Bricker Jr has discovered Pokemon… who knew it was still around?
Well, to my surprise, it is, and he’s agitating for a computer game.
I am not a gamer at all. We own nothing - no PS, no Wii, no Xbox. Plenty of PCs, but nothing that would qualify as a gaming platform.
He’s six, almost seven.
What’s a good approach to get him into Pokemon delight?
Your best option is probably getting a DS Light and Pokemon Diamond or Pearl, unless you wan tot go the route of eBay-ing and N64 and Pokemon Stadium, or an old Gameboy Color (or advance) with some of the older games. The DS is probably the best investment because it can:
Pokemon has gotten a good deal more complex from my days though (okay, I’m 18, I don’t think I’m qualified to say that, but Blue/Red seems like a loooooooooooooooooong time ago, sue me). It used to be “catch some Pokemon, keep a type chart handy and make sure they’re within reasonable levels of the next gym leader.” I skipped a everything from Crystal up and just got back into it with “Berries? Contests? Poffins? Local Multiplayer Underground Mining + Capture the Flag wtf!?” Though I don’t think you’ll need to walk him through it, it’s not that bad since most of the stuff is optional (and not hard to pick up, it is Nintendo and all).
So in short: Pick up a DS and Pokemon Diamond or Pearl, they’re not too horribly expensive, well when you compare them to the amount of approximate entertainment you’ll get for a one use movie ticket at least the cost-per-hour goes way down.
This weekend, Gamestops around the country are giving away a free very rare Pokemon. Deoxys, the Laser Pokemon.
Great time to start! There are many other wonderful games for the DS. Even Opera, the web browser.
It’s a very interesting product, technically, and worth investigating. I also reccomend Clubhouse Games (darts, majong, solitare), Brain Age (educational/mental agility) and Atari Classics (Breakout, Space Invaders) if you’re going to be the old fogey playing it.
Also, you can pick up Pokemon XD and a used Gamecube (and memory card) for about $60 total at a GameStop. But that’s last generation, and if you’d like to get current, I’d recommend Pokemon Diamond or Pearl and a used original DS for someone that young, as they’re virtually indestructible. The Lite version is a little more delicate. This will set you back around $90-$100 at Gamestop.
This comic seems appropriate, just 'cause.
I’ll echo Jragon. The handheld games are the core games in the Pokemon franchise. (Just in case you didn’t know, Pokemon is a Nintendo exclusive) A DS Lite with either Diamond or Pearl is the way to start. Once he gets beats that and wants to add more Pokemon, you can back fill with the Game Boy Advance games (Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Fire Red, Leaf Green), which can be played on a DS. Be aware there’s a lot of redundancy between the games. Diamond and Pearl are basically the same game, but there’s about 20 Pokemon exclusive to each version. The story line is identical. Similarly Ruby and Sapphire overlap, and Emerald is a superset of both. Fire Red/Leaf Green is the last pairing.
Some of the side games are fun, but not the best place to start. Pokemon Ranger made innovative use of the DS touch screen and was extremely addictive. I think I cleared more levels than my kids.
The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are basically the old UNIX classic Rogue with really cool graphics and Pokemon as the main characters. However, there’s a lot of reading involved, which caused my 5 year-old to give up. My 8-year-old has no problem.
Console-wise, you can pick up a used Gamecube or a new Wii and a copy of Pokemon XD. (Wiis play GameCube games, but you need to get your hands on a GameCube controller). I picked up a used GameCube right about the time the Wii was released. I found one with the XD game on eBay for $50.
The only Wii Pokemon game currently available is Pokemon Battle Revolution, which is pretty weak as a standalone game. It’s like Nintendo suddenly realized, “Oh crap, this console is selling like mad, we already got a Mario game, what about our #2 franchise? Quick, put something, anything, Pokemon on the Wii”. Basically it lets you copy your Pokemon from the DS games to the Wii’s internal memory and watch them battle in 3D. If you don’t have a DS there are a few canned sets of Pokemon to battle with. It’s a fun expansion to the Pokemon universe, but in no way worth the $50 retail price. $20 after a price drop would be more reasonable.
Like other posters mentioned, GameStop has the Deoxys giveaway this weekend and next (my wife was supposed to take my sons there today on their first day of summer vacation), which makes now a good time to start. What’s a Deoxys giveaway? Let’s see… There are 493 Pokemon in the Pokemon universe. The object of the game is to “catch 'em all”. However, it is impossible to obtain all of them by playing the game normally. Some of the rarer ones are locked away in the game code. To release them, you need to go to various Nintendo events, such as this GameStop promotion and unlock the Pokemon via the Wi-Fi connection built into the DS. Usually the events are corporate synergy tied to some other Pokemon merchandise. For example, last month Toys R Us had a Darkrai event giveaway to coincide with the release of the Darkrai movie DVD. (In Japan, where the films still play in theatres, the giveaways were in the theatres showing the movie).
Whoa, this is a long post. Seeing as I have 2 Pokemon addicts for sons, I’ve picked up a lot more knowledge than I’d realized. We haven’t even mentioned the trading card game…
Okay, I am going to Game Stop tomorrow with my son’s DS Lite. We missed Darkrai at Toys R Us last time, so this one is a must.
Do you know if he needs to be at a certain level or something in order to unlock Deoxys?
No, you just need to have received a Pokédex. If you’ve played more than about 20 minutes, then you’ve got it already. Also, I’m going to really emphasize what I said about the original DS. It’s bigger and clunkier than the Lite, but it’s also much hardier and cheaper. This makes it a lot more suited to a small (or clumsy) kid.
Also note there are different ways to gain the Pokemon experience. There’s the TCG, the arena combat oriented video games, the RPG-type video games, and the random dungeon crawl video games.
The Lite isn’t exactly fragile, I’ve dropped, banged, smashed etc mine and it still has no signs of wear, minus the Wario Ware battle scars on the screen (and you can really only see those under bright light, they’re not even scratches just needs a good cleaning). The Lite is (imo) much easier to see because the back-light can become much brighter, but I’m one of the few people who needs to see the absolute most intricate detail of every color so long as I have the capability to see it (why yes, i do run out of batter often).
I’d recommend the Lite, assuming the Phat/Original isn’t a LOT cheaper (in which case it’s absolutely a great product, but for the price differences I’ve seen the extra cost is pretty worth it for the extra light and somewhat greater portability).
Also, it’s nearly impossible these days to find accessories for the old DS’s, IME. Most places don’t even carry the old-style styluses anymore…and those suckers are easy for a kid to lose. (However, you can buy larger ones…my daughter bought one at an anime convention that hangs from the DS on a string.) If you want, for example, a case, there are plenty to be found for the DS Lite, but most of those won’t fit the old DS. We wanted a charger to fit into a car’s cigarette lighter, and finally found a third-party one with an adapter for the old DS. The official Nintendo charger had no such adapter.
If you don’t care about such things, the old DS is a perfectly good machine. Mine is three years old and still going strong.
My daughter and husband both play Pokemon. I played and almost finished one of the older games, but couldn’t quite beat the Elite Four before I decided I had better things to do. The DS games are huge. There really is an entire world to explore.
Is the trading card game still around? We have some of those cards around here somewhere.