So guess what I did this weekend?Went to the Toys R Us in-store event on Saturday so that I could download Manaphy. The little darling popped into my DS at level 50, with a contest ribbon and a Red Scarf for coolness.
What is it about Pokémon that can make a healthy, socially well-adjusted (or so I like to think) young woman go to a toy store on a Saturday afternoon to make sure to get a virtual animal? I mean, sure, they were giving out $5-off-a-DS-game coupons with the download, but that had absolutely no bearing on my decision to hop on the train and ride some sixty blocks downtown to Times Square and pile into the chaos.
First off, if you've never been to the Times Square Toys R Us, go someday. Seriously, go, no excuses. Skip Broadway shows, go to the Toys R Us. Whether you have kids or not, it's, like, the coolest place ever. Okay, it's three floors and in the middle is a giant ferris wheel. Inside the store, a freakin' ferris wheel. They always have some kind of twenty-foot wonder of a Lego sculpture that changes regularly, and there's this T-Rex that moves its head and roars. The stuffed animal selection alone is like a zoo of joy -- I challenge anyone to look at the stuffed animals and not feel a loving twinge threatening to translate itself into an irresistible impulse to bring one home. They've also got this Candy Land-themed bulk candy section with Mr. Mint and Plumpy and everyone else standing around nine million different types of gummies. Gummies! The video game ZONE is like some kinda space beacon. Sure, you've got snot-nosed seven and eight year olds crawling all over everything in a sugar frenzy, but there're always people of all ages hanging out, boosting their pokeymans by trading them back and forth at the unmanned DS stations. The sales people have Ratchet and Clank caps on with furry ears. It's completely rad.
Going back to pretending I'm not an arrested juvenile, the clerk at the register also recognized me from the Internets and the TV! I felt so cool, and wasn't aware my image had any kind of prevalence.
There's something about Pokémon, though, seriously. There was a swarm of people there, kids and adults, perplexed and fatigued mothers, and a sea of glowing DS screens. Everyone just seemed so happy, crowding to look at one another's teams and trading and battling over WiFi. I've done trades and stuff on the GTS, but I've never actually played Pokémon against anyone else on a local network, so it was fun -- my Gyarados beat a Deoxys, and my Shieldon battled to a draw against an Ursaring. I know, I know, but the rest of my team's levels were high enough so as to exclude them from the match and I was carrying the Shieldon because I was hoping to trade him with Diamond players.
I was reminded about the series Penny Arcade did about Gabe's experiences at a Pokémon tournament, excerpted here:
It was actually really cool to see how much these kids love Pokemon. I've been so into it recently that I think I'd forgotten I should be having fun. With my pages of hand written math and charts of carefully plotted out EV training regiments I actually felt sort of dirty. These little kids were showing me teams comprised not of statistically optimal Pokemon but of their favorites. A little girl talked to me for five minutes about why she loved Kyogre so much. When she asked why I used Rotom I couldn't bring myself to tell her that his ghost/electric type meant he had a lot of immunities while giving him some surprising moves that should allow me to cripple sweepers with status effects but still fight off any Dark types I encounter. "I think he's cute." I explained. She smiled and nodded as though this was the reason she had expected to hear.
My experience was a bit different -- those kids there were hardcore. I don't have a particularly special team -- until Manaphy, no legendaries, no Emerald-edition superstars. I haven't even beaten the canon of the game yet. They made me feel ashamed to call myself a gamer. But in a nice way. The spirit of joy, community and cheer that Gabe discovered in his tournament adventures was alive and well here -- blame the stilted, muffled ticking of my despised female biological clock, but the sea of young eyes all aglow with happiness at their pastime warmed the cockles of my heart. One little boy magnanimously and generously complimented my fairly bland team with an air of genuine sportsmanship, and another player, who had a fully completed Pokédex and hand-bred multiples of almost everything, traded me the difficult-to-obtain Spiritomb for my Shieldon, which I mass-produce from the fossil lab for the express purpose of trading.
Overlooking the happy community crowded into Toys R Us' game section, I had a glimpse of the idealistic universe that Nintendo envisions. And even though I'm a 25 year old woman, I totally had a fun day. I'd bet if we could get, like, Dick Cheney, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Osama Bin Laden, Ehud Olmert, Mahmud Abbas and Kim Jong Il to just all sit down and play Pokémon together, it'd save the world.
