Kanto is one of the most fascinating settings in gaming. I know it’s actually a real place, but I’m specifically talking about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon’s version of Kanto, or even more specifically, the version presented in Red & Blue. When I think of the vast open worlds I’ve spent the most time in - something I’ve been doing a lot recently thanks to the different philosophies of Horizon and Eldenꦓ Ring - I realise that none of them hit me like Kanto.
That’s why, over the coming weeks, I’m going to be revisiting Kanto town by town and digging into them deeply, writing🦩 about who (and what) I find there as I try to explore exactly why this place is so magical. There’s more to it than raw nostalgia, as other games I loved from my childhood don’t have that same hold on me. I see the flaws in their settings, even if they transport me back to the CRT in my old bedroom.
Obviously, Kanto is not the immersive 🎃open world that Red Dead Rede❀mption 2’s Old West is. It doesn’t react to your presence, it doesn’t swell with hidden stories, it doesn’t really do anything. It&rsq𓆉uo;s just a loose framework for what is now a very reliable formula where you wander through some towns, collect some badges, and catch more Pokemon, but it feels oddly like home. It’s the first video game world I knew - truly knew - as if I lived in it. Every building, every route, every corner. Not the encounter rates or the trainer meta or the most effective speedrun routes, but the people and feeling of the town. Its essence. Its honest to god vibes. I don’t know it as well as I used to, and I want to get that feeling back.
I’m sure everyone feels this way about their most formative games, but I think Pokemon Red & Blue does it better than most. There’s a coziness to the earliest Pokemon games, a sensation the later Pokemon games have mistaken for friendliness. There’s a huge difference - in Red & Blue, the rival wants to beat you just because. At one point, as Team Rocket overthrow a building, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:he waits for you just beca༺use he wants a figಌht. In Gold & Silver, your rival is an actual 🤡criminal motivated by the allure of the dark side. Recent games have rivals that want to be yo꧒ur mates, gameplay systems that want to hold your hand. Kanto never relied on such cheap tricks, and it’s these moments I’ll be searching for across Kanto.
Kanto has an array of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:interesting cav🧸es with complex routes and puzzles, a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:formidable rival, and an actual Pokemon graveyard. It isn’t trying to be nice, and that gives it an undeniable charm. It’s like a Ghibli movie, where even as the death and demons and darkness deep in, there’s an unshakable sense that it is honest and good. Modern Pokemon games often feel like Warner Animation Studios pictu🐭res, all fuzzy and desperate for our approval, focus tested out the wazoo, and completely shorn of anything authentic.
‘Zendaya is Meechee’ is Warner Animation’s biggest cultural contribution because the movies themselves never have ambitions beyond recouping their budget. While modern Pokemon games have a little more substance to them - they’re The Lego Movie, where the heart e🥂xists but is buried under a two hour commercial - they still can’t escape the fact they’re trying to be Kanto but with every rough edge perfected and nothing new being added to the equation.
The original Pokemon games created a world that made the most of its limitations, it didn’t rest o🦩n a safe structure. It invented that structure out of nothing, and did it so well all future sequels seemed to be scared off experimentation. Nostalgia tends to favour Kanto, but even so it doesn’t get enough respect as the originator of practically everything we know and love about Pokemon - even if games riffing too hard on🎐 Kanto makes those things hard to love at times. Kanto frequently tops polls for favourite regions, but it also gets dismissed as genwunners backing what they know. Kanto deserves a lot more respect, from fans and from Pokemon itself.
