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Comment by em0ney | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who doesn't understand pokemon

If you're following video games, Pokémon isn't really anything special. It's an RPG. It's doesn't have any innovative gameplay. What was new at release, is the way it combines things which already existed at the time.

For example, in Final Fantasy V (which came out 3 years before pokémon), a character could already catch monsters and have them battle against others. Many games already had a collecting element. The exchange/trading might be new though, as well as selling the same game twice, with only a few differences between the two (to encourage exchanges… and boost sales).

It's special to me, the tv show and the trading cards assisted with that. I rekindled my love of the franchise getting into speed running a few years back. 10yo me would spend weeks slow grind progressing. 22yo me trying to speedrun it in sub 2 hours.

I'm not denying that it's special to many people, but this is true of many things in pop culture. I was answering the GG-parent with regards to "understanding" Pokemon. I'm arguing that it's easy to understand as a video game. As a pop culture phenomenon, the question doesn't really make sense, calling for a tautological answer.

> If you're following video games, Pokémon isn't really anything special. It's an RPG.

Pokemon Red, Green, and Blue are the number two Game Boy video games of all time. Behind Tetris of all games. This is a pretty extreme reductive statement, akin to calling Super Mario 64 "just a 3D platformer."

I think you missed the point. I'm not talking about popularity, but game mechanics, see my other comment.

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