Friday, August 12, 2016

My memory of Pokemon

Honestly, the take up rate of Pokemon Go in Singapore exceeded my expectations. Sure, before its launch in Asia the game has taken the world by storm, but little did I expect this game to be soooooo popular that people are crowding ‘Pokestops’ as late as 11.45pm – 4am during the midst of Lunar 7th month?!? The news had the craze reported – residents in Hougang were unable to find parking lots at night; 20% increase in sales at the coffeeshop; throngs of phone-in-hand pokemon trainers dashing across the road. Crazy, I tell you!

I did not download the game, by the way. And I hope it stays this way.

The first Pokemon games (which were played on Nintendo consoles, but me on PC) were from my era. Pikachu, Charmander, Metapod, Meowth, just to name 2.67% of the ‘first gen’ pokemons which totaled 150 – my siblings and I knew all their names by heart and often competed to take turns listing one after another and see who would run out of names first. These names stuck with us till now – heck, I can even rap the last verse of the ‘Pokemon rap’!

We started off with Pokemon Blue... 



followed by Silver. 



We completed both games.

I have a more vivid memory of Pokemon Blue. Interestingly, my siblings and I chose different pokemons to start with – me Charmander, sister Bulbasaur and brother Squirtle. The storyline ends after a battle with Elite 4 and Ash’s rival. My selection for the final battle was:

Charizard (fire), Gyrados (water/flying), Dugtrio (ground), Zapdos (lightning/flying), Victreebell (plant) and Kadabra (psychic).


In addition to playing the games, my siblings and I also followed the anime that showed on Saturday mornings. Despite Pokemon playing a large part of our growing up, I simply do not find Pokemon Go any fun or enticing. Anyway, I also feel it’s a bubble… I heard many have almost caught all of the pokemon. With many high level players guarding gyms and some resorting to spoof apps to gain an unfair advantage, most will get bored of the game soon. We’ll see.

All 150 of the 'first gen' Pokemons


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