Not-So-Early Adoptérmon: Prologue

[Cross-posted from my proper gaming blog, because I don't love you enough.]

If there's one thing that can often be said about me, it's that I am rarely on the cutting edge of, well, anything. I've spent most of my life a few steps behind the curve. My family was several years late in switching over from cassette tapes to CDs. DVDs came even later. Even when video games are involved, I'm frequently a bit slow to adopt.

So, this should come as no surprise: I've never played a Pokémon game.

No, no -- that is absolutely true. Hell, I've never even owned a Nintendo-made handheld gaming device. My only foray into the handheld world, aside from a few of those depressing Tiger Electronics games, was a Sega Game Gear. I thought it was the future. I was not a quick-witted child.

Anime has never seriously appealed to me. Sure, I've enjoyed some of the genre, but largely, I just don't get it. And to my young eyes, Pokémon was just another anime, full of wide-eyed, spastic young individuals with razor-edged hair and no concept of subtlety. So, naturally, the video game was also promptly disregarded as some cutesy Japanese import "for babies," as they say.

Well, no longer. In my old age, I have fallen into the habit of enjoying RPGs and leveling and upgrading and being a pack rat with non-existent digital items. Pokémon seems to have all these things to varying degrees. And given the fact that, so many years after the Pokémon craze of the '90s cooled off, gamers are still talking about the series even into their late-20s and 30s -- well, I have to consider the possibility that, maybe, I was mistaken.

So! That's where this new series of blog posts -- something I have dubbed Not-So-Early Adoptérmon, because I am clever and you love it -- comes into play. I'm going to finally see what's up with this Pokémon nonsense, and I'll be documenting my experiences and observations right here, on something that will, hopefully, resemble a weekly basis.

I have started playing through Pokémon Yellow. It appears to be a combination of the first two Pokémon games (Red and Blue) and, thus, seems like a reasonable starting point.

Given my propensity for overindulgence, I'm not entirely sure this is a wise venture. Still, as much as I enjoy RPGs, I also have a tendency to tire of them and not finish them. So, we'll have to see which bright, shining side of my personality wins out: The Addict, or The Quitter. Stay tuned.