spoken to anyone who doesn't kind of love Phantom Menace or doesn't kind of love Attack of the Clothes or doesn't kind of love what they, in the trash films, they are so bad. But we love them.
01:06:26
Speaker
And then obviously the Disney films have came out and people hate them and there'll be kids all around the world who think the Disney films are the greatest films I've ever had and in 20 years time they'll say that Rise of Skywalker is the greatest film I've ever made. And I think Pokemon's that now for us as well. So we obviously love Gen 1 and there's kids now getting hooked on Sword and Shield.
01:06:46
Speaker
Despite people always being like, oh man, these games aren't as good as they used to be. And yeah, it's a shame there's not all the Pokémon in it. But at the same time, it's not photos anymore. Like, we're the adults now, and Pokémon's gonna always be for kids. And I know they're doing things like Pokémon Legends, which is kinda aiming at different people, but it's for kids.
01:07:05
Speaker
And it's really, I think there's a really fascinating thing I'd really like to know more about. Just like, how much do parents influence purchasing things for Pokémon? Because there's obviously a certain establishment that we have, and that would make it easier for a parent to buy a kid. Something, you know what I mean? Like, you're gonna buy a kid a Pikachu toy, and she's like, oh, Pikachu, I know him. Or like, going to see Detective Pikachu in the cinema, or... Guilty. You know. Yeah, I loved that film as well. Always good. Mine, man, was just great. Yeah.
01:07:32
Speaker
But you know what I'm getting at? I'm really curious about what effect does this next generation have in Pokemon? I don't think Pokemon is ever going to go away now. I think it's always going to exist in some form. Pokemon Go, I think, solidified. Maybe not PokeMania, but I don't know what the next level down is going to be. Like, Poke always existing forever.
01:07:53
Speaker
More like a poke renaissance, isn't it? Yes. But they've nailed it now but it will never go away. In the same way that Star Wars will never go away now. No matter how hard I ask it to leave my house, it doesn't leave. And that'll be it for Pokemon, I think. It's strange to see it as from an adult, putting a view on how it's seen as kids, isn't it? But there's going to be kids that they'll think are the greatest games I've ever made. And whatever next gen is that everyone hates.
01:08:19
Speaker
Yeah. Some girdle there is the greatest thing ever made. It mentioned at the start there's 151 Pokémon and every one of them is someone's favourites. There's 1000 Pokémon now and apart from unknown Q, I imagine every Pokémon is someone's favourites. Did you say unknown Q? Yeah, I was trying to think of the worst Pokémon I could think of. Unknown Q was the first one to get to my head. I was here thinking that was Delibird, but Delibird has the present thing which is kind of funny. And I know someone will like Delibird, so if you like unknown Q as your favourite Pokémon, let me know and I will apologize.
01:08:48
Speaker
Let me know as well because I'm very curious to know if anybody likes unknown queue or unknown, any unknown. It is interesting though, I honestly, I've kind of ranted to you about this before but
01:09:02
Speaker
see going back to the card game there has been this kind of revival of like as you said there's been this revival of interest in Pokemon like I think it did kick off with Pokemon Go and then it was more to do with like the games as well kept coming out and they kept cashing in the nostalgia because it's quite interesting to see how much nostalgia is in the new games like if you look at Pokemon X and Y relatively I remember playing them for the first time
01:09:32
Speaker
I am not a big fan of them, I just think they're boring and they're not well optimized.
Modern Pokémon Card Craze
01:09:37
Speaker
But the selling point for them was they introduced a thing called Mega Evolutions that were mainly centered. I love Mega Evolutions, so I'm guilty of this, but they focused it more on the Gen 1 Pokemon.
01:09:49
Speaker
like Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Mewtwo as well. In fact, Charizard got two of them, so did Mewtwo. They did have other Pokémon, but it was mainly Gen2, sorry, Gen1, and then when you go to the next game for Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire,
01:10:06
Speaker
that's cashing in on the nostalgia of people wanting a remake of the Hoenn games so again it's capitalising on that and it's just it's this like cycle of nostalgia but one of the things as I was saying there about Ranting because
01:10:22
Speaker
We can't keep this too positive, you know? We're gonna bring some salt into this out as the idea of people like, you know, there's this wave now of people buying Pokemon cards. And I don't know, I get quite art to buy it. Like, I understand why people are buying them. You know, they're buying them to like, sell them on, aren't they?
01:10:41
Speaker
or am I like getting that wrong yeah because I definitely like not mind it to play the meta game you know and the amount of posts I've seen like on insta or twitter where it's like these sealed cards and things and you know they've got them all signed and oh look I've got like 200 you get these really obnoxious videos as well of people like
01:11:04
Speaker
Like doing stupid stuff like basically blending a Pokemon pack and being like, oh, I hope it's not like a shiny I don't know like Pikachu or something. I hope it's not you know, cuz it's like over God knows how much money and
01:11:20
Speaker
I mean obviously Pokemon is a thing that is all about the money. As I said it's like it's the biggest like multimedia franchise ever. I don't know it's just it's weird seeing like adults just go out and I'm not like bashing anyone for doing it like if you want to do that you do you but it's just it's weird to see that people are kind of prioritizing the money aspect rather than like
01:11:43
Speaker
collecting or having fun. Like I remember seeing another video of just this kid's like opening the pack so usually you know when you get these pack videos where it's like they're going through the cards and then they'll have like a massive freakout and be like oh I got a shiny Charizard or whatever and there was this kid's like opening them in one of these videos it's like doo doo doo doo doo oh shiny Pikachu which is worth like a lot of money but he just didn't care because he went to the next card and he's like oh a water card
01:12:12
Speaker
It's just a generic, you know, like, energy card. And that's the thing though, it's like that kind of innocence and actually enjoying the content, if you know what I mean. Obviously it's all, you know, it's all to sell it. What do you think of that?
01:12:28
Speaker
I get what you're getting at. It's one of the things that I just can't avoid. Stuff like that on social media, if I'm honest. I haven't been exposed to nearly as much to that as you have. But now, people have always been collecting things and paying obscene money for things. It is kind of sucky, but it's something that you love. But it's the thing that's always put me off getting into any kind of
01:12:47
Speaker
deck building card game i wanted to get into magic the gathering for a while um so i googled like how to make a deck and magic the gathering oh jeez like like tournament play yeah and um turns out magic the gathering players are rich that was a
01:13:02
Speaker
That was an unexpectedly very middle class game. Was not expecting that. So yeah, I'm not surprised to hear about Pokémon. It's so huge, especially because so many of the cards and stuff were played with and wrecked as kids. You know, I've got Pokémon cards my parents loved.
01:13:22
Speaker
that have trashed in terms of sellability or whatever you'd call it, you know, they all get ratings and stuff, don't they? They're in a bind and I'll probably go look at them and have a nice wee night one night without, you know, just going through them, just, you know, kind of having that nostalgia for them. But I'll never be able to sell them because they're just not sealed up. So yeah, I kind of don't really, I don't know. I get where you come from, but it is a shame.
01:13:43
Speaker
You know, we still got our memories, so let's keep them. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I'm just like too nostalgic of a person to be like that. Like, I mean, I even hang on to, like sometimes I see listings online for like old consoles and I'm just like looking at them like, what's your story? How have you come to this place? Because I honestly, I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder, but yeah.
01:14:04
Speaker
I'm a nostalgic holder in terms of like things that you know like I've had so many memories of like I'm not willing to kind of bend them and things but yeah totally get what you mean but actually speaking of memories and things we actually got a few just interesting experiences that a lot of well a couple of our viewers um submitted for tonight just basically sharing their their own kind of experiences and their um
01:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think merch as well came into it. Oh, love a bit of merch. Let's do it. So Green Shield had submitted one on the Discord saying that he had a very faded pair of Pokémon pyjamas that he had kept for sentimental reasons. He had also got a terrible Pikachu alarm clock that they got from a pop-up vendor in Malaysia. I love it. I'm not surprised that was a thing.
01:15:00
Speaker
It's the kind of thing that the batteries melt in within like a day, don't they? It just does not work. I bet you it's like your present and it's like Digimon sounds that come out of it. We had a, in my house, we had a Bart Simpson one about like Bart Simpson along clock and it was just so obviously some guy's kid doing a Bart Simpson impression.
01:15:22
Speaker
Is it like that episode of the Simpsons where it's like, don't have a cat on mother? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So he's also said, I currently have a Squirtle from Build-a-Bear that's amazing. When I was in America a couple of years ago, I tried getting the Bulbasaur one, but they didn't sell it, so I ended up just buying a plush in one of the game stores instead. In fact, before I finish Green Shield's thing, what was your starter for Pokémon? Because I actually didn't ask this.
01:15:52
Speaker
I feel as if it's very important. I feel like it's always Bulbasaur for me. I feel like he's got the charm. He's got the vine whip. He's got the fact he becomes ugly or he gets older like me. So yeah, it's just an old round, relatable, good workhorse. It's Bulbasaur. He's just there anyway till I get snow-lagged and then just wreck the game with him anyway.
01:16:18
Speaker
Yeah, you're just thrown to the side like, move! Yeah, no, I would agree with Bulbasaur. Because this is the thing, and I think it'll probably be the same if your first game was Pokemon Yellow. Because my first starter was approached Pikachu. So you know how people say, oh, it was your first starter, was it Bulbasaur Charmander Squirtle? And it's like, well, it was Pikachu.
01:16:39
Speaker
because I had that game and I didn't get a choice because yet I'm getting all three anyway. If I had to choose now I would say Bulbasaur. They're all cool starters though but my like first choice, the first game that I played where I actually had a choice was Pokemon Silver and I chose Totodile which I still stand by that
01:17:00
Speaker
he is the best of that generation. I'm more of a Cyndaquil guy if I'm honest at that point. It's funny because it's always either Cyndaquil or Totodile. I actually played a game as Chikorita. I went back and played Pokemon so I went out too long ago and played it as Chikorita and that was tough going man. These games want you to grind.
01:17:22
Speaker
Oh yeah he gets like raked in the first couple of gyms because you've got a flying gym you've got a bug gym like all ones that he is very weak against so it's like yeah he is not getting up from that so yeah like Totodile was definitely my first like choice but if I had to choose yeah I would agree with that Bulbasaur it's definitely the most aesthetically pleasing
01:17:44
Speaker
And I'm not just saying that because I've got like a vinyl statue of Bulbasaur sitting right across from me just now staring like, go on, tell them. I've got a question for you actually. I don't know. I'm actually I might be landing myself in here because I can't remember if it's you or not. I came home from I went to New York a few years ago and went to the Nintendo store there and I picked up two copies of the Pokémon Cookbook
01:18:13
Speaker
Yep, that's me. Okay, I was like, I knew you had given him, I could have sworn it was you, but you know what I mean, like, you're saying you were live, and I'm like, I'm gonna be like, oh, I gave you that book, and you're like, never heard of it, don't know who you are. No. Okay, do you want to tell them about the Pokemon cookbook? It's kind of weird. I was just supposed to bring it up. I would just give it up. Basically, there's this cookbook that I picked up in the
01:18:34
Speaker
the Nintendo's doing New York and it's like the Pokémon Cookbook. It's not about cooking Pokémon. I'll put it out there now. But it's like this weird set of recipes that range from like beans on toast to like Michelin star, like extremely complex sushi. It was a fascinating read. So I gave it to Sats and one of my other friends and was just like, have you ever made anything out of it?
01:18:59
Speaker
not yet like I keep going I honestly keep going to make something and then you get put off and it's like yes you'll need one thing of rice one thing of rice okay and a gallon of seaweed gallon of seaweed that's enough cooking for one day i'm like what the i can't remember what because i really want to make the pikachu like the kind of remember what you call them but you know like the rice boat but um
01:19:24
Speaker
See this is the thing, I really want to make it, but at the same time I'm worried about smearing my hands over all this rice and being like, okay it's ready! There's also one that's like the Diglett Feud or something, it's like mashed potato with little hot dogs sticking out of it.
01:19:44
Speaker
I mean they're creative don't get me wrong they are creative but it's like as you know that way when you see ones that are like a masterclass of cooking and they're like really intricate and things and then you make it and it's like I will never take a picture of this I will just eat it in shame and silence and just that is it.
01:20:05
Speaker
But actually speaking of very weird circumstances, Green Shield finishes by saying Satsu also got me a growl with plush, which is true, and I'll tell you that in a minute. And I have a navy Funko Pop. Have I told you the story about the growl with plushy? No, don't think you have. So basically, because Green Shield is in Canada,
01:20:26
Speaker
and I am not. Spoilers. One Christmas I decided to send over a parcel to him. So I was in one of the supermarkets and I was walking around and I was just getting like you know snacks and things to send over and then out of the corner of my eye I spotted this. It was like this like the toy section essentially and it was this plushie of
01:20:50
Speaker
Gruulith. And I remembered him saying the ages ago, oh I really like Gruulith, so I thought okay that might be a funny thing just to shove in. So I went to buy it and when I went to the front of the queue, guess what, did not have a tag on it?
01:21:06
Speaker
And the guy kept saying things like, where did you get it? And I'm like, I got it off the shelf next to the other ones. Oh, I don't even know if this is some random child's one. And I'm like, no. I'm like, no, we are not entering this territory. And I'm looking behind me and there's all these people building up behind me.
01:21:27
Speaker
in the queue and I'm like I'm on the slippers on the edge to be like you know what just take it back just just get rid of it don't hold up the queue anymore and like there was a little woman behind me and she was joking she was actually she had a really good sense of humour about it she was like
01:21:44
Speaker
Oh, just give him it for free then, you know, that stereotypical. This is a classic him working the shorts for many years after class. Yeah, but the guy just looked at her and then looked at me and then was just like, yeah, I need to go get someone. I'm like, oh, it took ages to actually get it.
01:22:02
Speaker
Was someone they got Professor Oak? Who was it? I have no idea. No, I think it was just that random Oak tap on the computer. You're your buddy? Yeah, it was like, oh, it's so much. And I was like, I mean, you could have done me a favour and put it through if I didn't have the time. But, you know, it was like the team rocket. And they're just like, I will remember this. I will be back for the rest of your plushes.
01:22:29
Speaker
Although then again, I had a very childish moment. I think I was in my local super store, or not super store, supermarket, and I walked by the toys. And then I had to moonwalk back because I saw they did a toe-to-toe one. And I was like, hold the phone. And I just grabbed it. And I'm looking around thinking, OK, Satsu, if they stop you, you're buying it for a nephew, son, child. You're definitely not buying it for yourself.
01:22:55
Speaker
I had that once with the Snorlax plushie that I've got. The woman at the counter was like, oh, who are you buying this for? And I was like, uh, honestly me. I had no backup. I was not ready. I just had to take it on the chin. She was like, all right, that's nice.
01:23:13
Speaker
She was clearly a Digimon fan, I think. Obviously more of a Yu-Gi-Oh. Oh yeah. I mean, to be fair, the spiky hair on the dual disc probably gave you. It's time to do... Oh, you're a Pokemon fan. It's time to pay my credit card. You've activated my trap card. Wait, there's no card here. Oh, goddamn. So yeah, the next person that sent in a
01:23:42
Speaker
just some memories was Wonko. So he said, I have a couple of decks from the Harry of the card game and some miniatures that for the most part get incorporated into the Christmas crib each year. That sounds amazing. The baby Pikachu.
01:24:01
Speaker
and he says, I had the original Pokedex book that was my pride and joy until it got stolen from my bag during lunch break at school. What is it with people stealing cards and stickers? What is it with these utter deviants of society? It shows you how important Pokemon was to people that they were willing to break the law. We've already established that we had a gambling ring.
01:24:28
Speaker
You know, people getting... I wouldn't say it went as far as getting mucked, but petty theft was definitely a thing. Like, I refuse to believe that someone didn't have some bad experience of losing a card or something, or a toy, or something like Pokemon. I would like to be optimistic and be like, nowadays it's fine, but we don't know that.
01:24:50
Speaker
But yeah, that is a huge F for that. And the last one is Jules who has said, I wasn't good at the game but I loved the game, loved Squirtle and loved watching the anime. I think that is like...
01:25:09
Speaker
It's either the anime or the games, isn't it? They're like the gateway, like into this, into the spiral of Pokémon. Yeah, definitely. It's funny though, because like I was talking about watching the show back and it's funny, like some of the moments are so clear of just when you mentioned Squirtle and the anime, I was just like, oh yeah, Squirtle Squirtle of course. And it's like, it's so funny, like I think the games hold up better, but actually the show provided such vivid memories still. So yeah, those two, the combination of those two is just, is what makes all these great memories.
01:25:38
Speaker
I mean it's iconic as well though isn't it? Like I mean for the anime you know it's like as you said the Squirtle Squad and like even Charizard you know and it was those kind of things that you saw in the anime and then you were like I want to do that in the game and then
01:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, I learned the hard way that the anime logic does not translate well into the games. Go on Pikachu, you can beat that onyx, come on. Yeah, I will give you an example right now. So that actually did happen to me. I fought and broke against them. Yeah, well, I fought broke using Pikachu and yeah, I got my arched kits so many times and I kept like thinking as a child being like, come on Pikachu, I believe in you.
01:26:28
Speaker
Yeah, he was just like, it's like, you know that scene at the Avengers where, you know, where Wokey just gets like slammed everywhere? But the Hulk is just like, that would be good. And the next is just like getting smacked over and over again.
01:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, the gamer wants me to grind, but... The problem was when you were catching your Pokémon, you didn't hold down B, the down key, and turn the Game Boy color upside down. And if you'd done that, they would have been better. Yeah, I mean, that was just mistake number one, wasn't it? 100%. Yeah, never again. Much harder now with bigger pieces of equipment. I have to get the switch out and tip the whole TV upside down. It's a nightmare.
01:27:09
Speaker
Do you know, fun fact, there actually is a Pokémon that you have to... Yeah, I do know that, yeah. It's like, I can't remember if it's the 3DS, I think it might be both, but I think it's either the 3DS or the S-Switch, where you have to hold it upside down to evolve them. And I remember someone saying that, and I was like, okay, this is, someone's pulling that leg here, there is, no, no way, this is real. And then I did it, and it worked, and I'm like, what, actually?
01:27:39
Speaker
How could anyone figure this out? It's like there is no way. That is the thing though. I think I've talked about this before but you know the Mew glitch? It's like basically, long so short, you can exploit the game to generate an encounter with Mew. And I always remember reading about this and being like, aye, sure, sure. And this was like years and years later.
01:28:00
Speaker
after I'd played, like, I'd first started playing Pokémon. And I looked it up online, I was like, yeah, sure, this doesn't exist at all. And out of curiosity, I tried it. I thought, what's the worst that could happen? And it actually worked. And I was like, how do people figure this out? It was funny because I always remember at school, because we had yellow where they'd patched a lot of it, but there was also people going on about the Ray Candy cheat.
01:28:26
Speaker
In Red and Blue, that's actually relatively easy to do. The new one's a bit more specific, but the very candy one's not impossible. It's the same basic structure. You're rewriting the game as it goes along. You basically have to set up things in the right order.
01:28:41
Speaker
And yeah, you end up with 99 rare candies. That was famous, just talking about things that were famous, but that was such a famous glitch that people were just doing. I think it's probably the first glitch I knew of as a kid. I didn't know it as a glitch. I just knew it as something weird that you could do. It's very interesting.
01:28:59
Speaker
there was honestly tons of glitches for the old games though like and I think that is a thing kind of loosely linking back to Pokémonia but it's something I think that definitely held the popularity of it that even if you thought you bet the game like someone would come in the next day and be like oh I found this new glitch or I found this new like exploit like one of them I remember vividly was Pokémon Silver where you could do a duplicate glitch
01:29:24
Speaker
And it's like you had to turn off your game when you were like transferring Pokémon from one PC to the other or something. And then you could get like two of the same Pokémon and you just kept like doing that over and over again. But another one of the weirder glitches that I remember was being able to change the colour palette of your character.
01:29:44
Speaker
I thought I told you this one of the Crystal one, yeah. So just to kind of quickly explain, it's in Pokemon Crystal. You can choose to play as a boy or girl. And the girl is in a blue colour scheme and the boy's in the red. But I can't remember what you do, but you do. I think it's similar where you turn it off just as you're saving and then you start a new game. And for some reason the game switches the colours around. So you can play as a boy in blue or a girl in red.
01:30:13
Speaker
I don't know, it's one of those weird ones where you're just like, how did... Again, A, how do people discover this and B, how did this keep the franchise going? It's nothing game-breaking, but it was just those kind of secrets and things that people wanted to know more about Pokemon and this world that they thought, oh yeah, I'm gonna play this until... Goodness knows how long. And it is. It's a franchise that's never really gonna die.
01:30:43
Speaker
No, there's no chance now. It's gonna live forever. Kind of a closing question to this, but do you think that there would ever be another resurgence of Pokémonia that would essentially match what it was in the 90s and early 2000s? Erm, I don't think so. I don't think there's anything that could just nowadays. You mentioned it before about lack of internet, but, you know, there's only so many TV channels, never mind, you know, lack of internet.
01:31:12
Speaker
There's only so much media we could consume, and I think nowadays, this isn't, this is, I prefer this, I will say. I don't like to have to watch the same shows as everyone else's, but I don't think anything could ever be as big, obviously, in terms of like, popularity. It's probably more popular than it was back then, just in terms of sheer numbers of like, eyes on it.
01:31:30
Speaker
You know, you've got things like Twitch, there's people playing it in all numerous different ways every game's getting played. You know, like we mentioned before, Sword and Shield actually made the most money ever for a game, I believe, out of the Pokemon franchise. But I don't think you ever see that all-encompassing boom again like that. It's everywhere. But I think it's now, to me, it's a bit like Lego might be the closest example I can think of. But it's like Lego had a huge boom once upon a time.
01:31:57
Speaker
and then it just existed for a long time and I think that's where Pokemon will be now.
Comparison to Other Franchises
01:32:01
Speaker
They've got stores, they've got cafes, they've got theme parks, they've got all sorts of stuff and it's just never like, I don't think anything could ever boom. I beg I think the last thing really that will do it, I don't think we'll ever see it again. Like anything, I think Game of Thrones might have been the last one in terms of just sheer booming obviously Fortnite now.
01:32:28
Speaker
I'm just thinking back to when you were saying about other franchises like Lego and Game of Thrones. I mean look at Harry Potter. This is a whole chat tsunami in itself but with Harry Potter
01:32:38
Speaker
like revolutionised essentially how popular young adult like, I mean don't get me wrong it's still a kids book but you know like how those kind of films could be so popular and you saw like other films tried to do exactly the same thing like with Twilight, Percy Jackson, Hunger Games you know they just never, I mean they
01:32:58
Speaker
still earned their money whether it was like through infamy or there were genuinely good films but it never reached that same level though and i suppose the same with similar franchises alongside pokemon yugioh, beyblade, digimon there was actually another series um i actually completely forgot until i was researching this do you remember one that it was basically a barcode scanner i never go yeah yeah it was like a barcode scanner and it scanned little monsters it didn't i never had one either
01:33:27
Speaker
But Pokémon itself, they install that idea because I had the Generation 3 Pokémon cards that had the barcode scanner attachment. Oh really? Never had the barcode scanner, but I had the cards that had the scanner on it, so you can Google that sometimes, see what that was all about. I actually can't remember what it was supposed to do. Something to do with the TCG. Yeah. But yeah, you could scan Pokémon cards that had a barcode on it, so there's your random bit of merch fact for the day.
01:33:50
Speaker
nice it is weird how even now like there's a lot of facts that we're only kind of just finding out about like i was talking to you about the not even the pokemania but more like the pokepanic of like both parents and certain groups that believed it was like part of the antichrist let's just say you know it was it was going to be the satanic
01:34:14
Speaker
panic and you know you use potions in Pokemon and that means that automatically it's a devil game and you know it's like it's weird because I don't think those kind of I mean I don't know because I was a child so maybe this went on and I was just too oblivious but it wasn't really a big thing here maybe but over in America I know it was huge and it's something that you don't know or don't really like notice when you're a kid
01:34:40
Speaker
like when you go back to like look at the franchises a whole years later you're like oh my god people really thought that it was going to be the end times if you invited Pokemon into your home and you're like among all the parodies that came after it like South Park is like one of the more famous ones of that as well wasn't it?
01:34:59
Speaker
I don't know, there's just so many small things that even today, as I was saying before, with the beta Pokémon that are coming out with Gen 2, that has been sitting there for over 20 years. It honestly is scary to think that apparently Pokémon Yellow came out in the year 2000. That was 21 years ago. That's my quota for making me feel old for the day.
01:35:22
Speaker
Pokémon Yellow can buy alcohol in any country. That's any country that sells it. There you go. There's your Pokémon Yellow fact for the day. Oh, good. I feel old now. That's in the troops. Yeah, before we wrap up, will we go through some of the comments and see? We'll click before we do. What's your favourite Pokémon? Overall, it is honestly hard to tell.
01:35:47
Speaker
Honestly, for some reason I'm a fan of Pokemon that are kind of not appreciated as much. As I said before, Porygon, hashtag Porygon did nothing wrong. Even Pokemon came out and admitted that, by the way. They said that too, and I was like, do you see?
01:36:09
Speaker
As I said, I like Farfetch'd as well, Toed to Dial, because it's a lot of Pokémon that just either I like the design of them or I just like the, I mean like Bulbasaur as well, like either I like the design or I've got an emotional attachment to them. Like even for example with Pikachu and Raichu, like would you say you're a Pikachu person or a Raichu person?
01:36:31
Speaker
Can we caveat this with chunky Pikachu? Yes. Okay, okay. Chunky Pikachu, boy. Raichu. Thin Pikachu. That's about as much as you're ranking. Yeah, okay, okay. No, I'll give you that because, yeah. I love the beef. Yeah.
01:36:47
Speaker
Because yeah, I remember that when Pikachu used to be like a chunky boy and then he lost the weight throughout the generations and I was like, oh my god what's your diet plan? Because I've actually got like a toy Pikachu upstairs and it's one of those ones that you put the pencil into and yeah that is like the kind of like flat like steamed bun shape.
01:37:10
Speaker
So yeah, I would probably say, I don't know, I'd probably say Pokemon, maybe. I don't know. I just like the idea of a cyberpunk that's like half Pokemon, half Digimon. But there's just so many to choose from. What would you say? Like, I know I'm kind of like reverse it doing you just now. It's not Snorlax. I've always got to say that. There is no doubt in my mind, it's always Snorlax. I just wanted to make sure there, because I was like,
01:37:37
Speaker
it's like yes a hundred percent. It's kind of weird though because just the way we were talking there it is like earlier Pokemon that we're choosing like it's not like something like I don't know Grookey let's say nah I would not put him on my top like
01:37:53
Speaker
But yeah, you know, it's not any of the new ones, although the new ones do have some cool designs. Like Corviknight, which is just basically a metal part. And it's like huge. I like the ice cream one. Yeah, you have to evolve it, you spin in a circle. Big fan of that. There's one called, I think it's Phalanx. I think it's just basically like wee balls with swords and shields or something. Oh yeah, it's like fountains, aren't they? It's like Roman soldiers. Yeah, that's brilliant.
01:38:22
Speaker
It's just such... I have to admit like that is a whole subject in itself but just like they're on even in the new generations there is definitely something for everyone with design and things. Yeah I thought I thought you would have more time to think about it. So yeah where can these lovely people who are listening to this episode find you on other platforms?
Where to Follow the Hosts
01:38:44
Speaker
Well, if you've liked the sound of my voice, I've started speaking really funny there since I did that because I was like, how does my voice sound? If you like the sound of my voice, you can catch me on the Be It And Chill podcast. You can follow us, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, at Be It And Chill Pod. We put out new episodes every single Monday.
01:39:01
Speaker
We've just finished our absolute saga going through the Assassin's Creed franchise. That was fantastic fun. But we've also spoken about movies, games, TV shows. We've also been talking about WrestleMania. That's this weekend, so we'll talk about that on Monday. And next week, a little preview, we are doing Marvel vs DC. We're going through and comparing the
01:39:24
Speaker
graphic novels, the movies, the TV shows and the games. So if that, any of that seems like it might catch a fancy. Head us up on those platforms. I would just type in Being Chill podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts at. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple Podcasts. We're on anchor. We're on podcast addict. Whatever. You'll find us. If you want with me in your life, you can find me on Instagram at Martin McAllister.
01:39:45
Speaker
and that is my wrestling profile basically it's all about me as a professional wrestler and the crazy world out there so yeah that's the places to hit me up no go check him out thank you i was just like no no no really guys check him out do it do it now no actually just um i didn't want to interrupt you earlier but just when you were talking about the uh assassin's creed episodes that you did yeah they were great by the way
01:40:13
Speaker
yeah i could definitely tell a lot of effort went into those before i was listening and it was just yeah i even played some games for it like i don't i don't usually play much games like that's a whole like one request i even went away and played a bunch of the games so that was um that's dedication yeah that's dedication to the art though isn't it
01:40:30
Speaker
Exactly. So yeah, go check them out. And if you want to see more of my content, then you know what's coming. You can catch me of course on Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube under the name Satsunami42. If you want to catch any more episodes of Satsunami,
01:40:47
Speaker
then you can find me on Anchor, Spotify, and much like Bear and Child podcast, on all good podcast distributors. Please feel free to check me out if you want to see more of this content. As always guys, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated. Bye guys! Thanks for healing your Pokémon, we hope to see you again.