Friday, December 16, 2016

The History that Can Be Found in Pokemon - Part One

Lunar Landing
(12/16/2016) --- It was a while since I played first generation games of Pokemon, in fact it could be almost 13 years since I played any of the first, second and third generation games. They simply lost the appeal due certain circumstances about moving to another country and re-starting my life from zero.

I still played the newer games with the exception of Sun & Moon, and Alpha & Omega (which I plan to buy eventually) as time passed, I felt the itch about playing the games again and after losing my original cartridges; mostly after being kicked out due my identity and sexuality, I didn't mind buying Pokemon Yellow on the Virtual Console and re-start playing generation one (Wikipedia - Pokemon Red)

Pika Intro Screen
It is totally a different experience play the game as an adult than as a 13 years old adolescence, there are some details you can ignore quite easily when you are young versus whenever you revise the game.

What I found fascinating is that the game itself is placed on planet that could be Earth, even there are some hints that the game is set on a post-apocalyptic alien invasion that happened probably after the Apollo 11 mission (Wikipedia, Apollo 11) but the process took thousands and even millions of years (Wojcik, 2013) such as 65 millions ago that can be situated in the Paleocene (Wikipedia, Paleocene).

Albeit what it really got my attention are the little pop culture references centered around the many games, but it is the one towards found in Generation 1 that gave the clue about the timeline and some history of the Pokemon World that could be placed on an alternate Earth, as on the first image the old man in the Pewter City Museum gives the date July 20 of 1969 which is the date of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Space Shuttle Columbia
Inside the games' lore, we can see that in Generation 1 there are mentions of space travel which subsequently became part of the mythos; but finding inside the Space Shuttle Columbia scale model (Wikipedia, Space Shuttle Columbia) inside the space exhibition we can set that the games are around 1996 to 1998; but before 2003 as there are no mentions of any incident towards the Columbia.

The idea itself about the evolutionary traits and origin of the species is debated through the entire series of games as well in the anime; but always space seems to be the center of a sub-context on the game mythos; and it is actually quite appealing, due the reasons it give the idea that Pokemon are from outer space; as there are no signs of biological life that started on that world but rather one that was an invasive species, who slowly during the eons assimilated and grow to create an extinction event within the game story.

References:

  1. Web retrieved:  Wikipedia - Pokemon Red and Blue - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue (1996)
  2. Web retrieved: Wikipedia - Apollo 11 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
  3. Web retrieved: Craked.com ; 4 Reasons Pokemon is the Scariest Alien Invasion Story Ever, Wojcik, Jonathan - http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-reasons-pokemon-scariest-alien-invasion-story-ever/ 2013
  4. Web retrieved:  Wikipedia - Paleocene ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene
  5. Web retrieved: