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a disease that started in tokyo. it first infected gameboys in j-pan in 1995. then in 1998 the disease infected gameboys in america. soon channel wb11 was infected too, and now cartoon network. the ever-so-popular “gameboy advance” systems got infected in 2002, and still is. in 1999 the disease started spreading via cardboard aka “pokemon trading card game”. “nintendo 64” and “nintendo gamecube” are infected too. the disease is also spreading via plastic and metal in the toy isles at wal-mart, k-mart, toys-r-us, and every other toy store. it is now july 2004, almost 10 years after the start of this addicting, argument instigating disease and it is still out there, but not as bad as its most powerful years(1999-2001).
in 2000, i almost had a heart-attack from the pokemon disease!
say what you will folks, but pokemon is one of the greatest games ever released for the gameboy. period.

the problem is that nintendo, through their misguided policy of inundating the market with a whole wack of cr-ppy, kitschy merchandise, not to mention a t.v show and movies galore, alienated their older players. my theory is that most people who complain about how pokemon is stupid, are actually disenfranchised former pokemon players. cause let’s face it, back in the day, everybody, and i mean everybody, played it.

and all that is a real shame, because from a strictly gameplay point of view, pokemon kicks -ss. it should have gone down in history as one of the better video game franchises. but thanks to nintendo’s decision to sell the game to eight year olds, that won’t happen.
back when pokemon was cool, i played it all the time. but then when everyone was like, “this game sucks!” i jumped on the bandwagon, so that i didn’t look like a loser.
an anime, manga, and nintendo game created in j-pan. pokemon are creatures that children and teenagers (as well as adults) can capture and train. the trading card game was one of the first major trading card games that alowed players to not onle trade, but battle as well. in the anime we follow the story of a young trainer, ash, and his two friends, misty and brock, as they travel togeather on their pokemon journey. the mange series revolves around rivils red and blue as they collect badges and compete in various compit-tions.
1. pokemon is really a very intersting show if you’re a total hentei. watch the uncut episodes to see what i mean!

2. my friends enjoy trading cards with me, and i only need four more to complete my basic set.
no kids, not the garbage pokemon that they made. i mean, the original. this goes back about 10 years. you guys remember when pokemon blue first came out? i know you all got it for christmas that year! cos i know i did. and i played it all night haha. and pokemon cards were the coolest thing ever. and everyone had them in school, even the real popular kids. if you had a charizard, you were pretty much awesome. you sat for hours arranging your cards in a binder, just staring/reading each and every card. you pretty much had every fact about every pokemon memorized. you had like 500 slowpokes and you hated slowpoke because of it. you woke up at 5 am on school days to watch pokemon. you had a bunch of pokemon toys/stuffed animals. on christmas, if there werent 5 packs of pokemon cards in your stocking, you basically hated everything. when you found a “shiny” card you went completely insane. the number of holographic cards a person had defined how cool they were. you brought your gameboy color everywhere so you could level up your pikachu. you always wanted to evolve pikachu with a thunder stone, but dam game wouldnt let you! you snuck your gameboy into school to play, and the teacher never caught you. you secretly still play gameboy color sometimes (i know i do). you could bust out your gameboy right now and play for 5 hours with no problem. im 17 now, and i can look back on this and it was such a fun time of my life. hah. so all you older people, do you remember these good old days?
pokemon was so awesome before it diverged into new characters. ..

i remember having trouble fighting the elite 4 in blue version and i kept trying until i finally defeated them. that was the sh-t!
overview: pokémon (or pocket monsters) helped anime, games, trading cards, and nintendo. even if a lot of people won’t admit it.

history (before the release): satoshi tajiri was the creator of the original pokemon games. living just outside of j-pan (as a child) in the mid-60’s he loved to collect insects; in the rice fields he became very skilled at collecting the little bugs (‘mr. bug’ as called by childhood friends). in the late 70’s the rice fields became shopping centres and arcades (etc). in those days tajiri was an otaku, he was a game addict. he played in arcades which used to be the old rice fields; he felt it was a sin.
“tajiri preserved the world of his childhood in pokemon” (time mag. nov22, 1999). then in 1982, satoshi, ken sugimori and a few other mates created the magazine gamefreak (to offer tips and game cheats).
after two years of working on it, satoshi came across nintendo’s link cable. “i imagined an insect moving back and forth across the cable. that’s what inspired me.” tajiri. it was just an idea, but as soon as he could he signed up with nintendo.
gamefreak almost died because of such money problems, satoshi didn’t even pay himself. after six years, pokemon hit j-pan. but how would it compare to the technology of cd-roms?

history (after the release): nintendo didn’t expect much from pokemon. the gameboy wasn’t doing so well, with all the company’s moving on from the technology. but there was one group that didn’t give up on the gameboy, j-panese boys. since they could not afford all the new things. through word of month nintendo’s sales in pokemon climbed slowly and steadily (unlike games like final fantasy, they were big hits then died down). then came the comic, which had the first trading cards.
what really got it going was the fact that you could unlock a secret 151st monster, which nintendo didn’t even know about (cough satoshi).

history (the craze): as soon as nintendo realised what power they had, they created the cartoon. the animated series, in the form of anime. in late 1997 the cartoon caused seizures to 700 children. this did not help, for this was the first impression the western world received. on top of that, role play games were not big in the western world like they were in j-pan.

but unlike when they first started our, nintendo had a whole line up to support it’s game. nintendo had all the right cards to play, and now we move on to the different sections of the craze.

cartoon: this being released in america before the game. nintendo made sure all ‘adultish’ j-panese humour was removed, be it from violence, religion, or s-xual discrimination. nintendo tried to make pokemon look as non-j-panese as possible. this took a few months to become a major craze, but it was hardly anything compared with how long it took in j-pan. the cartoon worked, children (and even others) bought the game and more. in 1999 (when the craze was at its highest) the first pokemon movie was released in the us (and before in j-pan). with it came a new range of toys, and even a cd of the movie with all the latest pop stars. come to the movie, and you got ‘rare’ promo cards.
the cartoon and movies (now 7 in the us and soon to be 8 in j-pan), are still going strong. many cartoons and card games try to copy the success of pokemon, but some enough they are not even remembered.

pokemon is what bought anime to the western world. you could say, it broke the barrier of confusion that the western world and eastern world had.

game: the games were first released in j-pan as green and red. then there was blue, which renewed the sprites (images). pokemon was first released in the us as red and blue with the j-panese blue’s sprites. pokemon yellow was released in j-pan and then the us. it is known as the fastest selling game in history. gold and silver was then released with another one hundred monsters. followed after was crystal, the sequal to gold and silver.
the games then moved to gameboy advance, and they deserved to. since if it was for them there would be no gameboy advance. now there was a whooper of pokemon to collect, a big 386. but because of the move, you couldn’t trade with the old gameboy. but nintendo still went a head with the creation of ruby and sapphire which had a limit of 200 monsters (135 of them being new). firered and leafgreen then came out late 2004, helping you collect the old pokemon in a new gba environment (with added extras of course). but there was more pokemon to the advance saga. that’s where emerald comes in, like j-panese blue, yellow, and crystal before it, it was a sequel. this game introduced many new things the average pokemanic will want for his battling skills.

that’s where the advance generation ends, and the duel (for nintendo ds, meaning duel screen) generation comes in. pokemon diamond and pearl are the new games. there is a very high possibility that you can trade with advance.

there are many pokemon games not on this list, but it should be easy enough to find a list of them. pokemon made rpgs in the us famous, and helped games generally by bring a generation into games. pokemon games still sell in their millions.

trading card game: owned by wizards of the coast. abused by wizards to move young pokemon players to magic (wizards also abused harry potter tcg and more recently the neopets tcg and duel masters). late 2002-early 2003 the tcg became nintendo’s, nintendo has been continuing it and been putting it to good use since then.
there are three type of people in this world.

1. people that play pokemon.
2. people that hate pokemon (mostly ff players who don’t even know that pokemon actually helped anime and rpgs).
3. people who don’t really care. the “non-gamers” (which is what i am when i’m away from my pc screen).
something that you’ve pretended not to like since you turned 11, yet can’t deny how sick it would be if they really existed.
i don’t even need an example. you know d-mn strait what i’m talking about. admit it; you want a pokemon. so do i.

so do i.
there are three destinct parts to pokemon

anime:responsible for giving pokemon its “kiddie” reputation.

tcg:i must agree with people about this one, it was pretty horible.

gameboy game:aguably a great game. it is much more complex then it seems. unfurtunatly, most people who bash pokemon because it is “kiddie” would most likely not have the intellegence to fully understand the game at all.

why people that bashes pokemon always say something about gay s-x or masturbating, i’ll never know. that south park episode don’t help much either. i just pray that these people asociating the sp episode with the game are being sarcastic. after reading some of these definitions, i wouldn’t suprised.

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