Sam Brooks pens a love letter to the after-school gateway drug of the late nineties and early aughts: anime on free-to-air TV. If you look on the free TV schedule today, you’ll find a dearth of good after-school content for kids. Assuming a child-spawn gets home at around 3:30pm, they’ve got an hour of TVNZ … Read more
Summer reissue: Sam Brooks digs into his childhood to present his magnum opus: a ranking of all 151 OG Pokémon. This post was originally published on 20 April, 2019. You can see the scrollbar at the right side of your screen. Let’s just get into this, shall we? Opinions are, as always, my own and … Read more
Sam Brooks reviews the latest generation of the Pokémon games which finally hits the big-ish screen. “I love Pokémon but I wish I could play it on my TV.” I’ve been playing Pokémon for 20 years and that’s been the main thing I’ve heard from my fellow Pokémon friends/fans. The games have been engrossing, addictive and entertaining … Read more
Following the multi-billion dollar success of Pokémon Go, Nintendo is intent on turning a profit from the most mysterious human experience of all: sleep. Last week Nintendo announced their intentions to gamify sleep, the last sacred, ad-free and private space we possess. The release read like a teaser for the new Black Mirror episodes: “In … Read more
Mum was right: heavy exposure to pocket monsters fundamentally rewires your brain. But researchers from Stanford say it’s an exciting opportunity to study how we learn to see. There’s an old folk myth that when James Cook and the Endeavour sailed up the coast of Australia, “discovering” that great desert continent, indigenous fishermen spotted on … Read more
Sam Brooks digs into his childhood to present his magnum opus: a ranking of all 151 OG Pokémon. You can see the scrollbar at the right side of your screen. Let’s just get into this, shall we? Opinions are, as always, my own and subjectivity is not objectivity. 151. Jynx Look, the worst one is … Read more
Twenty years ago – before Instagram – a game about documenting your every move was released. That game was Pokémon Snap. The year was 1999. Hilary Swank was playing Brandon Teena, something that would now absolutely not be allowed. Troye Sivan was basically a fetus, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were at the top of the world, and people … Read more
What happens to the unused Pokemon who never make it to a game? They get leaked 20 years later and ruthlessly insulted. Last week, an uploaded ROM (essentially an illegal copy of a game) of Pokemon Gold and Silver was uploaded to the internet, and has since been meticulously unpacked by fans at The Cutting Room Floor. The … Read more
There’s two kinds of people in the world: the kind who haven’t played Pokémon and the kind who formed a deep emotional and transformational attachment with Pokémon. Sam Brooks pays homage to the pocket monster constant in his life. If you’re a 90s kid who was even slightly engaged with pop culture or being cool … Read more
In the soft, glazed eyes of the Magikarp we see a challenge to love that which is unlovable, or so argues Uther Dean. Magikarp are no one’s favourite Pokémon. Essentially powerless, the limp, flappy fish is famous for its Splash attack that famously, no matter how hard your Magikarp hurls themself into the air, always … Read more
Pokémon Go slayed 2016 and with a new update it might very well nail 2017 as well. Joseph Harper has ripped into Gen 2 and oh boy, he likes it. When Pokémon Go launched last year, it was downloaded by approximately fifty million people who leapt at the opportunity to feed berries to, throw balls … Read more
Not content to close out 2016 relaxing in their billowing piles of Pokémon Go cash, Gamefreak have just released two new Nintendo handheld rpgs, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon. Joseph Harper took them for a spin. It’s been a massive year for Pokémon. Celebrating 20 years since their first generation handheld games, the company has … Read more
Joseph Harper plays Pokken Tournament, the definitive Pokémon title for gamers who prefer dog fights to collecting stamps. For me, the best part about a Pokemon game is always catching lots of gorgeous baby Pokemon, giving them funny names, and falling deeply in love with them. Apparently though there is a subset of Pokemon fans … Read more
The Donbox is a regular series where killing machine Don Rowe watches a movie based on, inspired by, or just damn ripped from a video game. This week Don revisits the first Pokémon movie and finds a film about about friendship, adventure, the thrill of battle … and the agony of existing in a meaningless … Read more
Candy Elsmore is a seasoned veteran of Ingress, the Niantic-developed predecessor to Pokémon Go. Here she compares the two, and puts Pokémon Go in its rightful place. Ten days or so ago, Pokémon GO hit the world like a giant Magikarp in the face. Before that, the concept of real world gaming was somewhat of a … Read more
Dyed-in-the-wool Pocket Monster fan Joseph Harper joined the burgeoning Pokémon GO craze this week and found it overwhelmingly pointless and bad. When the Pokémon GO trailer was hurled onto the internet last year, it seemed too good to be true. Playing Pokémon in the real world seemed fricking awesome. When I played Pokémon as a … Read more
Joseph Harper reviews the three new starter Pokémon characters, using cutting-edge scientific methods to determine which one is the cutest. Great news for children, and fully grown Nintendo tragics: while Pokémon Sun and Moon are still a wee way off, we’ve just been gifted the first offering of real game footage – including names and pictures … Read more
This week Joseph Harper is drawn back into the Pokémon vortex like a starving Rick Stein stumbling across Magicarp at a market. He finds there is no better fuel for nostalgia than a solid run with a Pokémon trainer’s licence. As part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, the Pokémon geniuses at Nintendo did the handheld … Read more
February 27 marks the 20th anniversary of Pokémon Red and Green, the first Pokémon games ever to be released. Mega-fan Ethan Sills looks back at how a collection of outlandish Japanese creatures became a worldwide phenomenon. March 2008. It’s late at night – well, late at night for a 13 year old, so probably around … Read more