I'm unsure if there's a proper term for it... - in German maybe? - that describes a rite of passage through young adulthood that I'm sure everyone on this site has experienced on some level, at some time: finally having the disposable income to obtain something you coveted in childhood and then inevitably finding out that it wasn't everything (or even anything) that the media and advertising you consumed as a child promised you that it would be.

For me, many of these holy capital-cultural artefacts centre on Pokémon. I know it's cliche to refer to yet another Japanese entertainment juggernaut as something analogous to a religion, but it's hard to deny the comparison when your town's priest spent a lot of time between 1997 and the new millennium talking about the Satanic properties of Mr. Mime, Magikarp and Misty. The Catholic Church was afraid of Zubat for a while.

The mysticism of Pokémon was so strong in rural Scotland that my school descended into riots over Pokémon not once, but twice. When someone in our class sent a mail order to China for a copy of Pokémon Silver almost a full year before the game even existed in Europe, people handled it with the same practiced reverence they'd use at the church across the road, carrying it faithfully like it was a relic called the Ark of the Crobat or the Holy Granbull; a really cute snapshot through the crack in time that succeeded the rise of global capitalism and Thatcherite deregulation of children's advertising and preceded the advent of the mainstream internet and all that it entailed. We got our cheat codes from a newspaper back then, and the day the MissingNo glitch was revealed sent our schoolyard into rapture. But like all religions I've been involved in, time eventually revealed this false Pokéfaith for what it was - a moralless money-making vehicle for paedophiles.

While Pokémon Puzzle League wasn't high on the list of Pokérelics I coveted, it still excited me, I think - the idea of a puzzle game (I already adored Tetris) with Pokémon (I already adored Pokémon) that was faithful to the anime (I already adored Pokémon: The Animated Series) was so exciting to me, but I always ended up choosing classic N64 titles like Earthworm Jim 3D and California Speed whenever I finally scrounged together something for the offertory at Electronics Boutique. Perhaps I wasn’t as committed as I remember myself being. Finally playing through it in 2022, decades removed from the incident at my school where a nine-year-old kid was beaten up for selling fake shiny Charizard cards, I could no longer believe in the utter pish that I'd been drinking back then. I couldn't even muster a smile for a MIDI instrumental cover of the PokéRap on the title screen... What's become of me? I guess this is what it means to be an adult.

Reviewed on Aug 12, 2022


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