October 12, 2013 was the official release date of Pokémon
X and Pokémon Y! I was so damn excited to get my hands on my very own copy (I
got Pokémon X of course)!
Xerneas (left), the new fairy type legendary Pokémon and Yveltal (right), the new dark and flying type legendary Pokémon.
I’ve been a fan of the Pokémon series since Ash first
started his journey in the Kanto region with his beloved Pikachu. Although I’ve
stopped watching the Pokémon series around its 3rd season, I did not
stop playing the game. I had played Pokémon Blue version, Pokémon Silver, Pokémon
Sapphire, Pokémon Diamond, Pokémon White, Pokémon White 2, and now I am playing
Pokémon X. There are some versions that I didn’t get to play because I didn’t have
the luxury of getting them at the time but now that I am a grown adult and have
a job, I can finally afford these games! Some people say that the Pokémon franchise are and should only be for kids but I disagree.
The chart below shows the age demographics on the game's previous successor, Pokémon White and Pokémon Black. Unfortunately there are no statistics regarding the demographics of Pokémon
X and Pokémon Y since the game was only out for less than a week...bare with it.
Boys are in blue and girls are in pink. 1st - 3rd grader boys and men ages of 19-24 are almost equal and are greater compared to 4th-12th grader boys. Although the population of female players are smaller than the male player base, you can see that there are more women of the age of 19-24 that play Pokémon compared to girls younger than their age--which fascinates me. It's probably because most 19-24 year olds, either boy or girl, grew up with Pokémon in their early childhood. The Pokémon anime did came out in 1998 or roughly 15 years ago. You'd be surprised to see how many college students play Pokémon including myself.
Professor Oak tends to forget about your gender...and his grandson's name.
Pokémon targeted their audience at a young age and those young folks who eventually grew up as adults stayed loyal to the series, both anime and video games. As the year goes by, Pokémon creates newer generation of Pokémons that the veteran fans cringe and hate (but then eventually love) while the new generation of children praise it and dance with joy. In the end Pokémon is still very successful as they follow a similar story structure and game concept but modernizing it for the newer generation of our children and giving veteran fans a refreshment of the series.
Despite being a grown person, Pokémon
will forever be in my heart. It made my childhood and made a huge impact not only to my life nor to other people's lives but in our media as well.
I dont know much about today's Pokemon, but In my opinion, when Pokemon first begin, many people really enjoy it. Pokemon games, Pokemon Cards and watching Pokemon Epidsodes on television were really addictive. I still remeber as a child, waking up every saturday morning just to watch pokemon, and spent alot of money just for pokemon games. One of the things as my childhood was buying Pokemon card, trading and sometimes selling cards.
ReplyDeleteI remember the days when I first played Pokemon Red in elementary school. How the graphics changed and the gameplay! I hope they didn't create a mickey mouse pikachu thing that looked like your picture.
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