[HN Gopher] Thirty years on, Pokemon is still a monster hit
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Thirty years on, Pokemon is still a monster hit
Author : andsoitis
Score : 73 points
Date : 2026-02-27 01:35 UTC (3 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| It was a labor of love originally.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It was a beautiful attempt to reproduce a feeling of community
| that came from a bunch of kids collecting beetles in the woods
| for fun. Kids would need to get suggestions on where to go from
| other kids, and they'd show off the neat bugs they found and
| trade with other kids. The game was carefully designed to make
| kids work with each other and talk to each other. That's why
| you couldn't get all of the pokemon in only one game, and it's
| why some pokemon had ridiculous tricks to evolving them. It was
| wildly successful at that goal.
| tiznow wrote:
| Roaming around the apartment complex I grew up, in with
| friends and a link cable meeting new kids and trading Pokemon
| were some of the best times of my life.
|
| I'm still a Pokemon fan to this day. I play Go all the time,
| collect cards when they're not obscene to acquire, and I'll
| probably buy a Switch 2 when they come out with the upgrade
| to immerse myself in the online aspect of modern Pokemon
| games. Fantastic franchise.
| alargemoose wrote:
| Heads up that the switch 2 launched last May! (Depending on
| region) though they announced the next mainline Pokemon
| game won't launch till 2027.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Above is probably referencing an "Upgrade Pack," a
| product allowing owners of Switch 1 games get them to
| work a little better on the Switch 2. For examples, the
| $10 "Pokemon Legends" Upgrade Pack slightly improves the
| frame rate and draw distance.
| someperson wrote:
| It's just a fad
| pennomi wrote:
| Just wait, in a thousand years archaeologists will be talking
| about our pantheon of monsters that were greatly revered by
| all.
| elictronic wrote:
| There's Godwins law about comparing everything to nazis. Will
| there be someperson's law of completely misunderstanding what a
| word means?
| someperson wrote:
| It was sarcasm. Pokemon has been called a fad since it first
| gained popularity in 1998.
|
| Though to be fair the Pokemania era of the early 2000s was a
| blip, the same way Pokemon Go had a short-lived popularity
| surge in 2016.
|
| Pokemon is enduring.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Unfortunately, Goodwins law has lead to many people fearing
| to point out obvious fascism.
|
| Reversal of the Law: Mike Godwin himself has stated that his
| rule does not discredit efforts to make valid comparisons,
| particularly when democratic institutions are under threat.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| You might be interested in Poe's Law [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
| iammjm wrote:
| When does a fad stop being a fad and start being a canon or an
| icon or whatever? Is Shakespeare a fad? As a 8 years old I knew
| all Pokemons by name their powers and I have spent literally
| all my pocket money on Pokemon, and now almost 30 years later
| people still seem to dig it. Also I don't think it ever really
| went away in the meanwhile too. But yeah it could also just be
| millennial nostalgia and the cyclical nature of cultural
| products which over and over resurfaces and recycles and
| remixes the stuff from the past
| bogzz wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm.
| soopypoos wrote:
| no it's irony
| someperson wrote:
| It's a joke, people have been calling Pokemon a fad since
| 1998. Pokemania in the early 2000s was bigger than the
| Pokemon Go moment in 2016. But Pokemon endures.
| chao- wrote:
| Well with that attitude, you'll never catch 'em all!
| crims0n wrote:
| It is one of the few franchises that spans generations. My kids
| enjoy it, just as my wife and I enjoyed it before them. We have
| fun playing the games together. I imagine my parents felt the
| same way with Star Wars.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| I don't think your parents will enjoy the current crop of Star
| Wars IP.
| boringg wrote:
| They might enjoy the skywalker ranch general store though!
| crims0n wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, only one of my kids has shown any interest in
| Star Wars, and it is not in any of the new IP.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I didn't watch/play anything pokemon as a kid, I think I was
| just a little too old for it when it came out. My son got into
| it and we learned to play the card game, started going to a
| local game store, etc... I have fallen in love with it. Yes,
| the characters are cute/cuddly/goofy but if you get into the
| actual card game it is a deep strategy game with so many fun
| ways to play. My son still likes it but has moved on from it as
| his favorite, I now enjoy it and play it more than he does.
| juris wrote:
| my wife and i were just musing to ourselves this morning about
| whether it was strange that the franchise hasn't died yet.
|
| that conversation went somewhere along the lines of: "surely
| kids aren't interested in what their parents were/are
| interested in" (oh didn't _we_ hate _our parents '_ style) --
| and then I remembered that I really wanted to see Speed Racer,
| which was what my dad was into in the late sixties. i still
| thought that the animation was about as impressive as pokemon
| at the time (funny how they animated more frames than one punch
| man these days!!!)
|
| i think kids these days complain that their fat old parents are
| wearing (ostensibly 'millennial') graphic tees in public so
| there is plenty of generational rejection. but it's really
| weird how the internet hasn't developed more obvious
| generational 'coding' (except in language), and hasn't rejected
| things like pokemon entirely.
|
| or is it pretty easy to code us? lol
|
| their rejection of us aside (which is an evolutionary and
| biological thing) i wonder if our parents felt 'as connected'
| to us generationally speaking as we 'feel' we are to the next
| (socioeconomically and socio-digitally)?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Few franchises that span generations?
|
| The entire current zeitgeist of popular media is about
| zombifying your parent's IP. It's Nintendo's entire business in
| fact. Sure, usually they are doing good work with that IP, but
| they are the outlier in the industry. Everyone else is shitting
| out remakes of what your daddy played that don't even
| understand the original material, or like Halo, remakes of what
| your daddy played which was already a mediocre remake.
|
| Halo 1 came out the month after 9/11. It's old enough to have
| graduated college and started a family. It will be resold soon.
|
| Jurassic Park was dug up out of the grave to crap out several
| more movies. Star Wars is inflating a couple good plot lines
| into an entire _Universe_ of "Content". Even reality shows are
| made up of people who were contestants on older reality shows.
| Pixar is making yet another Toy Story.
|
| Aliens is still going, long after it's reanimated corpse was
| overplayed.
|
| One of the premier television series, that just finished, was
| all about nostalgia for living in the 80s, with some silly plot
| tacked on that apparently even the writers didn't care about.
|
| Even our propaganda, like Top Gun, is basically the same script
| as an 80s movie with minimal changes.
|
| It feels like the entire media ecosystem is designed around
| reselling content to my parent's generation before they finally
| kick the bucket or satisfying the nostalgia of that
| generation's early children. Even the President's
| administration bitches about things like the 90s USDA food
| pyramid that only affected that 13ish year segment of the
| population and was deprecated, twice, since then. Our
| authoritarianism is nostalgia based, for the time that
| generation was children, and things were "Simple" and "Good",
| because they were children and got to live the lives of kids.
| crims0n wrote:
| Maybe I should have qualified it with "successfully" span
| generations. I think most of the examples you give could be
| better explained as Member Berries, but I agree with the
| sentiment. I just don't think kids are as interesting in
| Halo, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, etc as we were - despite
| incredibly heavy handed pushes from studios.
| anshulbhide wrote:
| Its the ultimate millennial throwback.
| bogzz wrote:
| I just bought a controller attachment for my smartphone so I can
| replay Crystal and Emerald! I haven't tried any of the 3D games
| yet, do they still hold some of the charm that the 2D games had?
| dlivingston wrote:
| If you still have the original cartridges, highly recommend
| getting a ModRetro Chromatic or an Analogue Pocket to replay
| them. I have the ModRetro and it has been a lot of fun
| rediscovering my old childhood games.
| bogzz wrote:
| I donated mine with my GameBoys to Red Cross when I turned 19
| :(
|
| But I ordered the new Pocket Taco, which is like a controller
| that is taco-shaped and clamps around your smartphone, kinda
| turning it into a gameboy.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Pocket Taco, which is like a controller that is taco-
| shaped and clamps around your smartphone
|
| Nokia's N-Gage was a taco shaped smartphone before its
| time!
| lifesaverluke wrote:
| Last weekend I vibe-coded a website where my boys (5 and 8 years
| old) can look up their Pokemon cards to find out what they mean.
|
| They can read Dutch but they have cards with English & Portugese
| texts. Site helps them learning English :-)
|
| https://kartiq.xyz/en
| ecliptik wrote:
| Very cool, we have some Korean Pokemon cards that this would
| work great on. Are you planning to support other languages?
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| From your /en route, clicking on a card brings me to the
| /nl/cards route.
| lifesaverluke wrote:
| Will look into that. Thanks
| Liftyee wrote:
| I never played any Pokemon game apart from Go, until I recently
| tried HG/SS on my phone. It was a joy to experience (mobile!)
| games in an era where they were made as a form of art instead of
| as a cheap money making scheme. No microtransactions, no
| mandatory grind to progress, but plenty of goals and side quests
| to try as you want.
| exhumet wrote:
| i mean overall the core pokemon experience has never changed,
| G/R/B, HGSS, Scarlet and Violet. Core gameplay is the exact
| thing you said, only paid differences are that now a days they
| do include some expansions (in the oldschool vein) that are
| often better than the current base games lol. But overall,
| outside of stuff like pokemongo, the CORE game franchise has
| largely been unaffected by a lot of the trends of modern
| gaming. And great choice, HGSS are a highpoint of the series.
| Might i also suggest Black and White and Black and White 2. the
| first time IMO they really tried to make the games more story
| heavy and they succeeded. The music and pixel art in BW is
| unmatched as well.
| sdsd wrote:
| If you like the core games I highly recommend PokeMMO. It's
| the first five games glued together into an MMO and it's
| free.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| As a kid, I had the original Pokemon Blue for the GBC. Played it,
| enjoyed it, found it novel, beat it. Went to an event, got an
| authentic Mew (certificate is still around somewhere).
|
| Not long after, I was gifted Pokemon Silver. Played a bit of it.
| Didn't find it novel anymore. Very rapidly had this feeling of "I
| see where this is going and I want off this ride". Gave up on
| Pokemon, and haven't regretted it even slightly.
|
| I know there have been many innovations in the mechanics since
| (e.g. double battles), and I realize the game has a very large
| amount of strategy. But it also felt like the same kind of
| feeling I get from games like MtG ("expensive cardboard"); that
| _also_ has a lot of depth and strategy and new mechanics, but the
| "collection" aspect feels painful in an "I can see the Skinner
| box" way, in ways many other games don't.
|
| I had a similar feeling a few years later, when I played Wind
| Waker for the first time. That was one of the first games I
| intentionally decided _not_ to 100%: specifically, I left out the
| picture gallery, which gave me the same "collectathon" feeling.
| bubblewand wrote:
| From what I can tell the staying power seems to be in:
|
| 1) New players. More of 'em born every year! And,
|
| 2) Competitive play, which is a huge thing (I hate playing most
| games with randos online, personally, but lots of people love
| it). Like with any multiplayer game (call of duty, say) you
| need the latest entry or you'll be looking at a ghost town in
| the multiplayer lobbies. Plus you get to experience the meta
| evolving, so it's more dynamic than playing on an older one.
| They've got this whole graded ranking and matching system and a
| bunch of leaderboard stuff going on.
|
| I only know about the latter because I know a guy who usually
| spends at least a little time way up near the top of the
| rankings each time a new one of these comes out. Seems like a
| pretty large scene.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I think it also attracts many different _kinds_ of players
| (with overlap between them). Some of the same MtG "player
| personality archetypes" apply to Pokemon:
| https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Player_type : hyper-competitive
| players, players who like swinging with the biggest baddest
| coolest Pokemon they can get, and combo players who like
| figuring out just the right combination of mechanics if you
| bring in some move from six games ago plus an item from three
| games ago plus a new Pokemon that just made the combo
| possible. Also throw in aspects like grinding for shinies or
| EVs.
|
| Different appreciations for asethetics apply as well: people
| who get really into the lore, people who really enjoy
| specific Pokemon (look at Yellow, or the Let's Go games),
| people who just want "whatever has the best stats".
|
| And each new game tends to take all of those archetypes into
| account when creating new content.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Its interesting that elementary kids have this kind of evergreen
| introduction to Pokemon. There is always a new set of games
| coming out, cards to buy, toys, anime. So kids see older kids
| with it, they want to get it, then they get introduced. So this
| "fad" has gone on for 30 years.
|
| However, even as someone who plays JRPGs. I can't for the life of
| me understand how adults are playing the games. The pokemon games
| are _painful_ games to play, full of grinding, massive amounts of
| rng and just boring turn based combat (compared to other rpgs
| that exist). Why as an adult you would play Pokemon over SMT is
| something I can 't get. Every time Ive tried ive bounced off
| newer games hard.
| teeray wrote:
| > Why as an adult you would play Pokemon over SMT is something
| I can't get.
|
| Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
| jmarcher wrote:
| > Why as an adult you would play Pokemon
|
| Oh, I don't want to play Pokemon games, but every few hours, I
| am given the controller and told to beat the boss with a team
| composed of 6 low-level Pikachus and zero healing items.
| exhumet wrote:
| i play both! there is a sort of comfort in pokemon, like
| watching your favorite movie or eating junkfood, but i also
| love me a gourmet meal too. room for both! who doesnt wanna
| play a game with their favorite little doods, getting see what
| others can become favorites and then ya know everyone else
| playing so its a fun community thing. i also do love the
| grinding especially in the older games, and the RNG is fun to
| me. love when that 1% encounter rate hits after 30 mins of
| searching.
| sunaookami wrote:
| Newer Pokemon games have way more quality-of-life such as EXP
| share and way faster animations so it's not a slog anymore.
| Recently finished Scarlet and enjoyed it very much. Currently
| replaying SoulSilver and I couldn't play it without cheats that
| make the game a bit faster (cutting repetitive animations,
| making the game run at 60 FPS, etc.) since everything is so
| slow.
|
| I'm nearing 30 and have played a lot of JRPGs in my life.
| treesknees wrote:
| I completely agree with this. I'm playing through Leaf Green,
| and I'm around 8 hours in with just a single badge. I don't
| think I'd get through it without the boost of nostalgia for
| the GBC/GBA games. The newest games are nothing like the slog
| we went through as kids.
| bkandel wrote:
| As far as I can tell, my kids and their friends never actually
| play the game either, they just collect the cards. I don't
| think they even know the rules.
| basch wrote:
| once they get a phone they switch from cards to go.
| juris wrote:
| > Why as an adult you would play Pokemon over SMT is something
| I can't get
|
| bro are you serious? smt is _the definition of painful_ in
| terms of time sunk and the newer pokemon games have so many
| guard rails; i can mindlessly blast through the whole story and
| craft a quick crew to beat down my wife and friends and just be
| done ;p
|
| now granted, would I rather play (and 100 percent complete) any
| SMT game? yes. how do adults do it? i watched my friend who's
| an RN on hospital hours + has three kids blast through
| cyberpunk and the answer is pretty simple: sleep is for the
| weak.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| SMT is your example here for the anti-grind, anti-boring-tbc?
|
| I guess SMT2 was bizarrely anti-grind in a sense, but I dropped
| it when it turned out that leveling up made me _weaker_.
| nrb wrote:
| Players have come up with a variety of self-imposed challenge
| modes to make the game more dynamic, Nuzlocke being most
| famous:
| https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The grinding is less of an issue than being too easy. You can
| play through a number of the games with just your starter
| pokemon, playing with close to no strategy at all.
|
| People add artificial difficulty through extra rules, which
| seems like a strange thing to have to do:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuzlocke
| bombcar wrote:
| "You're playing it wrong" - Pokemon _can_ be played with a min
| /max grinding attitude, or it can be played as digital
| cockfights that you futz around with from time to time.
|
| Some people really like relatively "mindless" entertainment
| that they can do while doing other things. Hell, that describes
| the vast majority of mobile games.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Now that Niantic was bought, how will Nintendo prevent any damage
| to the brand from the 'seemingly' money grab changes to Pokemon
| Go?
| haunter wrote:
| You mean Pokemon TCG which introduced illegal unregulated
| gambling for millions of kids (since 1996)? Don't forget to buy
| the next pack for the special holo Raichu DX Spring Edition.
|
| Don't pretend that Game Freak/Creatures/Nintendo are some
| saints.
| perardi wrote:
| I still do a double-take when I see Pokemon trading card game
| vending machines at the grocery store.
|
| I am an elder Millennial with no kids...I knew it was still a
| popular game, but seeing a great big Pokeball machine next to the
| shopping carts really drove it home.
| poetril wrote:
| I grew up playing the games, and still have my copy of Yellow and
| Red. I fell of the wagon somewhere around Gen VI, the games just
| got to easy. It became clear to me that Gamefreak was just
| throwing in the towel and gave up making interesting games.
|
| That being said, recently I started getting into the world of
| Romhacks and they have sparked new joy in me. The games are hard,
| fun, and have a lot of love poured into them. I'm going through
| Radical Red right now, and its been an incredible time.
| exhumet wrote:
| should check out the Legacy line of romhacks, ie Crystal
| Legacy, Emerald Legacy. if youre ever in the mood for vanilla+.
| very very high quality releases made with intention and care
| for the base games.
|
| For absolutely crazy releases, Pokemon Unbound is an absolutely
| next level romhack
| irishcoffee wrote:
| In my head there are and only ever will be ~151 pokemon. I
| played red/blue when they launched as 8-bit wonders. I could
| never get into the rest of them.
| asdff wrote:
| Pokemon is one of the worst games for min maxing into a broken
| game. You go on the subreddits and everyone runs the same
| perfectly optimal team with the same perfectly optimal
| movesets. Playing like that probably is remarkably boring, but
| also once you learn of these patterns and playstyles it becomes
| hard not to consider using them. Like games that give you free
| money cheats, the seems great for a second then the drive to
| actually play the game as it was meant to be played is lost.
|
| I've tried to keep my pokemon knowledge free and clear from
| this influence. I don't look up anything. I don't really
| understand the meta beyond basic type matchups. I fumble
| through the games inefficiently and slowly same as I did in the
| 90s.
| sylens wrote:
| The romhacks are definitely the way to go. I don't need much in
| terms of gameplay mechanics besides Gen 3 or Gen 4, what I do
| need is interesting and challenging dungeons/gauntlets
| jtbayly wrote:
| Rant incoming...
|
| My wife and I live near a park. When we go on walks, we see
| people who have driven to the park, where they drive slowly
| around the parking lot, frequently stopping and starting, cars
| running the whole time. Rarely do they get out of their car. They
| are, I believe, playing Pokemon Go. Yesterday there were over 2
| dozen cars driving around. Nobody was walking. They don't talk to
| anybody. They are like zombies. I don't get it. Yesterday I did
| see one dad with his kid, and they were out actually walking on
| the trails. I can understand that. But driving to the park to
| drive around?! Argh!
|
| end rant. Thanks for listening.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Maybe complain to the council and ask them to remove the
| pokestop if people keep doing this.
| asdff wrote:
| You should have seen it when pokemon go came out
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I'm part of a pokemon go community, and the only time we ever
| do car raids is when the weather is terrible or freezing. What
| was the weather like?
| haunter wrote:
| Love Pokemon, hate the whole unregulated illegal gambling part of
| it and how they pray on kids. It's the dark side of Nintendo. And
| of course the stories like this
| https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2025-08-13/mcd...
|
| Honestly TCGs like Pokemon, YuGiOh, and Magic should have been
| regulated long long time ago but we have 100 years of history
| with baseball cards too so nothing going to happen.
| basch wrote:
| Their extended popularity should be viewed closer to praying on
| addiction than an accomplishment of culture. The phone game, by
| removing the exploration of outside aspect, became just
| mindless collecting. If you have ever been to an event as an
| outside spectator, there is as much anxiety in their air as
| joy.
|
| Pack opening is the equivalent of pulltabs or scratch offs.
| It's an asset class closer to beanie babies than baseball
| cards, because there is no tie to a rookie going on to have a
| huge career or anything but artificial scarcity.
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_card
|
| Addiction has always been a component here.
| ohhnoodont wrote:
| I loved gen 1 pokemon as a kid in the 90s. But today I sometimes
| feel like our culture is locked in time. Walking into a toy store
| is somewhat depressing - everything looks exactly the same as it
| did when I was a kid! It's been 30+ years, kids should have way
| cooler toys and IPs.
| alexpotato wrote:
| > But today I sometimes feel like our culture is locked in
| time.
|
| People say this often and I agree that it does feel that way.
|
| They particularly underline "they are constantly remaking old
| movies!" which is also true.
|
| However, this is not a new phenomenon. As someone who loves
| movie trivia, IMDB is full of "this 1980s film was actually a
| remake of this other 1947 film". An older example: the
| Victorians (~1837 - ~1901) were obsessed with the ancient
| Romans. This was during a time when the telegraph was
| connecting the world and people could talk to humans,
| instantly, on the other side of the world.
| bubblewand wrote:
| The Wizard of Oz (the one you know of) was a remake.
|
| The Thing (the one you know of--though the other had a longer
| title anyway) was a remake.
|
| The version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald
| Sutherland (so, the one with that meme-able image of him
| pointing toward the camera) was a remake.
|
| (Franchises? There are some from like the 40s that had a
| dozen or so entries over the next couple decades)
|
| Many remake examples from almost all periods of filmmaking.
|
| There were tons of remakes of silent films after talkies came
| about, then another wave of remakes of jankier-effects
| stagier-acting-style movies from the '40s and '50s when
| effects got way better and naturalistic acting took over in
| the 70s (plus some of these were remaking black & white to
| color).
| alexpotato wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| The opposite is also true: there are MANY authors who had
| entire series of books in the 1920s that were wildly
| popular yet largely unknown today.
|
| I imagine there are probably also films that everyone saw
| back then but are unheard of today.
| bubblewand wrote:
| Oh yeah one of those "memento mori" things for me is
| browsing shelves in flea markets with tons of 1890s-1930s
| popular fiction and appreciating how very many of the
| authors are now totally unknown. You can do something
| similar with bestseller lists by year on Wikipedia, go
| back far enough and even for someone with pretty deep
| recognition of historical authors it soon becomes a lot
| of "who? Who? Who?"
|
| > I imagine there are probably also films that everyone
| saw back then but are unheard of today.
|
| Even sticking to relatively critically-acclaimed stuff
| it's pretty easy to land on films that probably fewer
| than 1% of people in the Anglosphere (assuming initial
| popularity in that market) have seen, in the silent era,
| without going far off the beaten path. Go slightly
| farther and it's likely just you and a very small number
| of other extreme film nerds among the living who've ever
| watched it.
|
| Take DW Griffith, a giant of a director. Got what, 20+
| surviving feature films of 40ish made? How many people
| alive have seen more than three of them? It's a small
| number. Hell, it's not a _large_ number that have watched
| even one.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > The Wizard of Oz (the one you know of) was a remake.
|
| I'm not sure it's quite fair to call the 1939 film a
| "remake". It was one in a line of adaptations of the book,
| and isn't otherwise really related to the other
| adaptations. It isn't the first, or the last, but it is the
| most famous.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| The difference is between "I can tell this story
| better/more engaging/more entertaining/more realistic" vs
| "let's cash in on the success this movie had five years
| ago"
|
| The Wizard of Oz was a _new interpretation_ of Baum 's
| original story. They put _enormous_ effort into making
| the new film _better_ than other interpretations, of
| which there were several. Which is why it 's a
| successful, beloved classic!
|
| The same _really_ can 't be said of this week's Marvel/DC
| remake of whatever they made a few years ago. It's _just_
| about being a cash grab and nothing else.
|
| P.S. If you've never heard of the sequel 'Return to Oz',
| do yourself a favor and watch it without doing any
| research. Just go in straight blind, it really enhances
| the experience. If you drink, keep a bottle nearby,
| you'll need it.
| mrob wrote:
| >The Thing (the one you know of--though the other had a
| longer title anyway) was a remake.
|
| I think it's more accurate to say they're both based off
| the same 1938 novella: "Who Goes There?" by John W.
| Campbell. The 1951 movie "The Thing from Another World" is
| a very loose adaptation because it omits the most important
| plot point of the shapeshifting alien imitating people. The
| 1982 movie "The Thing" is a closer adaptation that includes
| it. This makes it a much better movie even if you ignore
| the improved special effects, because the drama of the
| characters not knowing who's really the Thing is a big part
| of the appeal.
| kevinsync wrote:
| Scarface! [0] We all think Tony Montana, but back in 1932 it
| was Tony Camonte.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarface_(1932_film)
| asdff wrote:
| I was just thinking too when there are new IPs, they are
| completely indistinct today. Take a character from any of the
| past 15 years of animated movies and they are interchangeable
| with each other. Everyone is afraid to establish a design
| language beyond looking kinda-sorta like a pixar character.
|
| 90s were so different with creative freedom with the media we
| were exposed to. All those shows had their own art style.
| Characters were distinct and unmistakable. Brands were cemented
| as a result.
|
| Marketing executives have lost the hat. They are like those
| people from the Neutral Planet in Futurama. Somehow they
| reigned in everything that made them successful in the 80s and
| 90s.
| specialist wrote:
| I believe, but cannot prove, new media(s) enable new waves of
| creativity.
|
| (Orthogonal to the socioeconomic incubators.)
| haunter wrote:
| >Take a character from any of the past 15 years of animated
| movies and they are interchangeable with each other
|
| That's mostly an american thing
|
| You should watch some anime
| yifanl wrote:
| To someone unfamiliar with anime, anime characters look
| extremely similar.
| yifanl wrote:
| I walk past something resembling a claw machine arcade on my
| commute, and I've noticed that although every month the prizes
| in the window swap around, the anime woman figurine and the
| mascot plush always looks quite similar to the one from the
| last month.
|
| I _think_ they're from different series, but aesthetically it's
| impossible for me to figure out one from the other. Trends are
| still changing, but I think our design sensibilities have
| definitely found a place to plateau.
| specialist wrote:
| I've come full circle to appreciating the current durability of
| culture.
|
| Last summer, I played Pokemon with my neice's kid. I got to
| relive the pure joy of playing Pokemon with my neice, nephews,
| and own son. So now three generations are nerding out together.
| I love it.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Eh, how long has looney tunes and Bugs Bunny been around? I was
| watching that with my silent generation grandfather into the
| 2000s, and my first video games were basically my Gen X dad's
| first video games on the 2600 and first Nintendo,
| Intellivision. I think the simplicity of those games and that
| IP is just universally approachable for people at a certain
| age. Before Pokemon cards, it was just sports cards for ages.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| It's not just video games but everything... movies, music,
| everything has basically barely evolved compared to the prior
| 30 years. Compare 1965 to 1995 and 1995 to present and it's so
| clear we have become stagnant in so many ways. Way fewer
| choices in a lot of ways even if we have more convenient
| options.
| runamuck wrote:
| I try to (relive my youth and) buy my kids action figures and
| they could care less. Injection molded plastic hunks can't
| compete with the dopamine hit of Roblox or Dogman books.
| popalchemist wrote:
| While there IS innovation and novelty in the toy industry, I
| can tell you from experience in the field that the people with
| the money are the parents. So the nostalgia play is a very
| strong tactic. Sell what the parents had because they will
| INSTANTLY want to give the same to their kids.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I get the logic, I didn't grow up with my parents youth
| culture though.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Not exactly Pokemon related, but this would have been the
| coolest toy I had for a while if I had it 30 years ago.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVXryEIj8ah/?igsh=MWViMDBvZ3h...
| bombcar wrote:
| "Block" games existed in the 90s, perhaps, but Minecraft is
| from 2009.
|
| "Factorio" type puzzles may have existed, but nothing of that
| detail until 2016.
|
| Part of the big advancements of the 80-90s was that the
| technology was advancing insanely quickly, which meant that
| things that were simply impossible a year ago were commonplace
| next year.
|
| LEGO still exists, but the Lego of 2026 is not the Lego of the
| 90s (for good or ill).
|
| Toy cars existed in the 80s, but the Cars franchise started in
| 2006.
|
| Part of the problem is it's hard to see what will be huge in 20
| years that already exists today.
|
| You also have "sideways cannibalization" where something in one
| area never really expands to another: Harvest Moon never moved
| to PC/Mac and so there was an opening that Stardew Valley took
| advantage of, and now has moved way beyond. In a way it's "the
| same thing locked in time" in another it's not.
|
| What do they say about there being only seven stories?
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| "Harvest Moon never moved to PC/Mac"
|
| That's not the opening that Stardew took. It was only on PC
| because that's the platform that doesn't make you fill out an
| application to get dev hardware for.
|
| The opening they took was Harvest Moon putting out
| increasingly uninnovative game after increasingly
| uninnovative game for years. Rune Factory innovated exactly
| once and then swore never to do so again (though they managed
| to produce RF4 so I do give them props for that. even if RF5
| walked it so far back.)
|
| Something about these games is very hard to pin down. See
| also: the millions of SDV clones, some even by huge players
| with lots of money, that don't make any kind of cultural
| dent.
| mmooss wrote:
| Here's a little story I read about how Pokemon's story
| intertwined with the rest of the fantasy gaming universe:
|
| You might have heard of another fantasy card game called Magic:
| The Gathering, started in the early 1990s by a small company
| called Wizards of the Coast which Wikipedia says was named after
| something in the founders' personal RPG world. MTG took off and
| WOTC did very well.
|
| In April 1997, apparently with cash to burn, WOTC invested in a
| bit of nostalgia, acquiring a dying gaming company called TSR
| which made a game called _Dungeons & Dragons_. D&D had peaked in
| the early 1980s and was then steadily run into the ground by two
| owners. WOTC's investment didn't do much for over a decade, iirc
| (becoming so desperate that Hasbro (see below) management
| embraced an employee's idea for 'open source gaming').
|
| The same year WOTC continued their speculative investments,
| acquiring the US (or English language?) license to a Japanese
| fantasy card game called Pokemon. This one was a hit.
|
| Two years later Hasbro acquired WOTC. The story said that Hasbro
| wanted the Pokemon license and maybe MTG. The rest of the assets
| were an afterthought.
|
| The joke was on Hasbro because Nintendo canceled the Pokemon
| license in 2003, leaving Hasbro with MTG and that nostalgic
| afterthought, D&D. I wonder how Hasbro could acquire WOTC without
| some assurance about the Pokemon license. But D&D, in a business
| and cultural sense, of course became an amazing and I think very
| rare comeback story. (The story was from a few years ago; I don't
| know how D&D is doing right now.)
| relwin wrote:
| If you want to drop $8k or so you can buy a Pokemon pinball game
| from Stern: https://sternpinball.com/game/pokemon/ .
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