Pokémon and the Nostalgia of the Outdoors
May 9th 1990; the date when the first trademark for a Pokémon character was made by Nintendo
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Pokémon has become one of the greatest ironies during the COVID-19 pandemic. You may be reading this while you’re in lockdown, or long after the world has healed, but going outside and meeting people is one of life’s luxuries that many are yearning for at the time of writing.
Cast your mind back to when creator Satoshi Tajiri was thinking up the Pokémon series in the late eighties. The main idea came from his hobby of collecting insects as a child, and as the years passed, how urban structures would take over the fields and parks, reducing the insects. Coupled with the idea of children playing video games in their own houses, ‘Pocket Monsters’ was born.
Nowadays, playing any game from the Pokémon franchise is something that we would all relate to; exploring different cities and villages, and encountering different people and animals. Whether it was pets or a species at a zoo, it was something different.
It’s something we took for granted, but now, we all yearn for that interaction that our Pokémon trainer easily has now. It’s the greatest irony in gaming. While there’s worlds of Gods, Zombies, Green Hills, all anyone wants, as Pokémon GO has proven, is a get-together with friends.
Which is why this article is for you; because everyone of us is battling our own kind of duel, mainly with ourselves in how we’re dealing with COVID-19. From monetary to mental health reasons, visible or invisible to others, we’re all working towards a time where we can meet one another again.
As we mark its 25th anniversary, this is a story about how the series came to be for me, and how it can be there for all of us for most of this year while we all fight against the pandemic.
History
Pokémon, or Pocket Monsters, first arrived in Japan on the original Game Boy back in 1996 on the 26th February. Taking on a new Pokémon trainer, you would explore the lands and try to catch all…
