One of the biggest bugbears I have with the Pokémon games is the ongoing rubbish that each game only has ONE SAVE FILE POSSIBLE! It’s not even so much down to the fact that there’s a choice of three Pokémon at the start that you can only get at that one time – I can believe that the strategy behind that is to make you want to trade pocket monsters with your friends, more sales etc etc (the fact that my mates are NOT mostly 8year boys scuppers this notion of trading somewhat – although once I did trade with a girl in Lewisham to get some rub firepokémon or the other, I think she had named it VASHTAR for some godknown reason).
No, the real problem comes when you have FINISHED THE GAME! Pokémon is a massive 60-70hour immersive roleplaying game that embeds it’s characters and pokémon onto your mind irretrivieably! When you’ve finished the game, sure you can enter your pokémon in contests, try and catch other pokémon to complete your pokédex, but without the story to push you on, the thrill of the previously engrossing woodland palls. By this point you’ve created a strong team who can take on pretty much anything so wandering around aimlessly in the vague hope of catching a new pokémon (invariably a tedious BUG type) hardly excites.
So! You’d like to live your journey again! Maybe not immediately! Maybe a year or two later, when you’ve forgotten the plot details and you’d like to start a new adventure in Hoenn/Johto/Kanto… but then, what does a new game involve?
DELETING ALL YOUR POKEMON. And how can you delete 70 hours worth of pokémon caring, evolution, catching, training, berry-feeding?? What kind of SWINE would you be! When you started off you promised to look after all pokémon!
I don’t know about you, but I just can’t face it. So sadly, I keep putting the game back on the shelf, until last week, where I took desperate measures. I bought a second hand copy of Pokémon Emerald, along with my pre-existing completed copy of Pokmon Sapphire. I joyfully turned this on, to find… previous file! Previous owner: Jai. Play time. 60 hours. And upon entering the game… he’d caught more pokémon than me… IN a quicker time… and his final team was stronger! And he’d traded with other systems!! I felt ashamed, and then came THE GUILT! This is even worse! I can’t kill these pokmon who aren’t even MINE! Auggghhh!!
Sarah’s life as a rubbish gamer will be continued….