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12/31/04

The Most Important Games Ever Made

In just four decades, video gaming has grown immensely as a medium. While games probably aren't really as popular as the movie industry, despite what some claim, there's no doubt that gaming is a remarkably popular form of entertainment -- especially considering how long it's been around. With each passing year, games grow more sophisticated: the graphics become more realistic, the sounds more convincing, and the interactivity feels more engrossing.

There's a downside to the rapid pace at which gaming has advanced, though. Amidst the industry's emphasis on technological improvement and deeper interaction, old games are sometimes forgotten. Because games are tied to hardware which typically becomes obsolete in five years' time, digging back through the medium's history can be far more challenging than looking back at classic novels or films. Even if you can find the old hardware you need, there's no guarantee it will work, and who has space for a dozen game consoles anyway?

But it's good to be mindful of the past -- just as a movie buff needs to understand what made Gone With the Wind so special, avid gamers should know why Donkey Kong was important.

Every week through the end of the year, classic.1UP.com will be presenting a look at a different video gaming landmark -- the fifty most important games to be created within the forty years that the medium has existed. The Essential 50 is not intended to be a comprehensive history of gaming. Nor is it a list of the best games of all time -- in fact, some of these games are the very worst ever created (which is why they're important). Rather, The Essential 50 is a look at the games which we feel have made gaming what it is today.

These are the innovators -- the creations which shaped entirely new genres. The revolutions that launched great designers to fame. The concepts that inspired countless other games. And of course the failures that brought mighty corporations to their knees.

We're working in a roughly chronological order rather than according to any sort of ranking. We can't guarantee you'll always agree with our selections, but we'll do our best to convince you. Check back each Friday for the latest entry



The Essential 50 Part 46: Pokemon from 1UP.COM

Whose Time Had Come

It seems like such an obvious idea, in retrospect: a Game Boy game that used the system's unique linking ability to promote trading and collecting items within the game. So basic, so easy. Yet it wasn't until seven years after the arrival of Tetris that someone did it and did it well.

That someone was development house Game Freak, a company known for solid puzzle games like Quinty and Yoshi's Egg. GF managed to combine the acquisitive thrill of trading baseball cards with the tactical challenge of a Japanese RPG, creating in the process a game that rewarded both socialization and quick thinking. It was a lengthy, open-ended RPG, yet it worked best when played in tiny chunks. The graphics and story were simple but possessed a distinct cartoon charm that more than compensated for its dreary four-tone visuals.

In other words, it was a completely unique playing experience. More importantly, it was an absolutely perfect match for the limitations and possibilities of Nintendo's Game Boy, and ideally suited for the system's younger audience.


The first most Americans heard of Pokémon was in the context of news reports of how it caused seizures in Japanese children -- and the Simpsons' mockery certainly didn't help matters.


Though originally intended to appeal to Japanese boys' fondness for battling stag beetles, the quality and whimsical tone of the game gave it a far more universal appeal -- ultimately making it one of the most popular video games ever published in both Japan and the U.S.

The game was called Pocket Monsters -- or as it's known in America, Pokémon.

Prior to the Pokémon invasion, handheld gaming was still seen as faddish, a novelty. Tetris and its falling blocks had consumed billions of man-hours, but beyond that single success story few portable titles were particularly inspiring. Nintendo's competitors discovered this fact the hard way when their handheld efforts came in a distant second to the underpowered, pea-soup visuals of Game Boy. Without Nintendo's savvy marketing and the irresistible lure of Tetris, Sega's Game Gear and Atari's Lynx had brief, unhappy lives despite their technological superiority. (It probably didn't help that their technological superiority cost twice as much as Nintendo's stripped-down hardware and soaked up battery juice like a sponge.) Still, save for a few notable first-party Nintendo titles, there simply wasn't much reason to see handheld games as anything more than a brief time-waster when nothing better presented itself.

Pokémon changed that.

Catch 'Em All

For a franchise that grew into such a juggernaut, Pokémon had surprisingly humble beginnings. The initial release of Pocket Monsters in Japan could best be described as a moderate success -- certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but hardly an indication of what the series would become. It was only in the ensuing weeks that the game began to snowball through word-of-mouth and become a small phenomenon.

It was a decent enough single-person role-playing adventure: players took control of a nameless boy and chose one of three monstrous companions, each of which had different skills and elemental affinities.


Despite its Japanese nature, Pokémon proved a surprisingly easy fit for American audiences, although differences in cultural mores occasionally reared their ugly heads. For instance, the beach episode of the cartoon (which featured a male character in a busty inflatable body suit) was skipped entirely.


The companions -- the eponymous Pokémon -- slowly grew in numbers, ultimately becoming a sort of RPG party that would fight for the player's character in turn-based virtual cockfights. Once an enemy monster was weakened, the player could capture it with a "Pokeball," turning it into a member of his party. The game offered 150 different monsters in all (151, if you count the secret Mew character, and even more if you start counting odd characters resulting from bugs, like Missingno), and the drive to catch at least one of each was at the heart of the Pokémon experience.

Every monster had its own strengths and weaknesses, and factors like elemental affiliation made battles a balancing act: creatures were weak against specific enemies and strong against others. Players could take up to six monsters at a time into battle (the other 144 had to sit the battle out), with combat working as a one-on-one tag-team affair. This added a certain strategic element above and beyond what most kids were accustomed to in their video games, but most learned how to balance a team to face opponents with little trouble. It turns out tactical planning comes easily to eight-year-olds when presented in such compelling, cartoonish terms.

The real strength of Pokémon, however, wasn't in the single-player quest but rather in the multi-player experience. Few games had truly taken advantage of the Game Boy's system link cable (possibly because of how notoriously difficult if was to program for), but Game Freak placed connectivity at the very core of the game. In fact, the game's release was built to encourage trading; for starters, it allowed players to pit their Poketeam against those of other avid players. The CPU-controller characters were easy enough to overcome with sufficient leveling, but fellow enthusiasts were limited only by the time they had invested in creating a team of super-powered monsters, and it was in these six-on-six battles where Pokémon truly began to shine.

To further promote sharing and trading, Pokémon was released in two variants: Red and Green (which was renamed Blue in the U.S.). The main difference between the two versions was the frequency with which certain monsters appeared; a common Pokémon in Green might be almost completely impossible to find in Red. Therefore the fastest way to fill out the 150-creature Pokedex was to swap monsters with players who had the other version.

The game's social dynamic, combined with its appeal to the obsessive-compulsive side of gamers, made it a true viral success. Through addictive gameplay and enthusiastic sharing by true believers, Pokémon stayed strong on the sales charts while other games came and went.

Anime Me

Nintendo has never been slow to capitalize on a good thing, and the company certainly wasn't caught off-guard by the game's unexpected success for long. Japan was quickly carpet bombed with merchandise, comics and cartoons.

Ultimately, it was the last of these which helped push the series to genuine smash-hit status by introducing Pokémon to millions of viewers who might otherwise have never heard of the game. Though hardly high art, the anime made for colorful and entertaining children's television. Unlike the game, which put players in control of a nameless kid accompanied by either a Charizard (fiery salamander), Squirtle (water turtle) or Bulbasaur (plant-like dinosaur), the anime told the story of a boy named Ash Ketchum and his loyal Pikachu, a diabetically cute giant mouse with the ability to toss electric bolts at foes. Ash, Pikachu and their companions Misty and Brock shared an impressive series of adventures over the course of several seasons and a few films, all with the ultimate goal of seeing Ash catch all 150 critters.

The anime also served as an ambassador to an even bigger audience than the Japanese schoolkids for whom it was intended. Even as Nintendo was looking to expand the Pokémon games to international markets, anime was beginning to earn a substantial audience in the U.S. Although it had long been popular among enthusiasts, the relatively small market for anime in America resulted in high prices for translated fare, limiting the market to people who were willing to pay $30 for a 45-minute videotape.


Proof that the Pokémon name will sell anything: meet Pokémon Box, which is basically nothing but a fancy index.


A few high-profile releases (particularly Akira and Ghost in the Shell) earned the medium the attention of respected critics like Roger Ebert, and a growing U.S. interest in all things Japanese meant that Pokémon was very much a case of the right thing at the right time.

Nintendo spent a few years preparing Pokémon for its U.S. release, and when the game finally arrived the company left nothing to chance. A massive multimedia blitz heralded the series to the point that many didn't actually realize the Game Boy RPG was the whole point of the thing. In fact, many players were disappointed when they discovered that Ash and Pikachu and the bad guys from Team Rocket were nowhere to be found in Pokémon Blue and Red -- an issue Nintendo addressed a year later with Pokémon Yellow, a tweak of the original game in which the hero was followed around by a cloying Pikachu.

Ironically, the Pokémon name wasn't completely unfamiliar to Americans -- the series had already made a minor splash in the headlines when an episode of the show hospitalized dozens of Japanese children with epilepsy-inducing flashing lights. If anyone harbored lingering negative associations by the time the franchise arrived in the West, they were certainly in the minority: the game and anime and manga and in fact everything emblazoned with the Pokémon logo were hot.

Perhaps no greater case can be made for the franchise's influence than the fact that Nintendo wasn't the only company to profit from its success. A shameful number of also-rans have ripped off the Pokémon formula, from the pitifully blatant (Digimon) to the genuinely clever (Mega Man Battle Network), and most have them have enjoyed a lasting popularity.

But Pokémon's influence extends far beyond its original medium. Since the series' arrival, anime and manga in general have exploded in popularity: what was once an obscure infatuation has become a mundanely mainstream fad, and racks of DVDs and comics of Japanese origin can be found at any retailer, and almost entirely as a result of Nintendo's cartoon collect-a-thon. Fair is fair, of course: other popular series like DragonBall have done their share to pique American interest in the format. But it was the one-two punch of the Pokémon game and anime that brought the trend to critical mass, and companies like TokyoPop and A.D.Vision owe a great deal of their current profits to a little yellow rat.

Lifeline

Pokémon's success has ultimately been most crucial to Nintendo, of course. The past few hardware generations have been rough on the house that Mario built, and the GameCube's popularity is a mere fraction of that commanded by the NES. In fact, Nintendo's home consoles have rapidly slid into something resembling obsolescence -- after the initial amazement of Super Mario 64 wore off, most gamers grew disillusioned with the N64 and its single annual A-class release, especially when the PlayStation was seeing a dozen high-quality games each year. Today, the GameCube is nearly as powerful as the Xbox and has hardware capabilities that put PlayStation 2 to shame, but it's the distant third-place also-ran of the current race.


The GBA Pokémon sequel(s), Ruby/Sapphire, didn't exactly push any technological boundaries, but they certainly racked up the sales regardless.


Even the latest Mario and Zelda titles -- system-sellers in any other generation -- have struggled to move into that vaunted million-seller territory.

But at the worst of times, the company can (and does) fall back on Pokémon. Each sequel sells on par with the original, if not better, and the latest U.S. release -- Ruby and Sapphire -- are hands-down the best-selling titles on the Game Boy Advance (which is hands-down the best-selling system). In fact, few series besides Grand Theft Auto and Madden NFL can even hope to challenge Pokémon's popularity. And unlike GTA, Pokémon lends itself to vigorous licensing, spin-offs and remakes, yet its collection-based theme keeps the series from growing stale. Quite the contrary, in fact: the more stuff there is to collect, the more it feeds the frenzy.

And good thing for Nintendo, because times are getting ever tougher. Many people have already written off the company's next machine (currently known only as "Revolution") before it's even announced. Worse, the handheld market space -- dominated exclusively by Nintendo since the arrival of Game & Watch more than two decades ago -- has come under fire by Sony, whose PSP is directly intended to take down GBA and the quirky new DS. Urban legend says that when the Game Boy debuted, Sony's president at the time berated his top designers and producers for not having been the ones to create the system; even if that's nothing but fanciful thinking, the PSP is unquestionably a bid to repeat the PlayStation's success in a handheld format... at Nintendo's expense, of course.

And the PSP is an alluring machine, no question. But Nintendo can afford to be confident about their ability to withstand Sony's assault when they know that profitability is as easy as saying "Pokémon DS."



Platform: Game Boy
Date: 1996(J)/1998(US)
Developer: Game Freaks
Publisher: Nintendo



Landmarks:



Progeny:

Resources:

Game Freak
Home of the creators of the Pokémon series. (No, not Nintendo.) Yeah, it's in Japanese, but poke around and you'll find plenty of cool art to admire.

Pokémon Elite 2000
Don't let the date in the title bar fool you! It's actually a very up-to-date site that covers both the video and customizable card games.

Power Up
A treatise on the role of Japanese video games, featuring a fantastic, informative chapter devoted to Pokémon.



Musings:

"I'm not going to lie: I don't really like Pokémon very much. I don't have a problem with the marketing or the cultural phenomenon or even the too-cute art style. In fact, I bought a copy of Pokémon Blue the week it came out in the U.S., curious to see what the hype was about. I quickly discovered that it's very much a game of sheer determination: not only does it take ages (and diligent trading) to acquire all the different creatures Game Freak concocted for the series, but once you get them you have to spend hour upon hour simply leveling them up.

"But that's not to say I can't understand the appeal of the game, especially for a younger audience. An essential part of the Pokémon experience is trading with friends, and unfortunately by the time Pokémon came out I was about twice the target age and had a 'real' job, so I couldn't really ask my hopelessly dignified and straight-laced boss if I could trade my Mudkip for his Charizard. That cut me out of a significant portion of the fun right off the bat.

"I can also understand how gamers could become attached to the characters -- I don't know how Game Freaks managed to create 151 different creatures, all equally endearing and cute without being saccharine or overdone, but the sheer game 'cast' alone is an incredible achievement. I guess it's probably my own fault that I couldn't think of individual names for my entire stable of critters without being lame and obvious. Once I created 'Darth Jigglypuff' I knew I was out of ideas.

"As a friend pointed out, it's a little strange that I can enjoy obsessive-compulsive dungeon crawls like Rogue while Pokémon leaves me cold, given that they both have a similar play structure that rewards diligence, determination and a strong stomach for repetition. I think maybe I'm just daunted by the prospect of having to level up literally hundreds of 'party members.' I get cold feet when I have to keep levels up for more characters than can fit in my active party in a game like Final Fantasy X; having to micromanage several dozen times that number just gives me an ill feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"But that's not to denigrate the game itself. I have too many friends and respected peers who fixate on raising their Pokémon to belittle it -- and even if it's not to my taste, I can still see the quality in the game. The amount of content in each core Pokémon title is impressive, and even more amazing is how well Game Freaks managed to balance the strengths and weaknesses of so many different creatures. It's a truly excellent game whose merits are obvious even to those who don't particularly care for its gameplay. Like me!

"And I have to admit, even I feel the temptation sometimes to catch 'em all... so it's probably for the best that I don't have the time for it."

"But still, my time with Pokémon wasn't a total loss. I challenge anyone to convince me that Psyduck isn't one of the greatest characters of all time. And I will forever carry with me the knowledge that shorts are both comfy and easy to wear. Thank you, Nintendo, for so enriching my life."