Ever thought of making a game like Pokemon?

I think they’ve kind of got a monopoly on it, honestly. Anything else will just appear to be a ripoff. I know a lot of people feel that way about Digimon, for example.

While I am a card-flopper who played Magic (off and on) since Alpha, I have never really like the card-based mechanics. While Magic, BattleTech, and Netrunner have pulled it off fairly well, the games I have thought of designing are generally board/map-based strategy games, with the exception of one RPG.

@Mariah That is always a risk as well. Robot combat will always be compared to BattleTech/Mechwarrior, car-based games may be compared to Car Wars, and anything mixing Dragons and Datajacks will be compared to Shadowrun. Truly original ideas are rare in the gaming industry, and I can count on one hand the number of publishers I’ve seen come out with something unique.

@Mariah Yeah, people would label it as a “rip-off”, but they do that with many other games too, but I think, if the game really is not a rip-off and was not intended as a rip-off, an original idea talking influence from Pokemon. it’d do good and sell well, it likely wouldn’t be as popular as Pokemon…but that’d be alright, well, for me at least, lol :)

@jerv Was that RPG exception you made similar to Pokemon? :D

Pokemon does have that cool twist where you can upgrade your monsters through their transformation, and make them gain new abilities and change their appearance. Like I remember with Pikachu, you can use this stone to transform him right away into his final form, Rychu, but if you don’t let him transform naturally, he’ll loose his agility boost that he otherwise gets. (then Rychu isn’t very fast)

But there are a lot of monster collection/breeding/maintenance games out there. My favorite is the Shin Megami series where you enlist the aid of various demons, have them merged together to form stronger ones and stuff. It’s a lot darker and more mature than Pokemon, which fits my tastes a little more.
Still, it’s a genre of game, or at the very least a sub genre of RPG anyway. What would be cool is seeing a larger amount of titles to pick from. Whether they’re original or not wouldn’t matter much to me, as long as they’re done right. And don’t include stupid gimicky crap like Monster Rancher did by finding monsters in every compact disc you can get your hands on. Lol.

But have I ever thought of making a game like that? If I ever worked on a game like this, seeing as I don’t play them that often, I’d be much more interesting in creating monster design, than the whole game. I’d leave that to someone else. but my monsters would all be overly violent and gross looking, nothing you’d want to cuddle anyway XD

@AntJR No, closer to Transhuman Space. Then I realized that it would be better suited as a worldbook for GURPS rather than a full-on RPG of it’s own and changed direction.

@Symbeline You should see what is required to make a decent item in Disgaea 2. Basically, each item you own is actually a dungeon, and completing levels in the “Item world” increases the stats on that item. They can also be powered up by finding “Specialists”, which can be merged, or you can breed them to create certain other kinds of specialists that are never found “in the wild”. Of course, the reincarnation system for characters also has breeding aspects to it. If you have a PS2, give Disgaea 2 a try.

@Symbeline I remember that too, it was an episode of the show, in the 1st season, when Ash battled Lt.Surge, he used a Thunderstone to evolve his Pikachu way too early, and Ash’s Pikachu was more agile.
And Shin Megami, I love those games, especially Persona! All the demons and entities are the physical form of your personality in those games, instead, I like that better because psychology really interests me :)
Creating the monsters would be my favorite part of it too, creating the human characters as well. All mine would be a mix of both violent&gross and cute, they’d be very weird and unusual. If you’ve ever played Earthbound(a game for the Super Nintendo, you really should play it if you havent), it was the game that kind of started Pokemon but it doesn’t have monster collecting, the people who developed it formed most of Gamefreak and develop every Pokemon game. Mine would be as weird and unusual as the enemies in that game, if not more! lol ;)

@jerv Oh, I see :)

I am more of a fan of civilisation simulators. My Dream Game is a galaxy simulator where you oversee and steer a civilisation to galactic dominance from its first single celled origins, each stage with as much depth as other games that focused on each period, like age of empires, sim city, sins of a solar empire, galactic civilisations, etc. At any point in the game and during any stage you can control your civilisation at the top level like galactic civilisations, to managing micromanaging fleet battles like sins of a solar empire or star trek armada, down to micromanaging cities on the planet like in sim city. You could even take control of single units, like single soldiers, fighters, etc, to get right in the middle of the action.
(Spore was a fucking disgrace and an insult)

As for a pokémon like game, the Megami Tensei series is far superior to Pokémon in every respect.

@ragingloli I like the amount of options you have in that game, I’d play it :)

@jerv Yeah Disgaea is huge…if you go in one sword, there’s supposed to be like fifty floors in it. And you have different grades of the same item, like a potion with no stars, and the same potion with five, or something like that. I heard people clock in like 600 hours of gameplay and are nowhere near done. Other games like that, made by the same developers include Makai Kingdom and Phantom Brave, which are supposed to be just as huge. I rented Phantom Brave once, and got absolutely nothing done in one weekend. XD They’re freakin hard games to find though. :/

@AntJR Yeah Persona was really special for all the psychological stuff it offered in its story…plus spreading rumors of illegal weapon shops opening up in bars I always thought was funny. Ever tried Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne? Probably my favorite one, but it’s hard as hell…then again most of those Megami games aren’t too easy.

Oh and I love Earthbound. Zombie paper FTW! I own the game, it’s one of the few I decided to keep and bring with me when I moved to Québec. (couldn’t bring everything on the bus haha) But that’s interesting, I never knew the minds behind Earthbound had anything to do with the Pokemon games. We gotta start hittin em up for a damn sequel already.

@Symbeline I know right! thats just so awesome though, to think that Pokemon and earthbound are connected that closely, and if you kind of look at each Pokemon very closely, they each seem like something that Ness would run into on his journey too :)
There was a sequel to Earthbound though, but it was only released in Japan…unfortunately…Earthbound should have tons more sequels, but it’s producer, Shigesato Itoi doesnt want to make any more of Earthbound, sadly…Zombie Fly Paper was awesome, also Happy Happy Town and the cult that only wears blue, and Master Belch lmao! :D

I agree, Persona is hilarious! And I’ve never played Nocturne, I really want to though :)

I was only a fan when I was younger when there were only 151 pokemon. Nowadays I don’t even want to know how many total there are, and it’s definitely lost a bit of its gleam as a result in my opinion because of that. But I definitely think that any type of offshoot will be a ripoff (as all others are). Pokemon is just too original. Either that or they just did something way better than the originals.

@dxs There are 650 total, at the moment. And Hmm…you think so?

Yeah. You could call it Digimon… or Bakugan… or Yu-Gi Oh!... or DuelMonsters… or CardCaptors…

And sadly, none of them have anything close to the staying power of Pokemon.

For example, my little brother watched Pokemon, and we are in America – so already 5–8 years behind (I forget exactly how long it was before it jumped the Pacific), and now my 4 year old son is a Pokemon fan. Pikachu’s had a good 20 year reign so far. When was the last time you heard the words “Digimon” or “CardCaptor Sakura”?

It would be interesting to see a more grown-up version of the Battle Monsters-type game, something for we adults who used to debate the relative merits of Alakazaam vs. Charizard.

@Seek_Kolinahr Splash green to put Venomous Fangs on a Goblin Sharpshooter and almost any creature would be dead before the caster took his hand off the card, so I would take my Goblins over any monster from those other games :p

@AntJR Yeah I’m aware of the Earthbound sequel, and that first Nes game we were supposed to get. Even got the translation done and everything, but it never came out here. (although you can still get it at certain fan sites, kind of like that Sailormoon RPG I got an emulator of, which also got the translation, but no American release)

And yeah lol, those crazy blue KKK guys. Everything in that game is crazy though, never quite played anything like it since then. Plus it has the coolest enemies ever. Mad taxis and retro hippies and possessed hieroglyphics…dude.

@Symbeline I beat both prequel and sequel, they would’ve done so well in America, Canada, Europe etc. :D Never heard of the Sailor moon RPG I’ll have to check that out.

Yep, never played anything like it, well Dragon Quest is technically like it cause it was modeled after it, and so are the enemies, almost as crazy, almost! :D

Pretty Soldier Sailormoon Another Story Denno if you like Sailormoon, but if you do, you gotta try this game. And if not, it’s a fun and simple turn based RPG that any JRPG fan might get a kick out of.

Doesn’t hold up to Earthbound though…

@Symbeline Nothing holds up to Earthbound(I’d almost go asfar to say that), and yeah, I like Sailor Moon, haven’t watched it in a while though, the game looks nice :)

The only game I think that holds up to it as far as originality and atmosphere goes, (and humor) is Shadow Madness. Unfortunately, while the characters and world and everything is fantastic, the game has the worse gameplay that freakin exists lmao. and that ain’t too good for any game lol

@Symbeline I’ll check that out as well :D