{"id":1800287,"date":"2026-03-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1800287"},"modified":"2026-03-01T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T07:00:00","slug":"the-older-pokemon-and-i-get-the-more-i-appreciate-its-greatest-asset-inter-generational-brilliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1800287","title":{"rendered":"The older Pok\u00e9mon (and I) get, the more I appreciate its greatest asset &#8211; inter-generational brilliance"},"content":{"rendered":"<article class=\"article \" data-ads=\"true\" data-article-type=\"features\" data-article-group=\"feature\" data-paywalled=\"false\" data-premium=\"false\" data-sponsored=\"false\" data-type=\"article\">\n<header class=\"article_header\" data-component=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n<nav class=\"nav_breadcrumbs\" data-component=\"nav-breadcrumbs\" aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\">\n<ul class=\"nav-links\">\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Home<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/features\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Features<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/nav><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_details\" id=\"main-content\">\n<h1 class=\"title\">The older Pok\u00e9mon (and I) get, the more I appreciate its greatest asset &#8211; inter-generational brilliance<\/h1>\n<p class=\"strapline\">One for the Pansages.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_asset\">\n<figure class=\"headline_image_wrapper\">\n<p>        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"headline_image\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/pokemon-30-alex-header.jpg?width=690&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;dpr=3&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Pok\u00e9mon 30th anniversary Pikachu logo, overlaid on a golden yellow background of many other, smaller Pok\u00e9mon-specific 30th anniversary logos.\" loading=\"eager\" data-uri=\"pokemon-30-alex-header.jpg\" data-lightbox width=\"690\" height=\"388\"><figcaption>\n          <span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Eurogamer \/ The Pokemon Company<\/cite><\/span><br \/>\n        <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"metadata\">\n<div class=\"avatar\">\n<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Alex Donaldson avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/alex-av_hu0ROt7.png?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\"><\/p>\n<p>  <img alt=\"Alex Donaldson avatar\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-uri=\"alex-av_hu0ROt7.png\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"byline\">\n                  <span class=\"article_type\" data-slug=\"features\"><br \/>\n                    Feature<br \/>\n                  <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"by\">by<\/span> <span class=\"author\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/authors\/alex-donaldson\">Alex Donaldson<\/a><\/span>                    <span class=\"job_title\"><br \/>\n                      Editor-at-large<br \/>\n                    <\/span>\n            <\/div>\n<div class=\"published_at\">\nPublished on <time datetime=\"2026-03-01T10:00:00+00:00\">March 1, 2026<\/time>              <\/div>\n<div class=\"comments\">\n      <a class=\"comments__link comments-bubble\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-older-pokemon-and-i-get-the-more-i-appreciate-its-greatest-asset-inter-generational-brilliance?view=comments\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n          2 comments<br \/>\n      <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mypop-header-wrapper\">\n<p><button class=\"mypop-button button wide\" data-state=\"follow\" data-type=\"tag\" data-uuid=\"b14cee41-e7cc-41ab-aa2b-3f8fb2bc688f\" data-name=\"Poku00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\" data-follow-text=\"Follow Poku00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\" data-unfollow-text=\"Following Poku00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\" data-aria-follow-text=\"Follow Poku00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\" data-aria-unfollow-text=\"Following Poku00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\" data-popup=\"true\" data-force-login=\"true\" aria-label=\"Follow Pok\u00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\" title=\"Follow Pok\u00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen\"><br \/>\n  Follow Pok\u00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen<br \/>\n<\/button>          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<div class=\"desktop_mpu\">\n<div class=\"mpu1 lazyload\" data-dfp-id=\"eurogamer_net\/mobile_web_display\/article\" data-dfp-sizes=\"300x250\" data-dfp-targeting=\"site=eurogamer.net,pos=1,gto=false,position=desktop-article-mpu,gnpos=1\" data-dfp-collapse=\"false\" data-dfp-above-the-fold=\"true\" data-dfp-refresh-direct=\"true\" data-prebid-config=\"MPU_1\" id=\"desktop_mpu_1\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Sitting at my desk and racking my brain for something, <em>anything<\/em> to say about Pok\u00e9mon for its thirtieth anniversary, I found myself inexplicably struggling. What do you say about a series like this? With Zelda, there&#8217;s easy lines to trace about it as both reflection and architect of many an era&#8217;s trends. I could write about the anniversary of Final Fantasy in about a hundred different ways. I even had easy words for NFL Blitz. But Pok\u00e9mon&#8230; What do you say?<\/p>\n<p>Part of it, I suppose, is the <em>breadth<\/em> of it all. Video games, yes, but trading cards, endless toys, TV shows, movies, and more resilient (and yes, sometimes, more deranged) online communities than just about any other franchise. Plucking out one thing to talk about is difficult. But then again&#8230; perhaps that is my clue. The thunderbolt of inspiration hits: <em>that<\/em> is what it is all about.<\/p>\n<p>When I think about my greatest memories of Pok\u00e9mon, I realise, it has always first and foremost been a powerful inter-generational experience.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"video_wrapper youtube\">\n<a aria-label=\"Pok\u00e9mon 30th Anniversary Special Movie\" class=\"video-facade full-size\" data-platform=\"youtube\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vYsxq0zstOs?autoplay=1\" title=\"Click to play video from YouTube\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cover image for YouTube video\" class=\"video-facade__image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/vYsxq0zstOs\/hqdefault.jpg\"><span class=\"video-facade__title\">Pok\u00e9mon 30th Anniversary Special Movie<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/a>\n<\/div><figcaption>Happy birtday Pok\u00e9mon!<a class=\"video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vYsxq0zstOs\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In early 1999, when my mum brought home an early import copy of Pok\u00e9mon Blue from a trip abroad, Pok\u00e9mon was indeed just another video game, experienced the way this only child always did: as a solitary experience that I&#8217;d then excitedly chatter about with friends at school. I was early to the Pok\u00e9mon train in the UK by a few months, having asked for and received a US copy after reading about how it was the next big thing in the hallowed pages of ONM or some other precious tome. But then, quickly, it became more than a game: Poke-mania was coming.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The thing about the all-encompassing madness that followed, where it felt for a brief couple of summers that Pok\u00e9mon had truly totally taken over the world, is that even non-gamers couldn&#8217;t miss it. For me, that meant a greater chance that it was something I could truly connect with other people in my life over &#8211; and that was what happened. My grandfather became a Pokemaniac.<\/p>\n<p>He wouldn&#8217;t know what to do with a Game Boy &#8211; but he loved the rest. Newly retired, he was looking for hobbies and he found it in Pok\u00e9mon, especially the trading card game. He had an affinity for the creatures themselves, which again speaks to the strength and charm of the Pok\u00e9mon themselves. He would&#8217;ve bounced off a game like Magic: The Gathering &#8211; but as a nature lover, he adored the fantastical creatures that in this era were more or less all rooted in real-life nature. Like good hobbies do, it began to infect other things he did. He was a painter, and occasionally he&#8217;d insert Pok\u00e9mon into his landscapes. Occasionally, he&#8217;d draw new Pok\u00e9mon ideas of his own.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote left\"><p>Pok\u00e9mon is bigger than it has ever been now, famously the &#8216;biggest entertainment franchise&#8217; on the planet. But there was something about those early summers where it didn&#8217;t just feel big &#8211; it felt like it was everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For me, the memories just stack up. We watched the TCG trainer video VHS to learn the rules, and then spent countless hours sitting around the dining table of cramped static caravans on half terms and summer holidays with play mats and cards splayed across them. We had two or three decks each, constantly tweaking and upgrading them, and we kept a running count of who had won the most games. He lived outside the video game world, so whenever there was an update on the new Pok\u00e9mon coming forth in the second generation, I&#8217;d fold over the page in the gaming magazine with the info as a bookmark and then take it for him to peruse. I think we saw the first movie three times in the cinema, in part to get more copies of the promotional cards &#8211; and then one day he returned home with a dodgy bootleg VHS that I practically wore out.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t quite do justice to what those summers felt like. If you&#8217;re young enough to not have <em>been there<\/em> at that time, understand this: Pok\u00e9mon is bigger than it has ever been now, famously the &#8216;biggest entertainment franchise&#8217; on the planet. But there was something about those early summers where it didn&#8217;t just feel big &#8211; it felt like it was <em>everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The great big livestreamed and international Pok\u00e9mon Championship Competition events we have now are glorious for instance &#8211; but to me they pale in comparison to the simple belt-and-braces TCG tour that got ran in the UK in (I think) the year 2000, where a touring rabble of hired guns travelled on behalf of Pok\u00e9mon&#8217;s makers, erecting tents on beaches and in public squares to create would-be Pok\u00e9mon Gyms. We actually travelled specifically to go to some of these &#8211; we both crafted custom decks to take on each of the themed Gym Leaders, and I think ended up with three or four Gym Badges a piece.<\/p>\n<p>Go to a comic convention today and you&#8217;ll find stands of professional companies selling oodles of merch and running buy\/sell\/trade operations with cards &#8211; but another fond memory I have is how for a few summers pretty much any local car boot sale was totally taken over by Pok\u00e9mon. You&#8217;d go not just to thrift for NES and Master System games (though I did plenty of that too), but specifically to trade and pad out your collection. I was always a little ahead of him collection-wise, but I quite vividly remember negotiating a trade for the final card granddad needed for his Fossil expansion set to be complete. We were particularly proud to have collated two complete sets of the first three expansions.<\/p>\n<p>I think all these memories are all the more arresting to me because of how organic it was back then &#8211; a cottage industry springing up around a surprise hit. It&#8217;s all established now, and that&#8217;s wonderful, but I&#8217;ll forever pine for those days. To an eleven year old, this stuff felt like I was <em>in<\/em> the game, rather than part of some broader &#8216;activation&#8217; for the biggest brand in the universe.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote left\"><p>What is incredible is that Pok\u00e9mon is still as magic as it ever was &#8211; and that inter-generational joy is still there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But I digress. That was the better part of thirty years ago. What is incredible is that Pok\u00e9mon is still as magic as it ever was &#8211; and that inter-generational joy is still there. My granddad is gone now, sadly &#8211; at his funeral, talking through a list of all the hobbies we shared as part of his eulogy, Pok\u00e9mon was mentioned. But I&#8217;m the old man now, albeit twenty-some years younger than he was at that time. Like I was to him, I now have a little deputy following me around &#8211; and Pok\u00e9mon&#8217;s barrier-crossing continues, reverberating down my bloodline. Of all the things we share an interest in &#8211; like Mario, Sonic, music, and arcades &#8211; the hobby and interest we are most enthusiastic about <em>together <\/em>is&#8230; well, no, sorry. It&#8217;s Lego. Fair enough. I&#8217;ve wrecked my flow there. But after Lego? It&#8217;s Pok\u00e9mon.<\/p>\n<p>I see those same patterns repeating, and I find it joyous. She covets cards and plushies. If she sees a Pikachu in a shop, she shouts out that it&#8217;s Pikachu and gravitates straight towards it. To her, Ash Ketchum is a nobody bum &#8211; she&#8217;s all about new protagonists Liko and Roy, which makes me shake my head in disgust even if I respect it. The cycle has begun anew.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"3\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>My heart swells thinking of this, and pondering that lineage. When she&#8217;s old enough to be trusted to not wreck them, I will outright <em>give<\/em> her granddad&#8217;s card collection, and I can&#8217;t wait for that. But what&#8217;s most interesting to me as a critic is how this has also returned <em>me<\/em> to the franchise. My fandom perhaps waned in the face of too many TCG releases to keep up with and a barrage of games with head-scratching quality control issues. But I now have an unassailable reason to return to the franchise &#8211; and I have done.<\/p>\n<p>In my mind I think of this as the Doctor Who cycle &#8211; young fans rotate &#8216;out&#8217; of the series, then return in adulthood and introduce their own children. We&#8217;ve never seen a more aggressively successful example of this, in truth, than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/pokemon-go\">Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/a>&#8216;s 2016 zenith, as millennials almost got run over en masse trying to catch &#8217;em all.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s true, I think, that any old series can accomplish this sort of sentiment. How many Star Wars fans were raised in this way? But I think series&#8217; that can do it on this scale, with such brilliance, and also doing so while making it all look so <em>effortless<\/em> &#8211; they are impeccably rare. Pok\u00e9mon is one such series &#8211; and that, I suppose, is why it&#8217;s the biggest entertainment IP on the planet, or whatever corporate nonsense term we&#8217;re deploying to talk about it today. I&#8217;ve got a better word for it though: magic.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"poll_wrapper\" data-fixed=\"true\" data-hashid data-init=\"false\" data-poll-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<div class=\"desktop_mpu\">\n<div class=\"mpu1 lazyload\" data-dfp-id=\"eurogamer_net\/mobile_web_display\/article\" data-dfp-sizes=\"300x250\" data-dfp-targeting=\"site=eurogamer.net,pos=1,gto=false,position=desktop-article-mpu,gnpos=1\" data-dfp-collapse=\"false\" data-dfp-above-the-fold=\"true\" data-dfp-refresh-direct=\"true\" data-prebid-config=\"MPU_1\" id=\"desktop_mpu_1\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Sitting at my desk and racking my brain for something, <em>anything<\/em> to say about Pok\u00e9mon for its thirtieth anniversary, I found myself inexplicably struggling. What do you say about a series like this? With Zelda, there&#8217;s easy lines to trace about it as both reflection and architect of many an era&#8217;s trends. I could write about the anniversary of Final Fantasy in about a hundred different ways. I even had easy words for NFL Blitz. But Pok\u00e9mon&#8230; What do you say?<\/p>\n<p>Part of it, I suppose, is the <em>breadth<\/em> of it all. Video games, yes, but trading cards, endless toys, TV shows, movies, and more resilient (and yes, sometimes, more deranged) online communities than just about any other franchise. Plucking out one thing to talk about is difficult. But then again&#8230; perhaps that is my clue. The thunderbolt of inspiration hits: <em>that<\/em> is what it is all about.<\/p>\n<p>When I think about my greatest memories of Pok\u00e9mon, I realise, it has always first and foremost been a powerful inter-generational experience.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"video_wrapper youtube\">\n<a aria-label=\"Pok\u00e9mon 30th Anniversary Special Movie\" class=\"video-facade full-size\" data-platform=\"youtube\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vYsxq0zstOs?autoplay=1\" title=\"Click to play video from YouTube\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cover image for YouTube video\" class=\"video-facade__image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/vYsxq0zstOs\/hqdefault.jpg\"><span class=\"video-facade__title\">Pok\u00e9mon 30th Anniversary Special Movie<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/a>\n<\/div><figcaption>Happy birtday Pok\u00e9mon!<a class=\"video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vYsxq0zstOs\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In early 1999, when my mum brought home an early import copy of Pok\u00e9mon Blue from a trip abroad, Pok\u00e9mon was indeed just another video game, experienced the way this only child always did: as a solitary experience that I&#8217;d then excitedly chatter about with friends at school. I was early to the Pok\u00e9mon train in the UK by a few months, having asked for and received a US copy after reading about how it was the next big thing in the hallowed pages of ONM or some other precious tome. But then, quickly, it became more than a game: Poke-mania was coming.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The thing about the all-encompassing madness that followed, where it felt for a brief couple of summers that Pok\u00e9mon had truly totally taken over the world, is that even non-gamers couldn&#8217;t miss it. For me, that meant a greater chance that it was something I could truly connect with other people in my life over &#8211; and that was what happened. My grandfather became a Pokemaniac.<\/p>\n<p>He wouldn&#8217;t know what to do with a Game Boy &#8211; but he loved the rest. Newly retired, he was looking for hobbies and he found it in Pok\u00e9mon, especially the trading card game. He had an affinity for the creatures themselves, which again speaks to the strength and charm of the Pok\u00e9mon themselves. He would&#8217;ve bounced off a game like Magic: The Gathering &#8211; but as a nature lover, he adored the fantastical creatures that in this era were more or less all rooted in real-life nature. Like good hobbies do, it began to infect other things he did. He was a painter, and occasionally he&#8217;d insert Pok\u00e9mon into his landscapes. Occasionally, he&#8217;d draw new Pok\u00e9mon ideas of his own.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote left\"><p>Pok\u00e9mon is bigger than it has ever been now, famously the &#8216;biggest entertainment franchise&#8217; on the planet. But there was something about those early summers where it didn&#8217;t just feel big &#8211; it felt like it was everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For me, the memories just stack up. We watched the TCG trainer video VHS to learn the rules, and then spent countless hours sitting around the dining table of cramped static caravans on half terms and summer holidays with play mats and cards splayed across them. We had two or three decks each, constantly tweaking and upgrading them, and we kept a running count of who had won the most games. He lived outside the video game world, so whenever there was an update on the new Pok\u00e9mon coming forth in the second generation, I&#8217;d fold over the page in the gaming magazine with the info as a bookmark and then take it for him to peruse. I think we saw the first movie three times in the cinema, in part to get more copies of the promotional cards &#8211; and then one day he returned home with a dodgy bootleg VHS that I practically wore out.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t quite do justice to what those summers felt like. If you&#8217;re young enough to not have <em>been there<\/em> at that time, understand this: Pok\u00e9mon is bigger than it has ever been now, famously the &#8216;biggest entertainment franchise&#8217; on the planet. But there was something about those early summers where it didn&#8217;t just feel big &#8211; it felt like it was <em>everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The great big livestreamed and international Pok\u00e9mon Championship Competition events we have now are glorious for instance &#8211; but to me they pale in comparison to the simple belt-and-braces TCG tour that got ran in the UK in (I think) the year 2000, where a touring rabble of hired guns travelled on behalf of Pok\u00e9mon&#8217;s makers, erecting tents on beaches and in public squares to create would-be Pok\u00e9mon Gyms. We actually travelled specifically to go to some of these &#8211; we both crafted custom decks to take on each of the themed Gym Leaders, and I think ended up with three or four Gym Badges a piece.<\/p>\n<p>Go to a comic convention today and you&#8217;ll find stands of professional companies selling oodles of merch and running buy\/sell\/trade operations with cards &#8211; but another fond memory I have is how for a few summers pretty much any local car boot sale was totally taken over by Pok\u00e9mon. You&#8217;d go not just to thrift for NES and Master System games (though I did plenty of that too), but specifically to trade and pad out your collection. I was always a little ahead of him collection-wise, but I quite vividly remember negotiating a trade for the final card granddad needed for his Fossil expansion set to be complete. We were particularly proud to have collated two complete sets of the first three expansions.<\/p>\n<p>I think all these memories are all the more arresting to me because of how organic it was back then &#8211; a cottage industry springing up around a surprise hit. It&#8217;s all established now, and that&#8217;s wonderful, but I&#8217;ll forever pine for those days. To an eleven year old, this stuff felt like I was <em>in<\/em> the game, rather than part of some broader &#8216;activation&#8217; for the biggest brand in the universe.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote left\"><p>What is incredible is that Pok\u00e9mon is still as magic as it ever was &#8211; and that inter-generational joy is still there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But I digress. That was the better part of thirty years ago. What is incredible is that Pok\u00e9mon is still as magic as it ever was &#8211; and that inter-generational joy is still there. My granddad is gone now, sadly &#8211; at his funeral, talking through a list of all the hobbies we shared as part of his eulogy, Pok\u00e9mon was mentioned. But I&#8217;m the old man now, albeit twenty-some years younger than he was at that time. Like I was to him, I now have a little deputy following me around &#8211; and Pok\u00e9mon&#8217;s barrier-crossing continues, reverberating down my bloodline. Of all the things we share an interest in &#8211; like Mario, Sonic, music, and arcades &#8211; the hobby and interest we are most enthusiastic about <em>together <\/em>is&#8230; well, no, sorry. It&#8217;s Lego. Fair enough. I&#8217;ve wrecked my flow there. But after Lego? It&#8217;s Pok\u00e9mon.<\/p>\n<p>I see those same patterns repeating, and I find it joyous. She covets cards and plushies. If she sees a Pikachu in a shop, she shouts out that it&#8217;s Pikachu and gravitates straight towards it. To her, Ash Ketchum is a nobody bum &#8211; she&#8217;s all about new protagonists Liko and Roy, which makes me shake my head in disgust even if I respect it. The cycle has begun anew.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"3\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>My heart swells thinking of this, and pondering that lineage. When she&#8217;s old enough to be trusted to not wreck them, I will outright <em>give<\/em> her granddad&#8217;s card collection, and I can&#8217;t wait for that. But what&#8217;s most interesting to me as a critic is how this has also returned <em>me<\/em> to the franchise. My fandom perhaps waned in the face of too many TCG releases to keep up with and a barrage of games with head-scratching quality control issues. But I now have an unassailable reason to return to the franchise &#8211; and I have done.<\/p>\n<p>In my mind I think of this as the Doctor Who cycle &#8211; young fans rotate &#8216;out&#8217; of the series, then return in adulthood and introduce their own children. We&#8217;ve never seen a more aggressively successful example of this, in truth, than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/pokemon-go\">Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/a>&#8216;s 2016 zenith, as millennials almost got run over en masse trying to catch &#8217;em all.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s true, I think, that any old series can accomplish this sort of sentiment. How many Star Wars fans were raised in this way? But I think series&#8217; that can do it on this scale, with such brilliance, and also doing so while making it all look so <em>effortless<\/em> &#8211; they are impeccably rare. Pok\u00e9mon is one such series &#8211; and that, I suppose, is why it&#8217;s the biggest entertainment IP on the planet, or whatever corporate nonsense term we&#8217;re deploying to talk about it today. I&#8217;ve got a better word for it though: magic.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"poll_wrapper\" data-fixed=\"true\" data-hashid data-init=\"false\" data-poll-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home Features The older Pok\u00e9mon (and I) get, the more I appreciate its greatest asset &#8211; inter-generational brilliance One for the Pansages. Image credit: Eurogamer \/ The Pokemon Company Feature by Alex Donaldson Editor-at-large Published on March 1, 2026 2 comments Follow Pok\u00e9mon FireRed and LeafGreen Sitting at my desk and racking my brain for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,253],"class_list":["post-1800287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-eurogamer-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1800287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1800287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1800287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1800287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}