Almost a year ago, I posted this thread, in which I solicited advice for my son, who was eager to begin his Pokemon journey.
I thought an update would be interesting.
We ended up getting a DS Lite and Pokemon Diamond for him. Sadly, we missed the event that was mentioned in that thread, the Deoyxs giveaway at Gamestop, and after he had played enough to understand these things, was devastated that he had missed getting a Deoyxs by such a tiny margin.
He beat the game in short order, and then set out to collect all 493 of the beasties. In support of this goal, we acquired GBA games Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, FireRed, and Leafgreen. He beat all those games and used “PalPark” to trade his rare legendaries into Diamond. (Apparently, the there was quite a difficult time in getting something named Rayquaza). He also got me to get him Pokemon Ranger in order to get the one Pokemon that only can be found there.
In addition, we invested in a used GameCube and the two Poke games for that platform so the beasties that only can be caught THERE could be traded into Emerald and thence to Diamond.
Two weeks ago, we bought him Platinum (on release day), and he’s all wild about catching Shaymin. We’ve made all the Toys R Us giveaways so far, and when the Wii made its way into our house, Battle Revolution was the first disc in the system.
Kids! In my day there were only two versions of Pokemon, 151 monsters, you had to have a link cable and a friend to trade between versions to collect them all, and that’s the way we liked it!
Nah, that’s awesome about your son. Pokemon is a really rich and complex game, and it’s cool that he’s into it. I’ve played the second-most-recent version (Pearl; still need to get Platinum), but I definitely don’t have the drive that I once had to actually acquire the various Pokemans. Your son is at the perfect age to do so. Ah, youth.
I imagine he’s been talking your ear off about the whole thing
Oh,yes. In fact, he’s learned what percentages mean (as a second grader!) because he has a book that describes how to calculate move power, and it explained that if a Grass-type uses a grass attack, it gets a 50% boost in power, and he asked me what that meant. So now he can confidently figure out exactly what it means if his Glaceon (Ice-type) uses Blizzard (Ice move) during Hail (weather that increases Blizzard’s accuracy). And last week’s drive back from the grocery store was a monolgue/lecture/seminar from him on just that topic.
He’s just begun to work on something called “EV Training.” I have no idea what that is.
Oh, I also helped him set up his DS on our WiFi system, and now he gets hour-long phone calls from a friend ofhis wherein they fiercely negotiate trades and battles in the evening, each in their own house!
Wow… God bless kids. I played the original back in the day and occasionally try one of the new ones. The pokemon change, but otherwise the games all seem utterly the same. I can’t imagine how monotonous it must be to play all of them.
Imagine if someone told you that, if you jumped through insane hoops and worked like a madman for hours and hours, you could get about 10 extra miles to your takn of gas. This involved developing your own car by mixing an matching parts from other cars and putting them through their paces, then selecting the best parts again, and then finally spending hours tweaking it over an over again at the racetrack. For a few extra miles per tank.
This would explain the Adrian Monk-like fascination with the DS for hours at a time, then. The one time I looked over his shoulder, his little game character was running back and forth in the same place, and stopping to either battle or run away from opponents. He was battling little birds and runbing away from every one else, because apparently winning battles with the little birds give him speed points.
It sounded like it to me. Glad to have a confirmation.
That’s really impressive, especially for a second grader.
Kudos to him for doing it the hard way instead of getting an Action Replay, which lets you get almost anything you want. I think it’s totally cheating. He will feel such a sense of accomplishment once he gets them all. Then comes the “What do I do now?” letdown.
And kudos to you for being so involved. I am the same way with my two sons, age 8 and 10, and I have played several of the Pokemon games all the way through. I am totally up to date on Pokemon, Zelda, Metroid, Chowder, Spongebob, iCarly, YuGiOh, and whatever else they are obsessed with at the time. It helps me connect with them. The wife just rolls her eyes at all of us. Except Drake and Josh.
