People have used media as an escape for centuries. Whether it be books, TV shows, movies, or video games, all can act as a way to detach from the real world for a certain period of time for anyone who needs it. I might be biased, but video games are the best way of doing so. I say that because while the other examples allow their audience to passively step into far-off worlds and alternate realities, video games allow players to be an active part of those worlds.
There is perhaps no better franchise at doing that than Pokémon. The various regions Game Freak has taken us to over the course of the past 25 years might not be the biggest, but to create almost 900 new creatures, they are definitely the most imaginative. The games have evolved so much during that time. However, despite the improved graphics and expanded roster that has come with each passing set of games, I have still never been able to relate to a game more than Pokémon Blue.
You're Ten Now, Time To Leave Home
I was the demographic Game Freak was aiming their first Pokémon titles at when Blue and Red hit the market: a ten-year-old looking for a game that would test the limits of my imagination. It's no accident that the game's main character was also ten. At the time, thanks to the accompanying TV series, I thought I was assuming the role of Ash Ketchum. Even though I would later discover Red and Blue's main character was technically not Ash, the premise was the same.
As an adult, I wonder what self-respecting mother would send her son off out into the wild to hunt animals with nothing more than an untrained animal of their own. As a ten-year-old, I questioned why I couldn't do the same. To clarify, I didn't want to leave home, live in the woods, and capture rabbits. I wanted to be Ash. I wanted to travel Kanto making friends and catching Pokémon. Not just because that would be an incredibly cool life to lead, but I didn't want to be at home anymore.
Escape To Kanto
My mum had remarried and to say I didn't get along with my new step-dad would be an understatement. If I wasn't at school, I would be in my room as that was the closest thing I had to an escape from my new life. And after Pokémon Blue came out, if I was in my room, I was playing it. For a long time, when I fired up my Game Boy Color, I was no longer in my room. I was in Kanto. I was Ash. Proof for me ever since that gameplay should always come before graphics. It might have been a 2D, top-down game, but for me at the time, it couldn't be more real.
Then something would bring me back down to Earth. My step-dad banging on my bedroom door or noticing my Game Boy Color's LED was starting to get dim. A stark and unwanted reminder that not only was I not a real-life Pokémon trainer, but I never would be. When Pokémon GO was released years later, I spoke with friends about how lucky kids are today to have a Pokémon game that allows them to play in the real world. Little did they know that when I said that, I was thinking that had it been released when I was ten, I probably would have run away from home in my quest to escape my reality and live in the augmented one created for me by Niantic.