Of all the concepts I’ve stumbled across in Economics, the most interesting is the Curse of Knowledge. For those unaware, the Curse of Knowledge is a cognitive bias where Person A communicates with Person B while assuming Person B has all implicit background knowledge of Person A.
Still don’t know what I mean? Use this illustration.
Why am I blathering about the curse of knowledge? Simple: the chief topic of this blog, Pokémon, is a topic where common knowledge does not exist. A person can walk through their entire life without hearing about Pokémon and suffer no tangible penalty. Hence, a gap needs to be bridged between Pokémon fans and the general public, and that’s what this blog post is for.
But rather than copy and paste the Wikipedia entry for Pokémon, this blog post will be my attempt to explain Pokémon for those who’ve never heard of it before.
In the beginning/back in 1996…
The story begins with the release of the first Pokémon games, Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green on the Nintendo Gameboy in February 1996. Though the Pokémon franchise now includes a trading card game, a cartoon series, and a manga comic in addition to plush dolls and action figures, Pokémon started life as a video game. Hence, it is the core video game plot that holds the keys to Pokémon's jaw-dropping success and this post will focus primarily on that medium.
Pokémon's first games didn't have the strongest start, being so riddled with bugs and glitches, that improved version with better graphics, Pokémon Blue, was released later in 1996. The Blue game would form the basis of the international releases in 1998, as Pokémon Red and Blue. Once the anime cartoon series aired in 1997, a special Pokémon Yellow version was also released 1998 in Japan and 1999 for the rest of the world. Yellow depicted the Pokémon Pikachu on the cover, reflecting the growing popularity of that Pokémon character. The yellow, mouselike Pikachu is the Pokémon franchise mascot and has a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to this day.
aptain of a 105 billion dollar ship.
This first batch of games laid the groundwork for all future Pokémon games and other media.
So what was the story of Pokémon? And how did one play the game to win? The keys to Pokémon's success are in this gameplay. But before we analyse Pokémon's success, a more basic question needs to be answered: what the heck is a Pokémon?
In the world of Pokémon, there are only two species on earth: humans and Pokémon. Humans are the same as you and me, but all non-human creatures are Pokémon. All Pokémon are based off of plants, animals, machines and any number of objects in the real world. Furthermore, most Pokémon have the ability to “evolve” in the games. “Evolution” in this context is not Darwinian, being more like metamorphosis in the real world. When a Pokémon evolves, it turns into another species of Pokémon that it is related to. For example, series mascot Pikachu evolves into a Pokémon called Raichu while Pikachu itself is the evolved form of a Pokémon called Pichu. Pokémon in the same evolutionary tree look quite alike.
But what makes Pokémon unique compared to mere humans is their ability to shrink down to fit inside a softball-sized sphere called a Pokéball. Fitting these creatures into a ball that can go into your pocket makes them “pocket monsters” or “Pokémon” for short.
Every Pokémon in every game has the following attributes: a Type, Base Stats, all of which are crucial to understanding how to beat the game, so I will explain them in that order.
First, Types. All Pokémon are one of eighteen “Types”. The series started with fifteen Types but three more have been added. Pokémon can either have one Type or two and, other than Pokémon occasionally changing Types via evolution, their Type is a permanent fixture. For example, series mascot Pikachu and its evolutions are Electric-type Pokémon.
A Pokémon’s Type refers to how it will be affected in a Pokémon battle (more on those later). Sticking with Pikachu, as an Electric-type Pokémon, it will not take much damage from Flying-type Moves because Electric-type Pokémon resist Flying-type Moves. However, Pikachu will take double-damage from Ground-type Moves because Electric-type Pokémon are weak to Ground-types. But what this example reveals is that Pokémon are not the only things in the games to have types, so do Moves.
That naturally leads me to the second item on the list, Moves. All Pokémon have the ability to use Moves which deal damage to opposing Pokémon. Moves are Pokémon’s magical powers in the game. Like Pokémon, all Moves have Types attached to them, but unlike Pokémon, Moves are monotype and remain that Type regardless of which Pokémon is using the move. All Moves either deal damage, temporarily protect a Pokémon, inflict a status condition, or raise/lower a Pokémon’s stats in a battle. The Move’s effect is clearly listed in the games, but what matters for this discussion is that it is the Moves that ultimately deal damage in battles. But how much damage they do depends on a Pokémon’s Type and Base Stats.
Speaking of which, the final element common to all Pokémon is their Base Stats. Base Stats are numerical values attached to every species of Pokémon across 6 categories: Hit Points (HP), Attack, Defence, Special Attack, Special Defence, and Speed. Pokémon further along in their evolutionary family have higher Base Stats. For example, Pikachu’s Base Stats are, respectively, 35, 55, 40, 50, 50, and 90. But evolved form Raichu’s stats are 60, 90, 55,90, 80, 110. These Base Stats are fixed for every Pokémon. Rarer legendary Pokémon have much, much higher Base Stats, making them more formidable opponents.
So if you’re ever in the Pokémon world and you find yourself looking at a creature that’s not a human, has a Type attached to it, can learn Moves, has a set of Base Stats, and can fit into a red and white ball, it’s a Pokémon.
So if those are the attributes of the digital creatures within these games, how do players and their Pokémon win the game?
Players booting up their copy of Pokémon Red or Green found their player character was a 10-year-old boy whose default name is Red (a female protagonist would be added in the next set of games). Of course, one named their player whatever they wanted.
Your character lives in Pallet Town, a sleepy little village in the Kanto region, with your mother and no father figure (an odd trend that continues in Pokémon games to this day). But before you are allowed to explore the region’s forests, cities, and oceans, you must receive your own Pokémon to accompany you, as it is unsafe to wander around in the wild without one.
The player receives their first Pokémon from Professor Oak, a legendary Pokémon researcher. (This trope of the player receiving their first Pokémon from a professor named after a tree would continue more or less for all subsequent main series games.)
Professor Oak gives you the option of choosing one of three starter Pokémon. In these first games, the starter Pokémon on offer are Bulbasaur (a Grass and Poison type), Charmander (a Fire-type), and Squirtle (a Water-type). In subsequent games, the Starter Pokémon are unique to each region, but, barring special games like Yellow version, the three Types available (Grass, Fire, Water) do not change.
With your first Pokémon in hand, you are now officially a Pokémon Trainer and your adventure can begin.
Also receiving their starter Pokémon is Professor Oak’s grandson, your childhood friend and Rival, Blue (in Japanese his name is Green but I’m sticking to the language I speak). Blue (or whatever you named him at the start of the game) is a cocky, arrogant, but extremely skilled Trainer who will battle you on multiple occasions throughout the game. Blue will always be one step ahead of you, and always have the advantage over you as the starter Pokémon he selects will have a Type match-up advantage over yours. (For example, if you selected the Fire-type Charmander, he will pick the Water type Squirtle.) The Rival Pokémon Trainer is another feature that has continued in all subsequent games.
Starter Pokémon in hand, your objective is two-fold: First, defeat all eight Gym Leaders and the subsequent Elite Four to become the Champion. You achieve this aim by battling and defeating other Pokémon Trainers who challenge you to a Pokémon battle. Second, you are tasked with catching and cataloguing all 151 unique Pokémon species of the Kanto region in your Pokédex, an encyclopaedia detailing each Pokémon’s habitats, stats, and so on. Or as the series’s catchphrase says, you gotta catch ‘em all.
On your journey, your player will battle a variety of Pokémon Trainers. For reference, Pokémon Trainers who are NOT your Rival are non-player character identified by their profession (“Trainer Class” to use the formal term). For example, you might be challenged by Picnicker Anna or Hiker James. The Trainer Class indicative what kind of Pokémon they will use (e.g., the Swimmer Trainer Class will use Water-type Pokémon).
However, not all Trainers are pure of heart. Some Trainers belong to the Team Rocket crime syndicate. Team Rocket steal Pokémon, abuse them, and treat Pokémon the way one would expect a crime syndicate would treat wild animals. The player will use their Pokémon to defeat the seemingly endless stream of Team Rocket Grunts (no unimportant member of Team Rocket has a given name), higher-level Team Rocket Admins and finally the Team Rocket Boss, Giovanni. Though Team Rocket itself doesn’t appear in every game, all subsequent games do feature an evil team with the ‘Team’ prefix whose primary function is to impede the player whilst conducting their nefarious deeds.
When the player is not battling Team Rocket, much of their energy will be devoted to catching Pokémon for the Pokédex and defeating the Gym Leaders. Gym Leaders, as the name suggests run Pokémon gyms (which have nothing to do with benchpresses and medicine balls). Each gym specialises in a different Type of Pokémon. Defeating that city’s Gym Leader will earn the player a Gym Badge and the ability to use a specific Pokémon move outside of Pokémon battles, which are necessary to progress through the game. As with the starter Pokémon, Rival, Pokédex, and evil team, Gym Leaders feature in nearly all subsequent Pokémon games, serving the same role as these first games.
Once the Gym Leaders are defeated and the player acquires all eight Gym Badges, they have the right to challenge the Elite Four at the Pokémon League. The Elite Four are essentially the same as Gym Leaders, but much stronger. Upon defeating the final Elite Four member, Lance, the player will be informed that their Rival beat the Elite Four before them and is now Champion. As such, if the player wants to be the Champion, they must have one final battle against their Rival.
It should be noted that, like the Gym Leaders, an Elite Four is a staple of nearly all Pokémon games. The same can be said for the final Champion character, but the Champion is rarely your Rival in later entries.
The Rival is defeated just as Professor Oak arrives. Professor Oak chastises his grandson for his Pokémon training methods, and escorts the player to the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame records the six Pokémon the player used to defeat the Pokémon League for posterity and the credits roll.
Once the credits are done, the only post-game story available to the player in these early games is completing the Pokédex by catching and collecting all 151 Pokémon, including extremely powerful Pokémon Mewtwo. Mewtwo and a select few others are so strong that they are known as Legendary Pokémon, as they would be in all future games.
The End.
Except, it's not the end because, unlike books and movies, understanding the story of a video game isn’t enough to understand its popularity; one must also master the mechanics and the rules. And Pokémon sure has a lot of rules. So to simplify matters, I will divide this part of the explanation into two distinct sections: the catching and Pokédex mechanics, and the battling mechanics.
First, catching and the Pokédex. A player—excuse me, “Trainer”—cannot battle other Trainers without catching Pokémon first. Without Pokémon, there are no battles. Every game comes with a brief tutorial, usually a cut scene, that demonstrates the art of the Pokémon capture. This tutorial’s instruments might change but its song remains the same:
After receiving their Starter Pokémon from the professor, Trainers can battle wild Pokémon—creatures that do not belong to another Trainer—right away. A wild Pokémon can only be found in “tall grass”, patches of grass found on the routes between in-game cities. Catching Pokémon in towns and cities rarely if ever happens. As the player moves their character through the grass, there’s a chance that they will trigger a battle. Triggering a battle switches the game from the overworld screen to the game’s turn-based battle screen.
Upon triggering the battle, the player will be greeted with the sprite (or, in later games, 3D model) of a wild Pokémon. Immediately, the player will send out the Pokémon in the first slot of their party.
The game gives the player four options: Battle, Pokémon, Bag, Run. If the player chooses to Run, the battle will usually end and the overworld screen will return. If the player chooses Bag, they can choose an item in their rucksack such as a Potion that will affect the battle in some way. The Bag is where the all important Pokéballs live, so we’ll return to this. If the player chooses Pokémon, they will be greeted with their party menu. A player may have six Pokémon in their party at any one time and they have the option to switch out the Pokémon they have at the front of their party with another Pokémon provided they have more than one. However, it’s only when the player chooses Battle that the task of capturing a wild Pokémon begins.
The player’s objective in this wild battle is to weaken, but not knock-out, the opposing Pokémon. Players can see their progress by looking at the opposing Pokémon’s health bar. The more health the opposing Pokémon has, the higher the bar and the bar itself will be coloured green. When the opposing Pokémon drops to below half health, the health bar will turn yellow. When the Pokémon nears 0 health, the bar will turn red.
Catching Pokémon with a green health bar is much harder than a Pokémon that has a red or yellow health bar. So, once the player has brought the wild Pokémon down to yellow or red health, they will select the Bag option and find their Pokéballs. A player then throws their Pokéball and one of two things will happen. In the first scenario, the Pokemon will shrink down into the ball and it will shake once or twice but then the Pokémon will break out. If the Pokémon breaks out, the player will need to throw another Pokéball. If the player runs out of Pokéballs, they can’t catch a Pokémon until they buy more. Legendary Pokémon and Pokémon with high levels will take more attempts to catch.
In the second scenario, the Pokémon will go into the ball and the ball will shake three times before the game announces that you’ve just captured a Pokémon over a cheerful jingle. After successfully catching a Pokémon, you will be given the option of giving your new Pokémon a nickname (and no, you can’t use naughty words). If the player has less than six Pokémon in their party, the new capture will be immediately added. If the player has more than six, the Pokémon will be sent to the storage box. Players can withdraw, deposit or substitute Pokémon to build the best team at any time.
And that’s catching, the staple in every Pokémon game, and you need to catch them all. However, there’s one important caveat about trying to catch every Pokémon: it’s technically impossible, at least with just one game.
Recall that each mainline Pokémon game is released as a pair like Red and Blue. Among the reasons for releasing two nearly identical games is that some Pokémon are “version exclusives” only found in one of the pair.
So how do you get the Pokémon exclusive to the other game? The answer is trading. First through the Game Boy’s Link Cable and through wireless in later games, the two games pairs can speak with each other and allow players to trade Pokémon they caught between the games.
But the very act of catching a Pokémon requires knowledge of a Pokémon game's other central feature, battling.
A Pokémon battle in the game is initiated when the player character steps in front of another non-player character and the NPC challenges the player to a battle. The game will again switch to the battle screen. The player will throw the first Pokémon in their party out onto the field and the opposing trainer will do the same.
As with capturing wild Pokémon, the player is presented with the same four options: Battle, Pokémon, Bag, Run. Unlike battles with wild Pokémon however, a player cannot run from a Trainer battle, nor can they use their Pokéballs to catch the opposing Trainer’s Pokémon. Capturing a Pokémon in the wild puts that Pokémon under the ownership of the Trainer who caught it. No other Trainer may catch that particular Pokémon but they can catch another wild Pokémon of the same species.
So in Trainer battles, players are essentially limited to battling with their current Pokémon or substituting it with another one of the five Pokémon in their party. Winning one-on-one battles primarily comes down to the player’s understanding of Type matchups. They need to understand what Type their Pokémon is, what Type their opponent’s Pokémon is, what Type of damage their moves deal, and what type of damage their opponent’s Moves deal, in that order.
Conclusion
This blog post by no means explains every aspect of Pokémon battles. Such a feat would be impossible because the gameplay mechanics change ever-so-slightly with each new release. This blog post only contained the elements that were present from the very beginning and continue to be in the games. More lasting elements like Double Battles where four Pokémon are on the field as opposed to two and Abilities attached to each Pokémon aren’t mentioned because they were added later.
No matter what game you pick up, this blog post will save you from the existential terror of starting with nothing.
However, what’s interesting about Pokémon is not what I’ve outlined here…it’s why it worked.