So... Let's be honest: Pokemon Sun and Moon is really exciting. It's amazing that the Pokemon Company and Nintendo have brought a singular game through the past 20 years largely intact and still just as engaging in its premise as it was back in 1996. The JRPG is still a powerful genre of game. Junior Role Playing Games, otherwise called JRPGs, are often times described as short adventure games where you play a small-time protagonist who by the end of their journey is the big hero. Every JRPG seems to follow this 'coming-of-age' plotline.
And it reminds me of my younger days, when it was actually appropriate for me to play Pokemon. My friends and I would be out in the yard (+1 Respect from Parents) on our GameBoys (-1 Respect from Parents) and battling our pokemon teams against one another, and that was our favorite past-time. I remember the day my friend was ready to challenge and capture the strongest pokemon in the game, Mewtwo. And to make matters even harder on himself he was determined to catch Mewtwo in a pokeball, the most basic of capture devices. We must have been huddled up together out in the yard for hours, but you should have heard the way we whooped and cheered when the pokeball shook the last time and turned black, indicating that Mewtwo was caught.
My childhood was saturated with the JRPG, and not just Pokemon, but also games like the Megaman Battle Network series, Digimon World, the Zelda series, Super Mario 64 (arguably not an RPG), Kingdom Hearts, and the like. Something about these games resonated with me. The hero going out with their friends and saving the world, while all very cheesy, was also inspiring to my 7 year old self.
So my friends and I would go and act out the parts, being the heroes in our streets, fighting with sticks and imaginary projectiles, fishing for and catching imaginary Pokemon in the creek behind our house. It was all very romantic then, and yet today, somewhere that same spirit is inside me.
So what difference has the JRPG made in my life? Well for starters, I'm more aware of what people have to say. If you've played an RPG before you may realize that all information is relevant information, even if slightly obscure in its presentation. Secondly, people matter. While NPCs (Non-playable Characters) abound in JRPGs even the Average Joe, some character model who is very much like any other NPC, get the chance to move the plot forward in some way. Everyone and everything contributes to the story, the adventure. And that's just how it is in life too, isn't it? Every person we introduce ourselves too gains a degree of relevance to our plot. While some people may come and go almost mysteriously, there's still opportunity written into every interaction.
The JRPG is the kind of game that draws on the affections. It depends on the player caring about what's going on. Maybe they care because of the character they're playing, perhaps they care only to be the most powerful, but regardless, the JRPG draws us in and begs us to care about more, to care about wider issues than the self. The Pokemon game series has been particularly effective on purposely widening our perspectives with each game, so much so that the last main series games, X and Y, were grappling with the issues of natural beauty, life and death, and how we never completely escape our past. But if you want to know more about that, play it for yourself. Or watch someone else play it on Youtube.
The JRPG is alive and well still today, with games like Undertale, further Pokemon games, Monster Hunter, and DragonQuest. Even the more engaged RPG is thriving from games like Divinity: Original Sin (sequel on the way), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dragon Age Inquisition, the highly anticipated Mass Effect Andromeda. These games are still shaping young adults and children today. So the next time you see a child playing a game, it may be worth considering what that game is teaching. It might just be more than meets the eye.
