(So you know this is going to be about Pokemon and you're still reading? Bravo.)

We all know how the Pokemon games took the world by storm about 10 years ago, but not many people know (or care) how the franchise is doing nowadays. The surprising thing is that while the series' popularity has dropped, the games continue to sell extremely well. In fact, the worst selling Pokemon game, Emerald version for GBA, still sells as well as the worst selling Mario games, and it sells better than the majority of Final Fantasy and Zelda games. So how has this franchise managed to keep a strong foothold in the games market for so long?

My initial thoughts were that it was due to the incredible marketing campaign that accompanied the first set of games (Red/Green/Blue). While this explains why the first five games sold so well, it doesn't account for Ruby/Sapphire for GBA making it into the top 10 best-selling games since these games were released with a more standard marketing scheme and were introduced years after Pokemon became somewhat "taboo".

So there must be some other key factor that explains the franchise's continued success. The next obvious consideration is that perhaps the games themselves have some fundamental and unique aspects that attract players. Well, the storyline of each game is pretty standard for an RPG: form a team, level up, battle, collect stuff, etc; nothing too spectacular there. Then there are the key qualities that unite all Pokemon games: you start with one Pokemon, use it to catch whatever wild Pokemon you want, pick a couple of those Pokemon and form a primary team, pick movesets for each Pokemon, trade with friends to further customize your team, and set off on your merry RPG'ing way.

Again, this seems to point at a very simple game that should pale in comparison to all the deep and highly involved games that are available today. Then I remembered an article in Nintendo Power a few months back (Vol. 194) that said Pokemon as a whole (games, cards, toys, cartoons, movies, etc) has been so successful because it's based on childish pleasures, like catching bugs. This seems to suggest that the simplicity of the gaming concept is the primary reason for its success. As anyone who's played the games knows, it's very easy to pick up the basics, and those basics are enough to complete the game. This appeals to people who feel they need to grasp the basics of a game right at the beginning and tend to get discouraged otherwise. Games I've played recently have been mixed as far as this goes. Some games, like Windwaker, Paper Mario, and Kirby's Air Ride, were fairly easy to get started with, but others, like Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Worms 3D, took some time to figure out.

Another result of Pokemon's simplicity is the variable pace of the game play. One person could rush through everything and complete the main storyline in a day. While another person could slowly work their way through the entire game, battle everyone, catch all the Pokemon, raise their team a specific way, develop several teams, etc. and stretch the game out for months without losing any of the quality of the game play. This is something I have not seen much of in recent games. Some games, especially Pikmin, seem to constantly push the player to keep moving ahead, while other games, like Animal Crossing, sometimes don't provide enough for a player to do for more than a few minutes. Even Paper Mario reached a point towards the end where leveling up my team became painfully slow and I felt like I was being forced to keep going when what I really wanted to do was level up.

On a similar note, for a Pokemon game, the length of a gaming session can range from a few minutes while you take a short break and level up some random Pokemon you caught, to several hours as you progress in the main storyline during a long car ride. This also fits the gaming needs of many different types of people and is something I have not seen much of in recent games, with the exception of racing games and some 2D side-scrollers.

As much as the simplicity of the games may be contributing to their success, a simple game concept can only be remade so many times unless there's some greater depth to each new set of games. This is where I believe Pokemon excels. Although learning the basics is enough to beat the games, there's far more that can be done. Unlike most RPGs, the Pokemon games allow players to fully customize their team by choosing from hundreds of Pokemon and the dozens of attacks each one learns to create a team of six members with four attacks each. I estimate that in the Red/Green/Blue versions, players can choose from over a quintillion (10^18) possible teams, and in the latest installments in the series, the number is even higher.

This means the games have immense replay value in addition to making every single player's gaming experience essentially unique. This also lets players customize the game's difficulty level by picking stronger/weaker Pokemon and attacks, leveling up more/less, choosing strategic/brute-force attacks, etc. While this may not be a major factor in attracting new players, it helps retain players from one set of games to the next since they know they can make each game as different as they want, regardless of how the storyline changes. Also, each new set of games in the series has advanced this underlying complexity considerably (by introducing breeding in Gold/Silver, contests in Ruby/Sapphire, challenging battle arenas in Crystal, Emerald, etc).

I think this is something to keep in mind as game developers. As much as we love our Zeldas, Final Fantasies, and Halos, these games tend appeal to a certain groups of people and may not attract very many people beyond those groups. Amazing graphics may get people to try a game, but if the game is not simple enough to get the player hooked quickly, it probably will not be as successful as it could be. Just look at the best-selling games. Mario and Pokemon dominate the top of the list, and both of these series start with very basic and simple ideas but then add several optional levels of difficulty (try beating Mario without any powerups/warps or within so many minutes, etc). Other successful games, like Tetris and Duck Hunt, are also based on very simple concepts but don't have enough depth for successful sequels to be made. Right now, Nintendo seems to understand this idea the best. The New Super Mario Bros. game is a return to basics with some new twists and the Wii has been designed with this balance of simplicity and complexity in mind. So as long as the people behind Pokemon can continue to expand the games while maintaining their simple foundations, Nintendo will continue to support this cash crop.

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Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.