Forgot About that $#!+ Friday: You'll Never Catch em All

Yeah, this game was totally normal...

By Joe Parello  @HerewegoJoe

Here's a thought that will make you feel old. If Pokemon were a person, it would be able to drive and nearly able to join the Army now. Yeah, the Nintendo owned franchise that has produced numerous video games, animated television shows, playing cards and stuffed animals turned 17 this year, and became the second-most profitable video game based media franchise in the world.

Only Nintendo's Mario franchise has raked in more cash, and it had a two-decade head start.

But we all remember where it started, with the Red and Blue games for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. It was a storyline that would make Mike Vick blush: Pick a tiny animal, and raise it to be a fighting machine. Then, using this animal, attack other animals in the wild so that you could capture them and train them to fight. Then, you could battle the animals of your friends and numerous bosses with your animals in an effort to become the ultimate cock fighter/Pokemon master.

Yeah, looking back on it, that stuff was kinda messed up.

Either way, you were given a choice of three Pokemon on the original Red and Blue versions. If you were a loser, you could pick either Bulbasaur, a fat little leafy fella, or Squirtle, a wimpy blue turtle. But, if you were a real ole G, you would pick Charmander, a bad ass tiny dinosaur that grows into a freaking baller ass dragon!

I named mine Charles, btw.


The Yellow version was introduced a year later and allowed you to start with the lovable Pikachu, who would follow you around on screen.

Those three games all fell under the same umbrella of "first generation Pokemon" and have outsold every other Game Boy game ever.

In the original three, there were 151 Pokemon, finishing with #150 Mewtwo and #151 Mew, though I have no idea why they went in that order if Mew came first. The story of those two played out in the first Pokemon movie, where Mewtwo, a giant psychic white cat was all evil, and Mew, a tiny flying white cat, acted all adorable and stuff.

The animated series was also a smash hit, and proclaimed that we've "gotta catch em all!" The only problem is that every time you got close to catching them all, a new game would come out with new Pokemon. After starting with 150 (Before the introduction of Mew), Pokemon has expanded to include over 650, so good luck catching all those critters.
But Pokemon has not come without its controversy. No, not those rumors that kids were getting seizures from watching the animated series (They were in Japan), I'm talking about religious controversy. Many Christians had a beef with the game, not because it teaches children to capture, imprison, and fight animals against each other. Rather, because the idea of Pokemon "evolution" is against the Biblical creation account in Genesis.

Yes, because this game is so based in reality.

"Christian Power Cards" were introduced in Britain in 1999 and featured Biblical characters in the place of Pokemon on the popular playing cards. Have you ever wondered who would win a battle between Jonah and the Archangel Gabriel? Well, with Christian Power Cards, you could decide for yourself (Though, come on, you know it would be Gabe).

Jesus himself was left out of the deck so as not to offend anyone (Too late). And, likely, because it would have been almost as cheap to use Jesus as it would have been to use Michael Jordan had he been in NBA Jam.