I never played either of those. And i dont necesserally want to “play” the pokemon, as to get its lore and cultural meaning. While i could watch some hour long youtube lore documentaries or gameplay videos, i would rather experience this games myself.
If you don’t specifically want to “play” the game, I’d suggest checking out the anime or maybe one of the movies
As far as it’s place in culture and popularity: I’d say Pokemon is a toy company that happens to make video games. And sure, it did all start with a video game, but as the franchise expanded they jumped to a lot of different markets, and merch has always been a moneymaker.
Just like GI Joe and Transformers, I think the show was part of its marketing. It was on TV all the time when I was a kid, and I definitely knew people who got into the game after watching the show.
But y’know, video games are expensive to produce and in the 90s not everyone could afford the hardware to play them. So they got into the trading card space which was gaining popularity at the time. Anybody could afford a couple bucks to get some new cards, and trading cards were the original lootbox: a microtransaction moneymaking machine. Also the business model is essentially gambling for minors, and it’s surprisingly easy to get kids hooked on bits of cardboard.
Those kids are all grown up now, and pokemon was a big part of their childhood. Nowadays I think they probably do largely trade on nostalgia. But even so, the characters are cute, and have huge appeal to children. There’s always going to be a market for dolls and t-shirts
In that case, I’d just pick either HG/SS or OR/AS as noted above and play one of those 4 games. If you’re just wholly unfamiliar with Pokemon: Each generation (i.e. new entry in the series) is divided into two different games. They’re generally very similar but have a few small differences, including a few pokemon exclusive to that version. The original purpose was to encourage friends to trade pokemon with one another to complete their collections; nowadays I’d wager it’s to encourage diehard fans to buy each game twice, more or less.
The two generations recommended above are broken into HeartGold / SoulSilver, which are updated remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver, and Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire, which are updated remakes of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. Pick one of the two games in one of those two pairs and give it a try. If you enjoy it and want more, try one of the two games in the other pair.
Every generation is basically a standalone story and game map, you don’t need to have played previous ones to get the full experience.
I never played either of those. And i dont necesserally want to “play” the pokemon, as to get its lore and cultural meaning. While i could watch some hour long youtube lore documentaries or gameplay videos, i would rather experience this games myself.
If you don’t specifically want to “play” the game, I’d suggest checking out the anime or maybe one of the movies
As far as it’s place in culture and popularity: I’d say Pokemon is a toy company that happens to make video games. And sure, it did all start with a video game, but as the franchise expanded they jumped to a lot of different markets, and merch has always been a moneymaker.
Just like GI Joe and Transformers, I think the show was part of its marketing. It was on TV all the time when I was a kid, and I definitely knew people who got into the game after watching the show.
But y’know, video games are expensive to produce and in the 90s not everyone could afford the hardware to play them. So they got into the trading card space which was gaining popularity at the time. Anybody could afford a couple bucks to get some new cards, and trading cards were the original lootbox: a microtransaction moneymaking machine. Also the business model is essentially gambling for minors, and it’s surprisingly easy to get kids hooked on bits of cardboard.
Those kids are all grown up now, and pokemon was a big part of their childhood. Nowadays I think they probably do largely trade on nostalgia. But even so, the characters are cute, and have huge appeal to children. There’s always going to be a market for dolls and t-shirts
In that case, I’d just pick either HG/SS or OR/AS as noted above and play one of those 4 games. If you’re just wholly unfamiliar with Pokemon: Each generation (i.e. new entry in the series) is divided into two different games. They’re generally very similar but have a few small differences, including a few pokemon exclusive to that version. The original purpose was to encourage friends to trade pokemon with one another to complete their collections; nowadays I’d wager it’s to encourage diehard fans to buy each game twice, more or less.
The two generations recommended above are broken into HeartGold / SoulSilver, which are updated remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver, and Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire, which are updated remakes of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. Pick one of the two games in one of those two pairs and give it a try. If you enjoy it and want more, try one of the two games in the other pair.
Every generation is basically a standalone story and game map, you don’t need to have played previous ones to get the full experience.