Hope, for one. Pokémon, after all, have hope in them, unlike the vileness and violence of real Pokemon. For another, Pokémon provide something different for the kids who grew up with them, even if you don’t fit into the demographic at all. And let’s face it, they get a lot of love from the adults who grew up with them, too. I know a few people who grew up with Pokemon, even using Gameboy roms on gamulator and other emulators to relive their love of Pokemon, so it’s understandable why it’s still so popular.
I got out of a children’s musical last night, and after going outside to finish reading a book for school, I walked past a building where a few youngsters were playing Pokemon Go on a smart phone. I was tempted to join them and I realized that it’s a thing because I never play the videogames anymore.
Pokémon have been a thing for a long time. My first exposure was at the age of 10 or so, when I played a Pokemon Cards game with some friends. We borrowed the cards from a friend at school, and I discovered that we could get a card for free by catching a wild Ratata on the walkways of our school. We couldn’t do it for long, because the wild animals of our school, it turns out, are trained to hunt other Pokémon, or so I learned. And the destruction of wild animals? Well, that would not be a nice thing to do to a wild animal, right?
A fellow mommy whom I love to explore new casino sites with and was discussing this topic with was kind enough to write some guest content for us:
It’s a weird life to imagine. Growing up in Africa, we didn’t know where other African countries were, but I was eager to find out. I went to Japan with my family a couple of times, and I remember seeing Tokyo’s business district, called Akihabara, from the top of the cable cars down to the designated area. Later, I travelled around the states by myself and I had another fantasy of seeing Japan without having to go through customs. In the meantime, I was growing up and doing regular kid stuff, until I realized I was forgetting about the videogames.
And when did I start my Pokémon addiction?
When I was 12 years old, in the middle of high school in Tanzania. There was a regular bus line that had weekly trips from Moshi to our destination, Arusha, and I remember seeing some tall men in the bus that weren’t really any older than me. At one point, the bus stopped at a school to pick up some more people, and I remember seeing my peers playing Pokemon. And they got a card as a reward, and the card was called Nuttababe, and I was a bit confused, because there was no further explanation. It seemed like a weird version of Pokemon to me, but hey, I had to be imaginative.
I had to figure out what a game called Pokemon was, though. There was a small computer store in Arusha called Kenkelsi, which had about five computers, but I didn’t go there. I looked for Pokémon in bookstores, but I didn’t find it in most bookstores, either. In 2003, I started to go to a bookshop called Donous on the main street in Arusha and they had games and toys, so I went there. At the time, my biggest fantasy was to make movies, and I wanted to find the scripts to movies and watch them. All I could find were Pokémon titles. Pokémon Adventures? Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire? Pokémon Gold and Silver?
