Maybe it’s that warm fuzzy feeling you get from being force-fed happiness and the urge to buy from corporate executives during this time of the year… but suddenly I’m feeling optimistic about Pokemon’s future.
What?!? Insane. Optimism and Pokemon usually don’t go into the same sentence these days. However, there is reason to be optimistic.
After having a few months break from Pokemon, as have many of the rest of you, we’re starting to miss it. In fact, we’re missing it dearly. Magic is a great game, but we found out it wasn’t the competition that drove us. It indeed WAS the people we hung out with. Yu-Gi-Oh, for those of you who are playing it, may be satisfying you at the moment. Great! But I encourage you to come back to Pokemon… because we miss you.
Pokemon is the best TCG on the market. Period. In fact, most of you probably feel that way. There isn’t a game out there that provides as much fun and enjoyment as Pokemon does. Magic is a fun game to play, and I personally enjoy it, but most of the people who play it really aren’t like us at all. They’re older. They aren’t as fun to be around. That isn’t where we want to be. Plus, compared to Pokemon, the game is much more luck oriented. The draw power is almost non-existant compared to Pokemon. It really is a matter of what you draw.
There is reason to play Pokemon. There is competition, if we want it to exist. It’s something we need to CREATE ourselves. You know, I think I’m a great example of this. I’ve been telling myself that there isn’t a league within 3 hours, there aren’t tourneys within 5… what can I do? I’m useless. But I’ve been inspired folks… I’ve been inspired.
Chicago used to be one of the best places in the world to play Pokemon. Tourneys were all over the area and there were tons of tough players. Suddenly, even Chicago started to lose Pokemon support. The Midwest, one of the best places in the world for Pokemon, seemed to simply fizzle. We were all at a loss.
The Professor Program didn’t do it for us. What were we supposed to do during the competition off-season? What COULD we do? We all thought the answer was “Nothing.” I did too. We were wrong.
Two people have made a huge difference in the Midwest. It took only two. And I’d like to mention these two people who in my opinion deserve lots of respect. Meganium45, and Pokedok. These two guys have organized cash prize tourneys in St. Louis and Chicago. The St. Louis one had kind of low turnout, but the Chicago one (January 4) looks to be huge. And competitive. And fun. The Midwest looks like a great place to be in the future.
It doesn’t need to be restricted to the Midwest either. If we can do it out here in Hickville, U.S.A., you can do it anywhere. Let’s revive it. Everywhere.
Sitting on our asses doing nothing isn’t working anymore. We need to WANT to keep this game alive. I encourage you all to start trying to bring the game back to your area. Believe it or not, Wednesday, I played a game of POKEMON with my friend at lunch in front of everyone. And people were interested.
I encourage anyone within a few hours to attend the Chicago tournament. Contact Pokedok on either the Pojo boards or the WizPog boards. It will be Modified format, with a 20 dollar entry fee, with huge cash prizes to the top placers. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and I hope that I will see some of you there.
We can keep this game alive folks. 2002 was a great year that WotC provided for us. If we want to keep this game alive, we need to provide 2003 for ourselves.
~ RaNd0m
AIM: JonSchweppe