I have a lot to share and say about what the zoomers have taken to calling “mongames”, which seems appropriate enough.
This can be a sort of spiritual sister thread to the thread about Mother-adjacents. It makes sense because Mother was very much the spiritual predecessor to Pokemon and by extension, all the similar games the following generations. (Survival Kids, anyone? but I digress…)
The only difference here is that I’m not putting together a comprehensive list to kick things off. Instead I’ll share anecdotes and this awesome blog I recently discovered, which has the greatest english chronicling of the story and context of Digimon, weaving in the context from Tamagotchi and Pokemon:
Digimon History 1 – Creating a Digimon World – Digital World Archive
I still have a lot to read from this.
To kick things off though, I was born in the earliest of 90’s, so I never stood a chance against the monsters craze. I lived it. I was forged by fire. A blue Game Boy Pocket, what felt like a month with no games, then Pokemon Blue, was my first game. I remember going to Eckerd pharmacy and getting Tamagotchi, and the first Digimon vpet. I had the Pocket Pikachu vpet. I had the Tamagotchi game for game boy and played it a tonnnn. Later as an adult I explored the japan-only tamagotchi GB sequels, and this summer I’ve been playing the Digital Monster Ver. Wonderswan! intend to put more time into other early console games like the tamagotchi games for Playstation, N64, and I think Saturn too!
I remember allllll the fast food promotions for tamagotchi, pokemon, etc. The earliest Pokemon promotion at KFC is one of my earliest childhood memories. I only recently found photos of the display I remembered so clearly:
~(that’s right it says GAME BOY pocket!!! those of you who were born in the later half of the 90’s, much later than I was, can read it and weep)
The game boy pocket would turn out to be a flash in the pan due to the success of pokemon causing nintendo to go all in on rehashing the game boy hardware for a whole third generation with the GBC.
I remember doing chores for change so I could go to The Family Book Store and buy pokemon card packs for four dollars with my own money. I remember as the boosters released in waves post base set: jungle, fossil, rocket, gym… I collected the figures and basically whatever I could get my hands on that was even barely related. Basically, Pokemon Blue and Red are what defined “cool” in my plasticine brain, and that will always be my foundation. Another of my earliest memories, after being forcefully and illegally separated from my father in a botched adoption, he sent me a cardboard box big enough for me to live in that was filled to the absolute brim with Japanese pokemon card packs, toys, and imported rarities, like this epiccccc “touch to talk” Pikachu toy. (you know, like those little peepers baby chicken chicks with metal contacts on the feet, that when touched by holding it in the palm of your hand, cause the fella to peep peep peep?)
this is the original canon size for pikachu in my heart.
For Monster Rancher, I only had a demo disc for Monster Rancher 2, and I played those limited first few weeks over, and over, and over, because I never found the full game. The game boy color Monster Rancher Card game was so poorly translated, but I was too young to realize it. I just thought it was my fault for not understanding. I had monster rancher cards and figurines too. Eventually I got Monster Rancher Advance.
Of course I watched the animus. I unlocked my Disk. I played the game like an ace, and now I’m in this place.
Dude, the pilot for monster rancher was so cool, how it showed him playing playstation in his room. obviously the pilot for pokemon is my definition of glory, with the immortalization of cinematic the GB opening. Between that and link’s awakening, the cinema they squeezed out of that dot matrix is unlike anything else.
Well, this was gonna be a low-effort kick-off, but I ended up waxing poetic about it. That’s how you know there’s discussions to be had. That digimon blog is so good, that info deserves to be spread, and even regurgitated. Similar to my other interests and posts here (like Maplestory being a secret Wonder Boy game), there’s not a lot of crosstalk between fandoms, and when one side digs deep, they don’t realize the connections to the other side. These deep, obscured connections, and the Wonderswan, is what makes this topic something I’d discuss on Insert Credit specifically. and because I don’t wanna touch the Pokemon fandom with a 20 foot pole. I saw enough twitter drama this year to see that it is a warlike tribe.
I didn’t have internet access until 2003. And even then, that entire summer I was offline (and without cable TV, even!)
relevance? well, lets just say I played a lot of mongames :oj
~(also, fat pikachu is the only pikachu. all others are impostorchus)
