Looking back on Pokémon, I remember all the money I wasted on the damn fad (acutely all the money my parents wasted). Occasionally I find myself playing red or blue once in a blue moon.

I have realized recently, as someone who abhors animal cruelty, I found it ironic that this game made cockfighting ok.

While in New York, I learned at the Nintendo store that a new Pokémon game was released.

I had said to myself “I wonder what they have done differently (since I haven’t played in years). I did know that more Pokémon were added over the years, and it has spread over all of the Nintendo handhelds.

But somehow I found myself swiping my debit card and left with Pokémon Platinum and a Mudkip plushy (… I don’t know why).

On the flight back I decided to crack open my DS and start of Platinum; until the steward told me to turn it off (I’m still trying to figure out how my little DS will make a plane go crazy).

Well I can say the story line is still the same after all these years. You play an annexed 12 year old in a world where Tijuana cockfighting is 100% legal and you are fighting older folk for Boy Scout badges. And you still can’t walk behind buildings (despite the graphics update).

The only known storyline sounds like something out of a Michael Crichton or an Arthur C. Clark novel. The storyline involves a disturbance on a Mountain, when a portal to an alternate dimension is opened where normal physical laws do not apply. Then the Pokémon world becomes a scene from day after tomorrow where the climate starts to change (Ironically on my flight back we were watching An Inconvenient Truth).

I’m ok with it. After so many years without playing, it is an ok flash back to my childhood… until I realized how messed up it was.

After realizing the cockfighting scenario (FYI, I named my torchik little jerry ala Seinfeld), I noticed other screwed up stuff.

Where are the real animals in the Pokémon world? I noticed in one episode that Ash is eating a hamburger, so I’m assuming that they are slaughtering Taruos somewhere in that world. Are there restaurants call Kentucky Fried Pidgey? How many officer Jenny’s are there? Is there some inbreeding I’m not aware of?

Anyway… I’m off

Typing this while listening to my professor lecture on communism (and hopped up on Mtn Dew).

Aaron