It’s the day I’ve been waiting for all my life, and I’m fast running out of breath. As the town begins to shrink into the horizon behind me, nettles camouflaged in the long grass sting and scrape at my legs. I don’t care. Beside me, it’s been only a few minutes since I first met him, but we already have a bond that can’t be put into words…

I skid to a halt, and he looks up at me questioningly. I don’t see the look, my eyes are firmly pinned on what lies dead ahead. It stares back, two small beady eyes sitting above gleaming fangs. I turn to him. It’s been only a few minutes. Already he knows. I point at what lies ahead as it suddenly leaps at me.

“Go! CHARMANDER!”

Part One: On Pokemon Red

Aw, yeah.

Yep, I’ve been going back to the game that defined my childhood. I bet you thought this was going to be some sort of Brokeback Mountain deal, didn’t you, you perverted sicko?

So you may be wondering, why keep playing, and replaying, the same game you’ve been playing for the best part of 12 years? That’s a question that came to me too, as I laboured through Rock Tunnel for the umpteenth time. Why put myself through this?

BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH! IS VERY BAD TOUCH!

First, I believed in the media trite that all kids want is violence, and it tapped into that by having you train a collection of bizarre creatures in the art of fighting and have them compete in the fantasy equivalent of cock-fighting. Yeah, I don’t know why I bought that crap for a second either. I don’t know, having the relatively short mountain sections drawn out several times longer by Zubats appearing every other step tends to greatly wear down on your sanity. Really, the concept may be close to a cock-fight, but quite honestly the execution (pardon the pun) keeps that aspect strongly out. The fact that these creatures are hurting each other with attacks that border on meta (how exactly does Surf hurt you more than simply the slap of being hit with water, and just what the hell is a Psybeam anyway?), and simply ‘faint’ instead of die means that these monsters will simply send opponents home with a token slap on the wrist, instead of repainting the  walls with the loser’s innards. I’m not going to harp on this point, but why do you ‘black out’ when you’re out of Pokemon? I mean, you reappear at the last Pokecenter with some money taken away anyway, so why not have the opponent gloat, take some of your money and then you return to the Pokecenter to revive your Pokemon? Easy! Instead, we’re treated to a slightly creepy subtext that a random trainer, or a Gym leader, or even a member of Team Rocket picked up your unconscious body, took you back to the last Pokecenter you visited (how they know this adds a whole ‘nother layer of creepy), handed your Pokemon over to Nurse Joy (or whoever she was in the games), and then took money from your wallet? This is the kind of thing that breeds disturbing fanfiction, people!

Next, I thought it was simple franchise loyalty. Originally it was out of love for the anime and the card game, and now it’s nostalgic. Indeed, that’s a part of it. That’s why I never followed the franchise in any shape or form after the first generation. Is it just me, or were the new Pokemon they brought in just ridiculous? Did you know anyone who thought at the time “yeah, the 151 they have now are great, but we need a crapload more that aren’t quite as good!”? Maybe it’s just the senile ramblings of the ‘old guard’, but it seemed unnecessary and detrimental. Each Pokemon was distinctive. Just look at Jolteon, or Machamp, or Gloom. Now contrast with Mudkip, or that thing that kinda looked like a palette swapped Eevee. So memorable I don’t even remember it’s name.

Which looks cool and which looks goofy? This...

But is it really all just stick-in-the-mud thinking, or is there real detriment in these updates? It would take someone far less biased than I to tell you, but I will say this. In Generation I, Lavender Town was a sad, depressing place that people only went to to bury their dead Pokemon (as the Nostalgia Critic would say: “You know, for kids!”) or just passing through. It was small, no-one living there ended their sentences with exclamation marks (a truly horrific marker of depression, to be sure), and the native Pokemon were all ghosts. It was actually quite horrible for me as a kid, to know that Pokemon aren’t immortal, and hearing depressing stories from people who lost their Pokemon somehow (that girl who gives you Swift because her Pokemon died haunts me to this day). What happened in Generation II? They installed a communications tower.

Yes. Not even Lavender Town is safe from AT&T.

...or this?

Then, as I watched these poor, lost souls doomed forever to haunt this accursed place (the ghosts weren’t too happy either), I came to my conclusion: it’s about friendship. Yes, we’ve all seen parodies pointing out this exact trope, but there’s a lot of difference between knowing something and understanding it. Example? Not too long ago, I was torn. I taken the Eevee up at the top of Meta Tower (I can’t remember the real name), and had evolved it into a Vaporeon. Soon afterwards I got Surf, and thus Vaporeon shuttled me across water. However, soon after that, I reached Cinnabar Island, and the Lab revived me a Kabuto that I soon grinded into a Kabutops. Obviously, having two extinct Pokemon (including Aerodactyl) was too awesome a thought to pass up, so I had a choice, either stick with a faithful Vaporeon who had gotten me out of countless scrapes I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to beat easily, or the newer model. Of course, that’s all in my mind. The Vaporeon is just a bunch of zeroes and ones that just happens to have a powerful attack programmed into it. The Kabutops was an item I pick up and lost so a scientist could assign a unique Pokemon to my PC. But to me, it’s more than that. It’s an old stalwart, faithful and fearful of being replaced, and the new guy, cooler and more awesome that can do what the old guy can do and better and with more poise and élan, and with only six slots, there’s only room for one of them. And yes, I did just notice how close that is to a synopsis of Toy Story.

This, non-Pokemon fans, is why the franchise marches on to this day. If anything, it gives children a fantasy land to play in, where all manner of creatures can be your friends too. When you’re as lonely a child as I was, that’s quite the sell. Of course, then there’s the marketing, buy our cards, watch our show, buy the toys, go see the movies, but there’s a message there. It may have gotten lost a bit with executives wanting more, more, more, but it’s there. It’s about sharing a bond with a creature that’s a cross between the pet you don’t have to clean up after and the friend who will never desert you. While you’ll meet many different Pokemon along the way, none will be as important as your starter, which was always Charmander, despite the fact that it effectively meant playing the first half of the game on Hard mode. So now, when I look up at Charizard, I don’t see a mess of pixels, I see that enormous dragon towering above me. And maybe, just maybe, if I look hard enough, I see him look back at me. At that moment, I stop seeing the dragon, and I see in his eyes that little lizard running along behind me in the grass. I think he does too.

Would you excuse me a moment, I appear to have something in my eye…