Flashback Friday: Pokémon Edition
By: Demaris Webster
It’s safe to say that every ’90s kid (or as they are now called, millennial) probably had something made by Nintendo as they were growing up. Personally, I was an owner of a Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and multiple Game Boy consoles. For who knows what reason, I needed them in different colors and models. The Game Boy changed the way people played games much like what the iPod did for music. The Game Boy was at the forefront of our on-demand, mobile (portable) culture. There’s a long list of games associated with the Game Boy, but very few had/have a cult-like following like the Pokémon franchise.
The Pokémon franchise consisted of a card-game, video game, and a TV series. At any given time you would see kids all over the United States battling and trading their cards before and after school. Game Boy changed how kids interacted with Pokémon; it allowed you to be apart of the Pokémon universe. As the technology of Game Boy changed so did the Pokémon game. The last game for Game Boy, Pokémon Emerald, was released around 2004.
It’s safe to say that’s around the time most present day millennials left Pikachu behind with other childhood activities. Granted, no one wants to be the kid starting high school still playing Pokémon right? By then we were all practically grown-ups or at least that’s what we thought. The abandonment of Pokémon by millennials didn’t stop the creators of the game because there was already a new generation hooked on catching and caring for these little monsters. This new class of trainers will never know the magic that was Game Boy because the games produced from 2006–2014 were made for the Nintendo DS and 3DS.
It wasn’t until recently that you heard many 20-somethings talk about Pokémon, unless they were reminiscing about their not too distant childhood. Then Niantic, Inc. released Pokémon GO, the same game we all loved as kids, but now placed in the physical world we live in using something we all have, a smartphone. The premise of Pokémon GO is practically the same as the video and card game, but now you’re the trainer and your own city is your Pokémon universe. You walk around the city catching many of the same lovable monsters, nurturing them, and preparing for battle. So what’s the draw? Why are so many millennials playing this game?
Some may argue it’s the augmented reality (in it’s simplest form), or that it’s a new way to explore the world around them. Maybe it is because we’ve all been waiting for the resurgence of Pokémon? Maybe it’s the nostalgia of the game. Pokémon GO uses something familiar to all of us and presents it in our “new normal”, a mobile app. “If nostalgia is in play, and it evokes this positive emotion . . . our brain can substitute the question, “Does this make me happy” for “Is this a good game”” says Dr. Jamie Madigan, author of the book Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on People Who Play Them.
Niantic’s marketing campaign probably wasn’t as effective as the whisper campaign that organically happened. It was like a virus spreading amongst my peers. One by one, everyone started to play this game. You know who “is trying to be the very best” that no one ever was. Pokémon GO uses our smartphones, the device that keeps us captive, and somehow causes new interactions with people who would have never spoken a word to each other. The feeling of nostalgia is strong and can change human behavior, which we’re seeing now with the Pokémon GO phenomenon. Coupling nostalgia and technology might be the magic formula every tech company has been looking for.
