Kids Still Playing Pokemon Like It's 1999

theodp writes "In 1999, TIME's cover warned readers to Beware of Pokemon ('For many kids it's now an addiction: cards, video games, toys, a new movie. Is it bad for them?'). But Pokemon wasn't as easily felled as Lehman or Bear Stearns. Thirteen years later, 16-year-old Manoj Sunny has his eye on a Pokemon world title, having earned the chance to travel to The Big Island with 35 fellow Americans for the 2012 Pokemon Video Game World Championships, which will be held Aug. 10-12. Sunny, who also captains his school's chess team, credits his success to a good memory, intuition, daily practice, the use of an online simulator, and a competitive attitude ('I hate losing. Once I lost, I needed to get better.')"

Comments

Not surprised

[vux984]

My kids both like pokemon. I don't blame them... its collectible, and collecting is fun.

What did we collect when I was a kid? Hockey cards? Baseball cards? Same idea but a hell of a lot less fun. Especially if you didn't really care about the sport...

I'm vaguely surprised that Pokemon hasn't been replaced by something newer, but I'm not surprised that its still around. Nintendo has done well with the marketing.

Aside from the games' rules themselves...

[Pluvius]

The only important difference between competitive Pokemon and competitive chess is that chess is old and respected.

Rob

Re:Aside from the games' rules themselves...

[King InuYasha]

Perhaps these other games should be respected as well. They offer more complex rules and require far more difficult strategic thinking than classic games like Chess and Checkers.

Personally, I love the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG battle system. It's very complex and offers a wide range of valid strategies to actually win a match. Pokémon offers a similarly complex system, too. In a way, these games have invigorated the flagging card game genre.

While I have no proof to back this up, I suspect that games like these that were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s are the reason why casual puzzle and strategy games are far more popular on computer platforms.

Of course, none of these games get any respect. Most "adults" denigrate these games and believe they are worthless and/or childish. Many of these games are great for mental development in a multitude of areas.

For example, you may have not really thought of the Pokémon TCG as a way for children to develop a good understanding of economics, but it does[1].

[1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/717948.stm

Re:Aside from the games' rules themselves...

[Pluvius]

You're confusing Pokemon with Magic. Also, if chess was invented in the 90s, I can almost guarantee you'd see similar bullshit marketing tactics.

Rob

Re:Aside from the games' rules themselves...

[PopeRatzo]

Perhaps these other games should be respected as well. They offer more complex rules and require far more difficult strategic thinking than classic games like Chess and Checkers.

Personally, I love the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG battle system.

No. The benefit of chess is there is no corporate marketing campaign associated with it, and nobody owns the intellectual property.

The more I think about it, the fact that chess is public domain makes in infinitely better than any game like Yu-Gi-Oh! that belongs to someone.

And it's not just because Chess is free and you have to pay, at some level, to play Yu-Gi-Oh!. It's because chess belongs to everyone, to humanity, and I can go back and re-play the games played by chess masters 100 years ago and STILL not have to pay someone royalities. Two men of distinctly different backgrounds can play chess while incarcerated, in separate cells, as long as they can communicate somehow, either by yelling out the moves or by giving the moves to the screw patrolling the cellblock.

There are volumes and volumes of chess theory and chess strategy and chess philosophy. I can ride my bike over to North Avenue Beach and play chess, right now, with a refugee from sub-Saharan Africa or an immigrant from the Ukraine (and get beaten by both, even though I've got a ~1700 Elo rating). You'll find retired Romance Language professors and backward hat & baggy pants-wearing teenagers playing one another for a buck a game.

And there is something comforting about playing a game that has changed very little for the better part of a millennium.

No matter how you look at it, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon will be an historical footnote when chess is still being played off-planet. They might be great games, but their proprietary nature and cultural framework keep them locked down.

Re:Aside from the games' rules themselves...

[PopeRatzo]

I lost all interest in chess after 1997, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Princess Diana's death really hit you hard, didn't it?

Re:Aside from the games' rules themselves...

[PopeRatzo]

I don't fully agree with that... computers have done a great deal to expand the realm of chess theory, and I expect to see chess become a "solved" game during my lifetime.

It's already the case that even a low-powered computer system can play at the Grandmaster level and beyond.

Does the fact that a car can go over 200mph stop people from running the 100 yard dash?

Just because a machine can perform a particular task better than a human does not make any human competition in that task meaningless. A computer can fly a plane much faster and more perfectly than a man, but people still want to be pilots.

The idea that computers "solving" chess will destroy the game is ridiculous. I mean, a stick of dynamite has been able to dislodge a castled king more effectively than a two-bishops attack since the 19th century, but people still play chess.

'I hate losing"

[ed1park]

Pokemon championships? You're already lost.

Re:'I hate losing"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

... posted the Slashdotter on a Saturday.

Re:Get off my lawn.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Things are a tad different now.

*cough*ponies*cough*