You can only imagine how Satoshi Tajiri, the game-loving creator of Pokémon, must have felt as his labor of love became not just ignored by serious gamers, but a lightning rod for mentalists, both amateur and professional.

Tajiri is a genuine otaku done good, a bug-loving computer geek who played Space Invaders so much the arcade gave it to him to take it home; who rose from making his own fanzines on photocopiers to finding himself rich beyond his wildest dreams. And he remains a true nerd: The first question asked by Time, one of the few Western outlets to gain interview access to the reclusive Tajiri, was, “Are you OK? You look pretty tired.”

By the time the money-making machine was done with it, Tajiri’s little game was all but forgotten. The trading cards, the cartoon series, the movies – and the hysteria, the epilepsy, the accidental “swastikas,” the supposed racism, the bad journalism and the downright sickening lies – all combined to overshadow the essence of Pokémon: a simple, charming little game, one that changed the course of the entire game industry.

… Must Begin From the First Step
Would Nintendo now be sitting once again on the precipice of market domination were it not for the billions Satoshi Tajiri gave them? Consider when Pokémon was first released in Japan, as Pocket Monsters Red and Green: February 1996, four months before the release of the Nintendo 64.

The Game Boy, a seven-year-old piece of technology, was on its way out. After a solid launch, the software-starved N64 would soon fall behind Sony’s flashy new PlayStation brand and remain there for a decade.

Pokémon‘s success was vital both to Nintendo and to portable gaming. This was the dominant era of graphical flash – when if it wasn’t in three dimensions, it wasn’t worth playing.

The secret of Pokémon‘s success is well known: the ingenious decision to release two copies of the game, each with different Pokémon to collect, tapped into the collecting impulse hard-wired into every schoolboy’s brain. From there, all Japan fell for Pokémon.

The elementary schoolkid word of mouth that led to its success in Japan can be seen more recently in Sega’s Mushi King, a decidedly less cute form of insect battling game. Yet Pokémon remains superior, its combination of cuteness and fighting making it appealing both to boys and girls.

That appeal is carefully crafted. The main quest, a boy setting off to discover the world, is refreshingly free from evil armies, stolen kid sisters or any of the other stereotypes that dog most RPGs when it comes to “setting off on a quest time.” It straddles that perfect line between reality and fantasy, the kind of thing that could happen to a small boy in a world seen just a little bit sideways, filled with the exotic.

Most Western game companies can’t design a single cute character on which to base a game – and although they hardly try much anymore, Pokémon was released in the heyday of second-rate scribbles like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and Gex.

Pokémon, in contrast, had 150; and one of them was Pikachu, a Hello Kitty for a new generation, the kind of iconic character that will probably still linger in the media 50 years from now when the Game Boy is not even a memory. Pikachu’s rise to stardom was never part of the plan – that was a work of genius by the creators of the anime – and goes to show just how much care each part of the game was given.

Just as in the later Nintendogs, it is the sense of loyalty and friendship engendered in these fuzzy, pixelated creatures that makes people love the game. As sappy as it sounds, I can still remember the names I gave to first generation Pokémon, although I played it almost eight years ago. I still recall the sense of entirely irrational but very real pride I felt from watching my cleverly named Bulbasaur, Sauron, grow into a fearsome Venasaur.

And that’s not even to mention the carefully-crafted combat system, the revolution of trading between players that became a key feature of the DS and the influence it had in making RPGs one of the mainstays of Western gaming.

In terms of innovation, influence, soul and sheer old-fashioned playability, those little red, green and blue Pokémon carts had far more than the vast majority of today’s multi-million dollar blockbusters.

Straw Dogs
Above all, it’s the connection to our heartstrings, that sense of freedom and the feeling of adventure that makes Pokémon a cut above its rivals; and for all its cash-ins, a truly deserved success.

So put aside your snobbish maturity, your that’s-for-kids attitude and your image fears. Pokémon is a series that ranks at the very top of what this industry can do in terms of influence, design and sheer fun. It is a game that you owe yourself to play and a franchise that deserves your respect.

As for Nintendo, with every spin-off from Pokémon Colosseum to the recent Pokémon XD failing to capture the heart and charm of the original, perhaps a different quote from Lao Tzu might be more appropriate:

“One must know when to stop. Knowing when to stop averts trouble.”

The first step of Gearoid Reidy’s thousand-mile journey began in Japan and continues into China. It is irregularly chronicled at www.gearoidreidy.com.

While they’re trying to make it in the majors, Chang is also shopping AdWRAP to other game companies, specifically casual game providers that want to go mobile. “We would be backending another game provider, maybe a casual game provider, with our catalog, with our mobile game offerings,” he says. Their current focus is expanding their game catalogue to offer more to people outside their current core group: 13- to 34-year-olds, two-thirds of which are male. Chang says the normal mobile gaming demographic skews a bit older and more female, mostly because “the concept of free downloads is a little bit new, [so] it may skew a little bit younger for people that are a little bit more familiar with the technology. And mobile gaming in general skews a little bit older and more female because much of that [activity] is coming through the … carrier deck, which is more accessible to the general public.” Indeed, Chang believes the AdWRAP technology is the way of the future. “We look at [ad-supported downloads] as the way carriers will be moving.” And when the carriers finally do come shopping for an ad-supported solution, there’s really only one show in town: “We saw this fairly early and have been able to maintain our lead,” he says.

Part of maintaining that lead is keeping an eye out on mobile gaming’s future. I asked him what things will be like when the DS2, Nintendo’s inevitable follow-up to the highly successful DS, can make phone calls. “[There will] be a little bit of a blur; once you have the connectivity, is it also a phone?” he asks. “[But] the primary purpose [of a portable gaming machine] won’t be a phone, so you still will have these two different markets. I don’t think one’s going to take over the other any time soon.” Of course, Chang also thinks the connected future of gaming systems means there’s a future for AdWRAP there, specifically in the digital distribution scene. “There are a lot of things that need to be worked out for digital distribution on those types of platforms,” he tells me. “I think it’s a little ways out, but definitely, once it’s there, our service will be, too.”

The Escapist, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Joe Blancato, a young Associate Editor on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the powerless, the helpless in a world of criminals who operate above the law. Joe Blancato, a lone crusader in a dangerous world. The world … of The Escapist.

It was this smell which greeted me when I arrived in Galveston for the first time in 1985, shortly after the death of my grandfather. My mother, my grandmother and I were in town to visit some relative or another, and retrieve photographs of the deceased. I’d never met this relative, and quite honestly, from the age of the photographs in which she appeared, I assumed her to be dead. When I got my first noseful of Galveston’s briny air, I silently wished she were.

My grandfather worked at a spring factory, had lost most of his right hand in an accident, had served in the 101st Airborne Regiment in WWII, and had been shot down over Germany and spent time in a German prison camp. He would come home from work on Fridays with a case of beer on each arm, ice them both down in a big red cooler on the porch and then sit outside drinking beer with salt sprinkled on the top of the can, smoking cigarettes one after the other. I’d sit with him, and together we’d watch the light fade from the Earth until the only thing I could see was his face, highlighted in orange as he took a drag from his cigarette. On those nights, it felt like we were the only two people on the planet.

He gave me my first taste of beer, taught me how to ride a motorcycle (mainly by watching) and in more ways than I can count, showed me what it meant to be a man and a Texan. I have his hat in my closet and carry his knife in my pocket. Cancer took his life and left me the knickknacks. As the aroma of Galveston struck me full-on, I wished I was spending time with him instead of digging through old boxes in a stupid little town in an ugly old house with a person I’d never met. I knew it was wrong, but to my child’s mind, the trade made perfect sense. “I’ll trade you an unknown old lady card for the grandfather.” But life doesn’t work like that.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, the nose is the back door. Our memories of things, places and events are inextricably tied to our memories of their smells. Sharing space in my mental repository with other suggestive aromas is the putrid stench of decomposing aquatic life mixed with the chemical tang of naphthalene. The combined power of these heady nasal irritants literally took away my asthmatic breath in 1985, but today, owing to the electrochemical voodoo of my mind, I associate their smell with one of the most unexpectedly best times of my life from which a succession of great, somewhat-related memories which have followed.

To explain the first step on the road to Mario smelling like mothballs, allow me to share a secret about assumed-to-be-dead relatives: They usually have lots of cool stuff lying around, and my great-something-or-another in Galveston was no exception. A few moments after my mother and I arrived in her home, I was presented with a box of Archie comics, which had been waiting in a secret closet of mystery on the off chance that a child might happen by with a few days to kill. And so, while my mother and my grandmother retired with Mrs. Assumed-to-be-dead to dig up photos of the deceased, I ensconced myself in a spare bedroom, in this house, in the town that smelled of mothballs, and set about escaping into a box full of wonder.

Archie comics aren’t Great Literature by any stretch, but Archie, Jughead and Veronica seemed to me to be ambassadors from a forgotten age, wooing me with their hints at a life that used to be. Half of the jokes barely made sense almost 30 years after their publish (Archie stands behind Veronica’s latest suitor, preparing, the suitor assumes, coffee for his guest. “One lump or two,” Archie asks, his upraised fist clenching a cudgel), but the clarity of the narrative and brightly colored panels spoke to me; took me away from my pain, transporting me to a place where even conflict is funny.

It was, not to put too fine point on it, as close to Nirvana as I’d yet gotten, before I even knew what that word meant. My mind began to consider the possibility that not all surely-dead relatives are created equal, that even the worst pain will pass and that sometimes, the memories of the past can help heal the wounds of the present, and however we cherish those memories, however we preserve them, we’re better off for their presence. Mothballs, in other words, can sometimes be a good thing.

***

The terminal slowly filled to maximum occupancy levels. Mothers, daughters, aunts, uncles, crying babies, gun-toting National Guardsmen, frustrated airline workers and potential terrorists were all cramming as close as they possibly could to where they guessed the line would form once the gate attendants started collecting boarding passes, sharing breath in one of the oldest cities of what was once the melting pot of the world. Most failed to notice that they held “Zone 237” tickets, and would inevitably be in the way of the 200 some-odd passengers ahead of them in line. Either that or they didn’t care. Holiday travel tends to send altruism straight out the window.

I made rude comments to myself about the nature of selfishness, completely failing to note the irony as I monopolized the terminal’s entire allotment of power plugs by recharging my laptop and GBA simultaneously. I also, I must admit, was barely aware of the hubbub, having spent The Wait escaping into the mothball-scented Land of Mario, via an assortment of GameBoy cartridges assembled from the entire lifespan of the device’s various incarnations.

I’d spent the previous weeks visiting every game store within driving distance, asking permission to look through their used GameBoy game cabinet and returning home with bags full of treasures for a song. Each expedition, each venture into each locked cabinet and each triumphant return reminded my mind’s nose of the preservative tang of naphthalene, and the postponed joy and borrowed memories made possible through that singularly noxious miracle of science.

That memories of Galveston should also fill my mind during the Christmas holiday (at Logan Airport of all places), is no mere happenstance. Nor is it coincidence that my fondest memories of escape seem always to be tinged with the deepest pains of grieving, and among the most putrid smells imaginable. For as I occupied The Seat, dwindling away the long minutes of The Wait, I enjoyed my latest escape, and tried not to think too much about my latest, perhaps deepest loss. One which I knew I’d survive (perhaps better off), but which hurt nonetheless. I didn’t know my wife as long as I knew my grandfather, and she’s certainly not deceased, but I loved her, and she’s nevertheless lost to me.

As I flew that day to the only place left that felt like home, I spent time with my old friends Mario and Zelda, catching up on their adventures and laughing at old jokes. I was 10 years old again, and working hard, again, to exhaust a seemingly inexhaustible supply of serial entertainment in the hope of finding peace through escape. I was on a plane smelling faintly of old upholstery, peanuts and kerosene, but in my mind it smelled like mothballs.

Russ Pitts is an Associate Editor for The Escapist. He has written and produced for television, theatre and film, has been writing on the web since it was invented and claims to have played every console ever made.

Selling Unplugged to Zamick, Eric became an advisor and strategist for mobile gaming firms such as Digital Chocolate, Kayak Interactive, (M)forma (now Hands-On Mobile), In-Fusio, Reaxion, Vindigo and Warner Music Group. He travels a lot: In mid-November, he visited Beijing, where he gave the keynote speech at the first China Mobile Game International Summit. When I finally connected with him, he had just returned to his Park Avenue apartment and was unspeakably jet-lagged. For Eric, that’s basically normal.

What is he advising about nowadays? “They [mobile gaming publishers] generally want to know what the carriers are going for, what are the trends. … One or two are concerned about M&A [mergers and acquisitions]. (I advised Centerscore on its sale to Vivendi Games earlier this year.) They all care about the carriers – which things sell well, strategies for deck placement, carrier network connectivity.

“It’s a carrier world; the rest of us just live in it. We love the carriers’ customer acquisition – we just wish they would share it more often.” But carriers have little interest in catering to publishers’ whims; “carriers measure their game revenue in tenths of a percent of their total income.”

Even so, “mobile gaming worldwide was a $2 billion industry in 2005 – in the U.S., half a billion; in Europe maybe half a billion, probably slightly under; Asian markets over a billion, with Korea and Japan leading. It is arguably the second largest delivery medium for games, after consoles. Many well-funded new entrants are swarming into the market: Vivendi, EA, RealNetworks. Growth has slowed in the leading markets, but that’s mostly a consequence of the law of large numbers: it’s easier to have large percentage increases in a $50 million market than in a half-billion market.”

***

Even when not piling up frequent-flyer miles to China, Eric thinks in global terms.

• “Korea and, to an extent, Japan are playing in a different league from everyone else. They’re much more advanced in technology, business models, value chain, you name it. In Japan, the dominant players are Bandai, Square Enix, Namco – the native players, who have best-selling games from other media like Pac-Man and Final Fantasy. Korea tends to do games that are highly consumable, with the market life of a mayfly, perhaps as little as four to six weeks. This is a barrier to entry for Western publishers; the games you introduce will cycle through the market far too soon for you to be ready with the next releases. In Japan and Korea, Western companies are trying to come in. But just as the experience of Japanese and Korean companies in America has been dismal – a handful of Japanese companies have achieved success in the U.S. market, usually after three years of failure – there has been no comparable U.S. success in the Japanese market, with a couple of notable exceptions like Tetris.

• “The BRIC countries are coming – Brazil, Russia, India, China. China is a huge potential market; though its mobile game numbers last year (2005) were not greater than US$30 million, there are 400 million mobile phone users. Almost everyone has tried to go into China, because it’s ‘going to be really, really big,’ and discovered that the market has yet to produce really big revenue numbers. Also, the Chinese government has restricted foreign ownership. A further major issue with China is that less than half the handsets are game-capable. The per-capita income is below $10K annually, perhaps in the $6-7K range, as in India.

• “The Indian market is impressive, but they still have the remnants of the ‘license Raj‘; they’re stuck in more red tape than even the Chinese market. India does have a more diverse and freewheeling mobile carrier environment – five or seven effective carriers, as opposed to China, which is basically an effective duopoly of China Mobile and China Unicom.”

Great – but what about the games? Any prospects cooler than 1980s arcade games? Basically no, Eric says. Not yet.

Why is it so challenging?

***

The cost of entry into mobile gaming, once dirt cheap, has grown formidable, not so much in production but afterward.

“Post-production, which includes porting, as of a year ago, was a higher cost than game development. In 2004, to launch an A title worldwide, you needed to do 500 [ports] – different versions for Sprint, Verizon and Cingular, then a different version for each handset. In Europe, you have to do it for T-Mobile or Vodafone, then one English version, one German, one Dutch.” (Gaming god John Carmack, who recently created the mobile titles DoomRPG and Orcs & Elves, has blogged about the irritations of cell phone game programming.)

Eric sees some signs of improvement. “Nokia, with its Series 40s and 60s, has made sure there’s relatively little need for porting needed between phones within these series. And there are companies making porting tools that make it easier, like Tira Wireless and Mobile Complete.

“But the situation is ‘less worse’ rather than ‘better.’ And it cannot be fully automated, no matter what anyone tells you.”

What about funding all these ports with the PC world’s cash cow, online games? “Nobody has particularly figured out how to make multiplayer work as a business model. Many European carriers don’t support subscription revenues. Without subscriptions (or a similar continuing-revenue model such as advertising), there’s no obvious way to make multiplayer games work in the marketplace.”

Great. So why does Eric still think mobile can surpass consoles to become the dominant gaming platform? How can he be so excited about mobile?

“From a business viewpoint, it’s easy: It’s a $2 billion market. There are over 200 million wireless phone subs in the U.S. The mobile phone is ubiquitous, portable, networked and is voice-capable. It’s a field that works – though right now it’s going through consolidation, the pain that happens when the companies discover that everyone is crowding into their space.

“Against that, it’s not a game platform. On the network side, it’s networked to optimize one-on-one activity, mirroring the voice phone call – but that doesn’t mean it can’t support new technology.

“There are some carriers who are doing some good work – game-friendly stuff. But at the end of the day, the games tail will not wag the carrier dog. As long as the carriers are essential, rather than dumb pipes, they block the way to a more application-friendly environment. Their business preferences create an environment where things don’t talk nice to each other, so they maintain more control. Their nightmare is that they become just dumb pipes, like ISPs have become for the internet.

“The main bottlenecks resulting from the carrier infrastructure and business culture will eventually be removed by WiMax or one of the other standards. In all likelihood, by 2011-12 you’ll see the functional equivalent [on mobile platforms] of the current internet.”

Speed the day. Tetris is a great game, but another five or six years of falling blocks is enough.

Allen Varney designed the PARANOIA paper-and-dice roleplaying game (2004 edition) and has contributed to computer games from Sony Online, Origin, Interplay and Looking Glass.

But a funny thing happened: The mass market discovered the joy of puppy love. Nintendogs, a game where you adopt and play with a virtual puppy, became a smash hit, helping the DS top 27 million units worldwide. Nintendo followed up the success of Nintendogs with Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Brothers. All achieved remarkable success, critically and financially. The DS was the console to own, and it showed everyone that gameplay mattered more than graphics and realism. Just like that, fun was back.

While the DS has taken off into orbit, the PSP has been a bit of a disappointment for Sony and the third-party publishers that supported it. Trumpeted as the future of handheld gaming at launch, the PSP quickly gained the status of expensive paperweight to many gamers due to a paucity of attractive titles. Most of the PSP’s catalogue were ports of games that could be found on the PlayStation 2. Original titles were few and far between. With a collective yawn, gamers voted with their wallets and put the PSP in a distant second behind the DS.

However, after seeing the success of original titles on the DS, Sony and PSP developers have realized that the market is in demand of original games. New, quirky titles such as Locoroco, Work Time Fun and Hot PXL have made or are making their way to the PSP. Once the bastion of console ports and ill-suited shooters, it is now becoming the home to creativity and uniqueness.

On an even smaller scale, companies like Digital Chocolate and Gameloft offer some unique and fun titles for the cell phone. Limited graphically, these companies get by on ingenuity to create games on the go. Despite being littered with low-quality ports and Tetris clones, the mobile industry is budding with optimism and has a bright future.

While the big kings of industry fight their console wars at the expense of fun, the mobile and portable field is taking gaming to new and exciting places, either by way of new input medium or by returning to tried and true low-tech methods of game design. One has to wonder how much market share they’re going to have to take (mobile gaming is the fastest growing sector in the game industry) before everyone else starts listening.

John Scott is a contributor to The Escapist.