Nintendo is a very special company. Created in 1889 as a card company, the Japanese company dedicated to video games since the mid-1970s (its first arcade Arcadian dates back to 1975) is in its own right one of the most important players in the history of the digital world. For years she has moved comfortably in a specific and stable niche, alternating a few blockbusters with games that are not easy but not very risky and focused on a family audience (not to use the unfair word childish). His consoles have not been the most powerful but he has always known how to supply it with bold mechanics, iconic characters and simple but well-armed stories. Also, with a graphic section more focused on the caricature than on hyperrealism (the same thing that Pixar does and that makes it more difficult to expire with its artistic aspect). The Big N, we said, is a very special company.
And yet, his are some of the most important knocks in video game history. In 1996, two small cartridges for the now monstrous but iconic Game Boy hit stores. In contrast to the rest of the games in the catalog, gray, these had two antithetical colors. Forget Madrid or Barça, left or right; for a short but happy period of time the world was divided among those who had the pokemon red and those who had pokemon blue. The strategy was perfect because, apart from some small almost cosmetic changes, the two were the same game, so the kids of half humanity were really walking in the same direction: there was something biological in Pokémon, something very attractive in its mix of bug collecting, in their battles and in their playable mechanics. In addition, it printed several icons in the collective imagination: the pokeball, the healing centers, to Pikachu.
The game, in addition to being beautiful and powerful, praised the world in which we live in many aspects: young people were accommodating to the most common position today (that of looking at the screen in our hands) and the digital world had its first interference en masse on analog (through a wire, Pokémon could be traded as if they were physical trading cards). What happened since then is history. In that journey of 26 years Pokemon has become, and it is said soon, in the cultural franchise that has generated the most money in the history of humanity (adding video games, movies, series and merchandise in general): in total, about 90,000 million dollars, followed by Hello Kitty and Winnie the Pooh. To give us an idea, starwars it has generated 65,000 million (which is not bad either).
But like any saga, it has had setbacks. Gradually the games, released on different consoles, lost part of their groundbreaking spark. The animals were renewed, but not the mechanics. Not success, but creativity declined over time. In 2016 there was a change, and together with Niantic the company distributed something that many readers will still have on their mobile. Pokémon Go redefined the use of augmented reality to mix it forever with the phones. Cities around the world (and everything is everything) were filled with people setting foot in parks in search of a charmander or a vulpix. Really, that was, regardless of its quality as a game, a capital audacity.
This Friday it arrives at the market Pokemon Legends: Arceus, developed by Game Freak for Nintendo Switch. And it is the most important qualitative leap in the franchise in many years thanks to how the game knows how to take advantage of the lessons learned from previous products: the exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; the use of zones as in monster hunter; the refinement of its own formula in other installments of the saga, such as Mysterious world, or Snap.
With its flaws (especially the technical section, with a very short drawing distance), it is a revolution: a living world in which the player feels that things happen, regardless of their direct interaction. Pokemon Legends: Arceus It’s a great (new) beginning for the saga. And, also, a game that has earned the right to be talked about.
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