Game Boy

The Evolution of Pokémon

Today Pokémon celebrated its 20th birthday. It has been a world-wide phenomenon since the 90s, and has gone from the original 150, to over 700 different types of Pokémon. Whilst hugely popular in both Japan and in the West, there are vast differences between the games, merchandise and availability in each country. Whilst the West is mainly games and television series orientated, Japan has its own ‘real-life’ Pokémon gym and giant Pokémon stores throughout the country.

Pokémon started out in Japan in 1996 as video games created for the Game Boy by Satoshi Tajiri and Game Freak. eThe idea came about due to the Game Boys ability to be able to link together, and the opportunity for people to be able to trade Pokémon via the link connection. However, it took so long to create the two games, known as Pokémon Red and Green in Japan, that the company Tajiri was a part of almost went bankrupt. When the games did eventually come out, they were not expected to do very well due to the decline in the Game Boy’s popularity and a lack of media interest. Luckily for Tajiri and Nintendo, the franchise was a huge success.

To create extra interest in the game a secret Pokémon known as Mew, was added in. Mew was only available originally at Nintendo events, so people travelled from all over the world to get the character installed onto their Game Boy cartridges. Later on, Mew was found to be a glitch in the game, making it then available to everyone who knew about it.

Whilst in Japan the first games were Red and Green, they were released as Red and Blue elsewhere in the world a few years later due to the games having to be re-programmed and updated. Pokémon Blue was also an updated game in Japan that came out one year after the release of Red and Green, but Pokémon Green was never released outside of Japan. A slightly different version of the game, Pokémon Yellow, also came out later that year.

aWith the success of the video games, next came the trading card game. It is no surprise that a game like Pokémon branched out into card games, as that is what Nintendo originally started out as. There are now major tournaments all over the world just for the top players in the Pokémon card game.

The Pokémon television series started out as a Japanese show and was adapted for international audiences. It was basced around the original games, but differed slightly in the fact that Pikachu was Ash’s first Pokémon, not the traditional choices of Charmander, Bulbasaur and Squirtle. For a while Pokémon in the UK was a prime time Saturday morning children’s TV show on SMTV live, with the presenters having various Pokémon themed games and competitions surrounding it. The various series have been aired across multiple channels around the world, and the new shows are still running today. As well as TV shows, there have been multiple successful Pokémon films, with the first being Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back in 1998.

In October, Japan opened the world’s first ‘real-life’ Pokémon gym in Osaka as part of the new Expo City, and I was lucky enough to visit it. It features a range of paid games across two floors, where you DSCN0919can digitally interact with a wide variety of Pokémon, as well as there being a Pokémon themed café, multiple wall paintings and a giant Pokémon store.

Despite the differences within the Pokemon world around the globe, the popularity of the franchise still continues today.  New games are released every year, with the newly announced Sun and Moon being the seventh generation of the games. The older games are now available to digitally download, something fans have been waiting a long time for. Pokémon continues to be one of the best-selling video games franchises of all time, falling second only to Nintendo’s own Mario.

The History of Nintendo

I have been a Nintendo fan since the massive success that was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but they weren’t always such a well-known console corporation. Nintendo started out as a Hanafuda card company nearly 100 years before the NES even existed. Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the company in 1889 in Kyoto, and it was kept in the Yamauchi family until the late Satoru Iwata took over as president in 2002.

The first electronic games that Nintendo produced were the series of games on the hand-held Game and Watch in the 1980s. They came as individual hand-held games that were pre-installed and played on a LCD screen; this differed from the later hand-held consoles which allowed interchanging of games via cartridges. Over the years, the Game and Watch had over 50 games available on the various models, and remained popular until the release of the Game Boy.

The Game Boy came around in 1989, with the idea of combining the popularity of the portability of the Game and Watch, and the cartridge based interchangeability of the NES. Various advanced versions of the Game Boy were launched over time, including the Game Boy Colour and Game Boy Advance, before Nintendo moved onto something completely different with the Nintendo DS in 2004.

The DS still stands today as Nintendo’s most popular console, coming second only to the PlayStation 2 in the best-selling consoles of all time. It differed from the Game Boy because it had a dual screen that also enabled touch screen technology; the DS also had a built-in microphone and WiFi technology.

The Nintendo 3DS was the first hand-held console to incorporate 3D effects without the need for 3D glasses. Sadly the 3DS  proved to not be as popular as the original DS, with Nintendo’s profits plummeting and staff wages having to be cut; it has sold only one-third the amount of units that the original DS did. Complaints when the 3DS was 1st released included the short battery life and the awkward angle needed to get the 3D effects to work; the 3DS XL addressed these issues and was received well at launch.

File:NES-Console-Set.png

Nintendo’s first home console came in 1983 (1985 in America) with the Nintendo Entertainment System, or the Famicom as is was better known in Japan. The NES helped the video game market to recover after the famous American crash, and it was the first of the cartridge based consoles. The NES saw the launch of some of its most iconic franchises that still exist today, including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid; many online polls consider the NES to be the greatest console of all time. The controller was the classic A/B brick design, but there were numerous special controllers released for use with specific games, including the NES Zapper and R.O.B.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) arrived in 1990 in Japan and was worldwide by 1992. It was the first console of the 16 bit generation, but had tough competition from Sega’s new console, the Sega Mega Drive. Despite the competition, it was still the best-selling console at the time. It was considered the best console of the 16 bit generation due to the advance graphics and sound capabilities compared with the other available consoles. Whilst many classic games from the SNES are remembered, including those such as Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country, perhaps the one that stands out most is Street Fighter II as it was the first console port of the popular arcade game.

The N64 came out in 1996, with the name deriving from the fact the console had a  64-bit central processing unit. When the N64 arrived, so did two very well-known games; GoldenEye launched a new genre of games known as first person shooters, and the action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is considered by many to be the greatest game of all time. The creation of the N64 brought about major controversy due the fact Nintendo were in talks with Sony about making a disc based console instead of one that used cartridges. When the deal fell through, Nintendo went ahead with the cartridge based N64, and Sony went on to launch the first PlayStation; whilst the N64 was still a success, the launch of the PlayStation negatively impacted upon Nintendo’s sales and shares. File:Nintendo-64-wController-L.jpg

The next up in the list of Nintendo consoles was the GameCube, and whilst it was well received, it faced tough competition from Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s new console, the Xbox. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, with greater than 155 millions units being sold compared to the GameCube’s poor 22 million.

The Wii was available in 2006 and it was another major hit for Nintendo that helped them recover from poor File:Wii-Console.pngGameCube sales.  The revolutionary motion control sensor and wireless remote provided gamers with an alternative experience to that which Sony and Microsoft had to offer. The Wii outsold the PS3 and the Xbox 360 for a time, selling over 100 million units compares to roughly 84 million for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The success of the Wii is thought to have been due to the fact Nintendo tried to aim their new console at a different market to those that Sony and Microsoft were aiming at. They tried to incorporate the casual games market, as well as young children and families. The focus on fitness based games gave the Wii an edge over the other consoles, which they later tried to copy.

The most recent console, the Wii U,  saw Nintendo’s staff having to take another pay-cut due to terrible sales at launch. Even today, the Wii U has only sold just over 10 million units, which is on par with the low sales of Sega’s Saturn and Dream Cast consoles that caused Sega’s existence on the console scene to crumble.  Whilst the Wii U did differ from the Wii with its new gamepad technology, a lack of games at launch contributed towards poor sales.  The sales and number of games available have slowly been improving over time, but it might be a case of too little too late for the Wii U.

The future of the next Nintendo console is currently unknown, but there are plenty of rumours. The consoles code name is the NX, and it is thought that it might incorporate virtual reality. It would not be surprising if Nintendo did go down the virtual reality route as they are a very innovative company, but whatever the future holds for Nintendo, the next console will need to sell well to help them get back on top.

The Rise and Fall of Console Gaming

I grew up on consoles, both handheld and home, but I was always a Nintendo fan girl from a young age. My first console was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), or the Famicom as it was better known in Japan. I spent hours jumping on Gumbas’ heads, or running away from Boo, or even shooting ducks with my NES zapper in Duck Hunt.

A vertical rectangular wooden structure with a visual display unit embedded in the front side.Arcade games were considered the first wave of video games. The highest grossing arcade games included the popular Pac-Man and Space Invaders, of which there have been many variants on consoles over the years. Although other games had come before it, the game Pong helped arcade games to reach mainstream popularity in 1972. The popularity of arcade games peaked in the 1970s but had waned by the mid 1990s due to homes games consoles taking over, except in Japan where there are still many arcades left today.

The second generation was the rise of home video games consoles such as Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, and was a part of both the Golden Age of games and their spread across America, as well as the first fall of  gaming. The first fall of video games came with the famous 1983 video games crash. Multiple reasons were said to be the cause of the crash, including a saturation of the market, the loss of publishing control, inflation, and high profiled failures such as the well documented fall of Atari; last year the documentary Atari: Game Over explained it well.

Atari Official 2012 Logo.svg

The effect of the crash meant that the home video game console market shifted from America to Japan. The industry recovered in 1985, when the NES was launched in America (although it had already launched in Japan as the Famicon in 1983). In many online polls the NES has been considered to be the greatest console of all time.

The NES was part of the third generation of consoles, and the next generation moved onto the Super Nintendo and Nintendo’s first big rival; the Sega Mega Drive. The Sega Mega Drive provided an alternate to the popular Mario character with Sonic the Hedgehog. Nintendo and Sega were the two major competitors until something completely different came along; the first Sony PlayStation. Nintendo had been in talks with Sony to make the first disc based console, but after this deal fell through Sony created the original PlayStation. Whilst Nintendo’s N64 sold well, the fact that Sony had gone forward with a CD based console instead of cartridge negatively impacted Nintendo’s shares, and Sony took over as the leader in the video games market.PSX-Console-wController.jpg

Along with Nintendo’s Game Cube, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Sega’s Dreamcast, Microsoft got on board the console trail with the 6th generation of consoles with their highly successful Xbox in 2001. The Dreamcast was the final games console that Sega released. Although the Dreamcast had been considered to be ahead of the times, with it being the first console with internet support, Sega struggled to recover from the losses it endured with the Sega Saturn.  The stiff competition from the success of the PlayStation 2 also meant the Dreamcast had poorer sales than the company needed.

Game-Boy-FL.png

In terms of hand-held consoles, Nintendo have always really ruled that market since the launch of the Game Boy in 1989. In terms of the list of the top-selling games consoles, the Nintendo DS and Game Boy are both in the top 5, being beaten in sales only by the PlayStation 2. Sony attempted it with the PS Vita, but its success never really kicked off; compared to the vast sales of over 100 million units each for the DS and Game Boy, the PS Vita has only sold 4 million. People have lost interest in it, including Sony themselves if the recent E3 showings are anything to go by, and it seems to be on a rapid decline.

The rise of the iPhone and smart phones has brought a whole new type of gamers into the fold; casual gamers. In some ways they are the new generation of hand-held consoles with all the games and applications available. First came the apps and games on the iPhone, and later on more games were also developed on android platforms. Although games on phones had been around since the days of Snake on the Nokia phones, the iPhone has provided a vastly available range of apps and games. Mobile games were cheaper and easier to play than a lot of console games, with games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush taking over. To try to catch the casual market, TV and music apps, as well as social media, were incorporated onto major consoles.

Whilst the future of console gaming definitely seems more positive than in recent years, with more and more people finally making the jump to the next-gen consoles, it had remained stagnant for a while. Unlike previous launches of next-gen consoles, a lot of people had been reluctant to shell out and upgrade, with the PS4 and Xbox One having a lack of major titles at launch that weren’t also available on the older consoles. The concept of virtual and augmented reality seems to be the next big test for consoles, with more companies developing games and VR headsets, but only time will tell if these will be successful or not.