Pokémon X and Y

Guess what? Nintendo just announced the next generation of Pokémon games.



And I've realized it's over for me.

Pokémon was a big part of my childhood. I've played through every generation. I remember Red Version being one of the first video games I ever played. I sank hundreds of hours into Silver Version when I was in the second grade. Even more hours into Sapphire Version—it was the first time I finished the Pokédex, and I even went so far as to get the full four stars on my trainer card. Did you know that unlocks an alternate dialogue at the Pokémon Center? It's true. Nurse Joy congratulates you, and from then on, she skips the small talk and goes straight to healing your Pokémon when you talk to her.

I delved just as deeply into Pokémon Pearl, training a bunch of Pokémon to actual competitive levels with the breeding for the IVs and the training for the EVs and the training to lv100 and everything. And I even fully completed the entire National Dex.

I played through Black Version. I bought it the day it came out. It was fun. It was the same game I knew and loved. It was Pokémon. And it was easy.

After Pearl, I just felt done. I had beaten Sapphire, but never quite finished the National Dex. When I did (in Pearl), that was it. Closure. I beat the game, I beat the postgame, and I even explored the metagame.

I played through Black Version. I bought it the day it came out. It was fun. It was the same game I knew and loved. It was Pokémon. And it was redundant. I'd beaten the first gen, the second gen, the third gen, both GameCube side games, the fourth gen, and here I was playing through the same old story yet again. The difference was that I'm just not invested anymore. I don't care enough to memorize another hundred new guys and their stats and types and movepools. I don't care enough to scour the world yet again in search of the 100% completion. I've done that schtick enough times already; it's old hat.

I know a lot of people think that Pokémon has jumped the shark. It's true that it's no longer a worldwide mega-fad engulfing the entire consumer market like in the 90s—but it's not as if the product itself is getting worse, the way Sonic the Hedgehog did. It's mostly static. You could call it stagnant—tomayto, tomahto—but the fact remains that the core of the franchise is the same now as it was then. What's changed is me. Pokémon is still there, but I've turned into the kind of person who doesn't care about Pokémon. That's more or less what my poem from before was about.