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October 03, 2004

My Return to Pallet Town

Five years ago I first explored the world of Pokemon and visited Pallet Town with my (at the time) five year old twin sons and in doing so had a refreshing life lesson on what makes an intuitive user interface. Five years later with the advent of the release of updated versions of what were known as Pokemon Blue and Red and now are known as Pokemon: FireRed and LeafGreen, my adventure continues.

Playing with a Gameboy has been my guilty pleasure during the past couple of weeks. Whether it is during downtime while traveling in airplanes or waiting for food in a restaurant, there have been times that I’ve been using my Gameboy as often as my kids.

In the five years since I took interest in the Gameboy and the Pokemon story, the game graphics have improved by several factors of Moore’s Law. And the storyline while not complicated goes a lot faster when you have one or two personal tour guides to explain the individual game challenges. ;-)

With my recent fascination of the Sony PSP and the Ninetindo DS, I also found it interesting that this time around up to eight people can communicate using the Gameboy’s own wireless technology. I don’t believe it would be much of a stretch to get a working IM chat application on the existing Gameboy platform.

While it may be true at times that “you can never go back” – at least in the virtual world of Pokemon, Pallet Town is one place that you can return to.

Posted by jeff on October 3, 2004 08:22 AM | Permalink

Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos

Comments

Yeah I played pokemon when it first came out too. I played the others they are great! But after awhile they get boring and they did not add anything really new to the table...I gave it a chance and it failed on me soo I returned it soo I guess not everyone can go back. ;(

Posted by: BountyHunter at October 13, 2004 03:23 PM