Thread 58135443

Was anyone even a Pokemon fan between 2002 and 2003? Almost everyone I knew stopped being a fan after Pokemania ended.

In fact, its actually amazing how many things went wrong for Pokemon during that time period. It would have killed off lesser franchises.

>Buy expensive real estate in New York City, opens the Pokemon Center in Nov 2001, in the worst possible time.
>Pokemon TCG sales fall, most people moved onto Yugioh or Magic
>Wizard of the Coast stopped giving a shit about the TCG, especially competitive play. Seemed to be almost intentionally trying to kill it because they knew they were about to loser their license. The e-reader Booster boxes from this era are now very rare and expensive for this reason.
>Even in Japan, the change in cardback design was controversial and led to old Pokemon cards price plummeting
>Initial fanbase entering their teen years and now pokemon was just a baby nerdy thing and you were a fag if you were still playing it
>Similar perception with Nintendo in general too, Xbox/PS2/Halo/GTA were the new hotness
>Most people wrote Pokemon off as a dead fad now
>Pokemon sales massively fall. Cheapest time to buy Pokemon merch, because no one wanted it anymore
>Anime bleeds out its viewers because of how boring it got
>Movie 4 and 5 get very limited theatrical releases
>News that you couldn't transfer your Pokemon from your GBC games to the GBA games made people drop out even more

You could bash Masuda and the Pokemon company for many things, but its pretty impressive how they managed to weather that storm and help the franchise rebound itself just a few years later.

>>58135443 (OP)
ok shill shillson son of shillet

>>58135443 (OP)
I was a kid in 2003 and a very big Pokemon-Yugioh-Sonic fan. Gen III was soul and there was never any stigma around liking Pokemon as far as my demographic was concerned. And fast-forward over 20 years later that period is hailed by many to be the peak of the series.

Everything you listed has been long since proven to be exclusively johtoddler concerns which have been completely swept away by time, your lot being the sole-holders of an impotent grudge. In fact, your "Gen III killed Pokemania nonsense" led to the script getting flipped on you and now everyone knows Gen 2 was actually the worst of the 4 gens all along.

>>58135515
ebic bait shitpost

On top of good old 9/11 and all that other stuff you said, the GBA selling like complete ass didn't help matters either. Hasbo wishes it had that ability to be consistent with their product, Transformers was having problems shortly before Red/Blue and shortly after Gold/Silver and it took them importing a series for filler to catch up to making a consistent toy shilling marketing scheme (and additionally did not fuck up when the got a third fad, that helped too). Granted the Japanese were slightly more consistent about turning successful things into forever toy shilling marketing schemes but that was usually only in Japan so there was still the international market that the nascent Pokemon Company was uniquely able to do well at that exact moment (and probably had to do with them founding a US branch in oh look 2001).

>>58135515
So gen 3 fans are redditors?

>>58135602
and youtubers
and twitterers
and 4channers
and [insert IPC platform]

>>58135623
So they're redditors. Got it.

>>58135443 (OP)
Yeah all they had to do was leverage youtube personalities into pushing gambling

>>58135695
your point in posting this?

>>58135942
Game Freak always had no idea what they were doing and you bought it anyway

>>58136157
you know that applies to gen i and gen ii then?

>>58136190
Yes, and? They're actually fun games despite the retarded developers. Weren't made with the intention of soft rebooting shit to be a franchise by intentionally lacing the games with crack addict design traits

>>58135443 (OP)
Dunno, I've been a fan since Blue, then played most of the franchise and watched a large chunk of the anime until the Switch gens hit and all interest in playing further just evaporated out of me. The dex cut was the first thing that made me say "no fucking way" IRL, but seeing how shit gen 8 was as a whole just finished me off.
>inb4 poor
I mean, I'm definitely poor, but I've got enough to buy a Switch and a bunch of games, easy, I just don't give a fuck. Despite living pretty close to an S-tier game store, the Switch doesn't really interest me much and my next Chinkheld will probably be Switch-tier and I'll just pirate shit.

That said, at around 2000-2005, I'm pretty sure I was going to the Pokemon TCG leagues at the time, so my view on how active/dead the fanbase was at the time isn't exactly relevant. Pokemania was definitely over, though.
Still had fun for a while though, it was definitely more of a social thing than a "wow Pokemon" thing since there were a few hardcore sweaties there that just sat around stomping kids a third of their ages with decks that cost up in the hundreds/thousands of dollars.

[/blog]

>>58135570
>GBA selling like complete ass
Wrong

>>58136195
lol okay toddy lmfao

>>58136227
>hating baby pokemon
low t behavior

>>58136227
Pokemon would not be a successful franchise without girls liking the cutemons. They are literally carrying your autistic fixation

>>58136238
based baby fucker

>>58136195
Pretty sure you're describing Masuda's reboot of Gen 2. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, Gen 1 had a lot of problems. Shame he decided to shit it out in less than a year and had to make the JRPG part of the game super easy because they had zero time to balance it and were designing Pokemon at the last minute. Whatever, Gen 2 was great at the whole monster catching and playground rumor shit on top of feeling like a real world as much as the GameBoy would allow, Gen 3 is an actually good JRPG, it turned out alright in the end.
>>58136204
It sold way worse than the previous or next console, and only outsold the 3DS when it comes to Nintendo handhelds (unless you count the Virtual Boy which I do not that shit is not a handheld). It sold better than the PS5 or whatever but games for the GBA weren't selling so I dunno what the fuck people were buying it for. Was it just to play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? If so I get it that game was dope.

>>58136247
gen 1 didn't have babies and it sold just fine. they added them out of pure greed. Also most bitches just buy pikachu dolls and don't know shit about the name of any other pokemon.

>>58136250
weird cope + you're incapable of using your own words to explain why you don't like them

>>58136259
Fun Fact: Atsuko Nishida was added to the team to add cute Pokemon to Gen 1
Fun Fact: Atsuko Nishida designed the Vulpix line
Fun Fact: Vulpix had a pre-evolution with three tails
Fun Fact: The Vulpix pre-evolution was cut from Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 4, which beats Raitora for number of attempts to make that shit work only for it to never make the cut

>>58136276
ok retard

>>58136250
lol

>>58136247
GSC was a sophomore slump because of the cutemons
kanto didn't need to treat its consumers like toddlers in order to sell well

I remember the Shudo era Pokemon movies being HUGE, but the dubs for Gen 3-4 just aired over Cartoon Network instead of theaters.
I hear the DP movies did well in Japan.

>>58136313
Why do you talk like a Jew

>>58136357
why do you talk like a seething johtoddy
oh wait

>>58135443 (OP)
Pokemania was really just an insane trend. It was absolutely impossible to keep that fad up forever. Of course the popularity started to fizzle out eventually. I'm guessing you weren't alive back then if you don't understand that.

Honestly, if anything, it's extremely impressive that Pokémon didn't fade to obscurity and not only kept staying relevant, but is also still growing steadily today. If you compare it to something like Furbies, it's crazy how Pokémon managed to stay popular.

I gotta say, I would have probably stopped giving a fuck about Pokémon after R/S/E, if it weren't for a friend I had who was playing Diamond and showed me all the cool new mons and features. I was in sixth grade at the time and I was the only one playing Pokémon by then as everyone pretty much stopped after gen 3

>>58135443 (OP)
I wasn't born until 2007.

>>58137761
And you're probably one of the older users on /vp/, lol. This board is full of babies

>>58136837
>It was absolutely impossible to keep that fad up forever
Except the Pokemon Go fad made Pokemon cool again for almost a decade now. Fucking up Pokemania was gen 2's fault.

>>58135443 (OP)
I’d say the wilderness years were from 2001-2006. I still loved the cards, but was still in high school and had no job. So I had no money for cards. I remember looking at magazines with real cool cards and just looking at my shoebox of old cards and just sighing. I had outgrown the anime by that point. I wasn’t fond of the Gen 3 games. I had Ruby, and was thoroughly disappointed by the lack of old Pokémon. The Gen 1 remakes really didn’t interest me, because I still had Red. So I just kept replaying Red and Gold. I probably replayed them once a year each for about ten years there. Gen 4 I started to get back into the games. And once I got a job that started paying for more than just college expenses, I got back into collecting cards. Now, I’m in the wilderness again, because the cards are ridiculously expensive and packs are hard to find, and the games are just ok.

>>58135443 (OP)
You kind of summed the situation up with the greentext.
Pokemon's star faded because everyone had been convinced it was a fad all along, and there was a weird convergence of events all at the same time.
Wizards in particular had already alienated fans with the Neo Slowking mistranslation, trying to remove senior tournaments (because they wanted teens on Magic) and reintroducing degenerate cards in Legendary. It was always a quick buck and MtG ramp for them, but it got very blatant.
And it wasn't just teens who got into more "mature" games at the time, that early 2000s/post-9/11 darkness bled into everything. I was born in 1996 and can clearly remember that by 2004 my peers had all abandoned kiddy shit, because of the proliferation of edge: Linkin Park, Halo, GTA, Eminem, ICP, South Park and raunchy movies became the thing to talk about.
No longer could I mention Pokemon, even Yu-Gi-Oh was seen as kinda gay. Star Wars was for fags unless you defended it by saying you only like the video games (Battlefront). Bionicle was for fags. Sonic was retarded but at least Shadow the Hedgehog was cool. SpongeBob was for babies. Dragon Ball GT was cool and Z was for fags. It was that kind of attitude permating everything. Pokemon went from a series for 12 and under to a series for kindergartners.

But like the first long post here said, it's impressive that TPC/Ishihara saw the change coming ahead of time. Flagging sales with Crystal version pushed them to try and consolidate the brand from it's many licensees so that nobody would try and milk the fuck out of the cash cow with the fad ending.
MediaFactory was the first domino to fall, those "new back" cards started with Creatures' first set, VS, to signal a new era for the game and franchise. Pokemon USA established the same year.
Because they were able to control the merchandising during the mid00s, TPC played close to the vest and focused on the core business of game sales for the new 5 year olds born every day.

>>58138067
>cont'd
Having control meant they could weather the storm of being "uncool" and figure out what to do right. Rather than desperate attempts to reboot and get big again, they were content to let Gen 3 play out, trusting that the games would be the key to the rest of the series even if they were popular to hate on. Eventually they got to a point where their first gen fans had grown up and gotten back into Pokemon for nostalgia, and they had also made a new generation of fans with Hoenn (this was the DP era). They basically took their lumps and learned from them -- VS was unplayable and e-Cards were a hated disaster, Ruby and Sapphire had to be rushed out, PCNY defaulted on rent and had to be rescued by Nintendo. From those, they learned to be a truly evergreen franchise.

In a weird way, Pokemon never went anywhere despite not being a seismic fad anymore. In Asia, there were the PokePark events, in the US we got Pokemon Rocks America for a few summers as well which were entire event tours in major cities. Then in 2006, despite it only being the anniversary for Japan, Pokemon Rocks became the 10th Anniversary tour which was even bigger, and they had events across Europe that time too.
Pikachu stayed in the Macy's parade and even got a new float in 2007! They flew that shit in Bryant Park in the middle of summer for their Party of the Decade!
So it was gay and you had to enjoy it in secret, but there were certainly legions of small kids and autists that openly displayed their love of the game even when it wasn't "cool" to do so.

>>58138067
>Dragon Ball GT was cool and Z was for fags.
What? I followed Dragon Ball at the time and the general fanbase consensus weren't all that fond of GT, even moreso its English dub. Was the separation between the fanbase on the internet and the fanbase in Normieville that vast?

>>58135515
This part's accurate
>I was a kid in 2003 and a very big Pokemon-Yugioh-Sonic fan. Gen III was soul and there was never any stigma around liking Pokemon as far as my demographic was concerned.
Ignore the rest of this post.

>>58138144
Yes, for kids it was just about what was new and Super Saiyan 4 was the most badass shit around. I never thought much of it though, I had wanted more SSJ3 and thought Cell was better than any GT villain personally. Especially as GT went on and didn't .... Do anything cool after Baby.
But my friends just liked the toughest or strongest looking character and GT had plenty of late-90s techno wastelands to gawk at, unlike the colorful fields of Namek I guess.

>>58136343
I always just assume all products did well in japan

>>58138172
Japan just consoom

>>58135443 (OP)
I was lucky in that I had a neighbour who was just as autistic as I was so he was still into Pokemon but I know what you mean. Being hyperfixated on the brand as hard as I was I saw so many people I used to enjoy it with during the Gen 1 and even Gen 2 days in some cases watching the anime, playing Stadium or Gold, to moving on.
Obviously that was the normal thing but it felt like in the shift from Gen 2 to Gen 3 there was a mass exodus that was somehow more noticeable than the falloff from Gen 1 to Gen 2 despite that one arguably being worse.
Felt bad not being able to talk with my bros about how cool Groudon is or link battle with them.
For a while, my neighbour aside, it felt like the only time I saw Pokemon fans were on holidays or in pictures in Pokemon magazines.

>>58139084
Similar story here, I was obsessed and only got interested in other things because everyone else did. Well, they were things I did like, but I got more into them as Pokemon was supposed to be for babies.
I met a great kid at a YMCA fat camp and he loved Pokemon still, too, so we really got along and he was the main reason I never drifted away, I think. Eventually secret fandom with no one to share with would have been too boring, but we rode our Gen 3 together while trying to learn basketball and swimming.

>>58135515
>very big Pokemon-Yugioh-Sonic fan.

Checks out, only a retarded autists would suddenly go on your faggy anti-gen2 rant.

I became a "games only" fan in that time period, because the Ashinme was embarrassing to me by Advanced and most of the other multimedia things ended. I liked Adventures but VIZ stopped publishing it. I liked the TCG but the new cards bored me and the event structure changed meaning it was more difficult to find a store to play at.

>>58140232
Don't respond to obvious genwar bait.

>>58136157
>Game Freak always had no idea what they were doing
This is true but posting scrapped alpha designs is the most retarded way to demonstrate this. Literally every game ever made has cut/reworked content, every novel has a first draft, every movie has script revisions, etc. GF iterating on their designs instead of just going with the first thing they make is actually evidence of competence.

>>58135443 (OP)
It was still huge in Japan you dumb burgerbrain.

>>58141465
>It was still huge in Japan you dumb burgerbrain.

Not huge enough if Masuda went to the hospital over stress that R/S would flop.

>>58142606
unrelated

>>58135443 (OP)
that chick looks 30 and it's 1999, she's in her whole ass 50s now

>>58135443 (OP)
I got into the TCG around 2002 when the other kids had their cards in elementary school. I remember convincing my grandma to take me to the local comic store across town where I bought a 1st edition Team Rocket Koffing, my favorite Pokemon at the time (along with Weezing) for a quarter. I still have it. Also, an Unlimited booster that I pulled a Dark Machamp. I was more excited for the Magnemite in the pack. I still love that artwork. I remember the clerk saying that they were going to carry Yu-Gi-Oh more because Pokemon was losing popularity. One of my friends (girl) was playing Crystal and let me play for a few minutes while she went to the bathroom, as she was searching for Suicune.

>>58141456
>GF iterating on their designs instead of just going with the first thing they make is actually evidence of competence.
They don't even do this anymore

>>58135443 (OP)
>>Buy expensive real estate in New York City, opens the Pokemon Center in Nov 2001, in the worst possible time.
The Pokemon Center was the most profitable and successful venture Pokemon has ever done in terms of stores outside the Japan. It received tons of customers year over year and sold Nintendo Merch on top of theirs. Almost everything was import exclusives with a few exclusive New York products. Pokemania never stopped in New York. Ever since it was converted to a Nintendo store, it has been going downhill since. Please don’t speak of things you have no knowledge of, you’re probably a third worlder, an anon from a flyover state, or a shut in who wasn’t allowed to leave his home assuming you are from New York

>>58142913
Thanks Sherlock

>>58135443 (OP)
I was a fan from 1998 to 2009 ; HG/SS is my last game, it's when I stopped playing because ... well ... you eventually get bored, even with Pokémon. It suffers from "You play one, you played them all" syndrome.

>>58137784
You must be 30 years or older to post on 4chan.

>>58143636
I fucking wish anon. I'm 34 myself, but its really obvious this board specifically is full of underage posters

>>58143201
What's the deal with this rise of bait that is so bad you go out of your way to contradict yourself and make the guy you are trying to bait right?