For over 25 years, Pokémon has captured the hearts of gamers worldwide.
From battling with friends in the schoolyard to catching rare creatures on handheld consoles, the franchise has remained a cultural juggernaut.
But why does it still work?
Despite graphical quirks, limited budgets, and a text-heavy approach that might feel dated to some, Pokémon keeps players coming back, and for Sock0Puppet, that love runs deep.
A Quick Glance At Pokémon
Nintendo has been in the news a lot lately. It’s because they’re trying to protect their baby, the Pokémon franchise.
They’re doing this by going the route of patenting what it means to own a monster, throwing that monster into a battle, and so on.
This is not new; in fact, as far back as the concept of Pokémon goes, Nintendo has been ready to go after anyone who is ‘copying’ it.
Which, of course, is an issue.
Since the idea of this genre dates back to the early 1980s, with games such as Digital Devil Story.
If you’re wondering how this has been a thing for so long, it’s simple.
Most companies that draw the ire of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company simply relent.
Either by paying a fine or paying for some obscure licensing rights.
[Ed’s Note: At this part in the post, Sock0Puppet declared that he wanted to showcase some Cassette Beasts love and demanded that Arielle post a link to the NAG article. So here is Arielle telling you to make sure you’ve bought the previous NAG Magazines to read the article in question.]
However, with the recent Palworld lawsuits from the company, they have seemingly overstepped themselves.
Now, Nintendo is under heavy criticism and inspection, not from angry gamers, but from regulatory authorities and the councils that oversee patents.
It’s all very convoluted and complicated.
But it has made me rethink a few things. Mainly, why in all hells has Pokémon always been popular?
The Thing About Pokémon
Let’s get my own credentials out of the way. First, I owned the first Charizard Deck all the way back at the start of the 2000s.
Yes, I did play with those now very rare cards on the asphalt outside our house.
We were kids, and we were battling each other. Go figure? I did the same with my Yami Yugi deck against my brother’s Seto Kaiba deck.
But beyond that, I watched Pokémon when it eventually showed up on SABC2.
More importantly, before I could really think, a friend of my brother let me play Pokémon Blue on his Game Boy Colour in the late 90s.
If my memory serves me right, I have been playing Pokémon probably as long as I physically could.
And to be honest, I’ve never not enjoyed it, from the lowly sprites that barely move to the now 3D models that really should be moving more.
I have never not liked these games.
This should be enough to establish my credentials for why I am moving on to the next parts of this before concluding.
Graphically, it’s challenged
As much as I would love to say it isn’t so. It just simply is.
The Pokémon games’ transition from simple pixelated sprites to full 3D has never been good.
Even all the way back in the transition phases of Pokémon X/Y and Black/White, the games have not quite looked as good as they can.
The characters themselves are rarely the issue, too. In fact, the player characters and supporting casts are often some of the best-looking parts of the games.
It’s the wider world and the Pokémon that suffer.
Game Freak simply seems to have always struggled with these.
Many times, you may be excited to see how your favourite buddy moves, only to see them barely swaying from side to side.
Hell, in Pokémon Violet, they still don’t actually attack each other. Some movements are nothing more than the Pokémon moving their head a certain way with a slightly angry face.
But somehow, that’s still not the worst thing, graphically speaking.
No, that would be the world around us as we travel through each region. I would honestly say the sweet spot was near Pokémon Sword/Shield, where the worlds started feeling defined.
Then they sort of stopped.
It became a true-blue wonder to look at how the games struggle to operate. Pokémon Arceus is an empty world that’s just funky to look at.
With Pokémon spawning in before foliage in many instances.
Barely any draw distance to speak of, and at times surprises around corners that only kind of rendered in.
Of course, then came Pokémon Violet, and to be honest, just the frame rate alone could be an entire article.
Should I start writing just about Pokémon?
Anyway, Pokémon Violet is where the cracks really started to appear. And even became canyons of poor performance.
And now we have Pokémon Legends ZA. A game where the entire world map is loaded in at once, the Pokémon themselves are barely loading in, and windows are flat.
It doesn’t look good. No, really, I like the games, but in this game, the accelerated development times are showing the cracks in the system.
The litany of graphical issues comes from the fact that Game Freak are simply not given enough time, budget, and staff to do this.
Despite being the most profitable game series of all time, only about 1,000 people worked on developing the game. And at best, they started working on the game in 2023.
If you’re thinking that’s a lot of people, a large number of those are the localisation teams. And it took less than 2 years of development.
Just about every other game takes much, much longer than that. The new Digimon game took between 7 and 8 years to develop.
So, if you’re wondering why Pokémon LOOKS the way it does, it’s because of that.
But that’s not the whole story.
Pokémon Is Damn Quiet
This is going to be short, and it’s only here because I keep hearing people complain about it.
Pokémon has no voice acting; it’s all text.
And damn hell, I love it for that. To be honest, if I had needed to use headphones or listen to Pokémon. I would not have played it at all.
And modern Pokémon needs to continue being completely quiet. This will lead into the finale, the point, the raison d’etre of this.
As much as it can be annoying, no mainline Pokémon game has ever been voice-acted at all.
So, if you spend the night playing it, it’s a rather quiet game to play.
Every conversation is in text, every instruction, every surprise.
And I think this is entirely on purpose and not to save money.
It’s entirely because Pokémon is and always will be a Nintendo product.
And Nintendo damn hell knows their market, both with kids and adults in mind.
Think of it like this: if you’re sitting on the train for a 40-minute ride.
Would you pull out your handheld, faff about with headphones, and then have to concentrate on the people talking?
OR
Would you want to pull out your handheld device, launch into a game, listen to music, and not lose a moment of engagement?
For me, the answer’s simple: I would choose the one that has a variety of text-based games.
By the way, I think this is partly why other handhelds are not gaining the same amount of ground.
For all the fantastic things I have played at booths at expos. Never once have I had any idea whatsoever of what anyone was saying on those handhelds.
Not the same at the Nintendo booths, though. There, I always know what’s going on. I just read the screen, and BOOM, off I go.
But this kind of also leads me to my conclusion.
Pokémon Games Are Fun
This is the thing, as much as we all love to complain, we just keep buying Nintendo Switches and Pokémon.
The Switch 2 is now reaching over 3.5 million units sold, and Pokémon Legends ZA has sold over 5.8 million copies.
So why?
Why have they sold so many?
The thing about Pokémon is, it’s fun.
It’s a damn fun game to play.
As much as I can gripe about these games and criticise them. I love them.
I just told you how long I have been playing them. And when I had a Switch, I bought and played every single one.
I don’t mean that in an abstract way.
Currently on a shelf next to my desk are the cases for Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee, Shining Pearl, Sword, Legends: Arceus, and Violet.
Before I had to let go of my Switch, I was busy with Arceus. And having an absolute BLAST.
Here’s a look at my actual shelf:
Which, even to me, is strange. However, they are such simple games with a rock-solid gameplay loop that it’s impossible not to become addicted to them.
And this is something I think we often overlook about Pokémon, especially when comparing them to other games like Digimon or even Persona.
Yes, those games may visually look better, but they aren’t always all that fun.
They have spurts of fun. But you also get tired of them.
You get annoyed with having to grind out a new Digimon to level whatever to get it to special digivolve or something.
When I sit down and think about it, in my nearly 33 years of life (one month away, damn this year is flying by), I have spent more time in the world of Pokémon than any other.
In Primary school, I would spend hours playing Pokémon Sapphire on my Game Boy Advance SP.
Either during off periods, breaks, or just when I was bored at home.
In high school, I spent much of my time doing other things, but I eventually got a Nintendo DS.
And despite not playing the games for half a decade, I launched Black 2 and immediately lost myself.
On my last day at my first-ever official job, I launched Black 2 at the office after they took my PC away. I sat on the floor in the IT department and played Pokémon.
Years later, I asked for a Switch as a 30th birthday present. I got it.
The first game I added to my cart? It was the only Pokémon game available on the Switch at the time.
Let’s Go Eevee.
I still had fun.
And, in 2023 and 2024, as I sat next to a dam, during weeklong stretches of loadshedding and power failures.
Where I was more alone than most people ever are in their lives, I was sitting in my car (no mozzies & charger) and working my way through Pokémon Sword.
I was having fun. I was lost in the simple strategy of playing with my chosen partner Pokémon and seeing how the story unfolded.
For all its faults. For all its strangeness. And for all we know, it can be.
The thing about Pokémon is that it’s always been, and always will be, a fun game to play.
Pokémon isn’t perfect. Its worlds can feel empty, its frame rates waver, and some movements barely register.
Yet it’s undeniable that Game Freak has created a formula that works: simple, engaging gameplay, memorable monsters, and endless fun.
As Sock0Puppet’s decades-long love story with Pokémon shows, no matter the flaws, the franchise continues to captivate, entertain, and bring people together – one battle at a time.
About Sock0Puppet:
Sock is easily one of the best gaming streaming content creators you’ve probably never heard of!
When he’s not being shot into the sky in multiplayer games, he’s a full-time copywriter, thinking about RPGs, and wondering if he’ll ever actually finish his first book.
He is an expert in nothing and a master of waffling – games and books are his thing!
