So much for a smooth rollout of Twitter's "official" verification badges. Elon Musk claims he "just killed" the deployment hours after it began. The gray checkmarks have vanished from those accounts that only just got them, including Engadget's and The New York Times. With that said, this isn't necessarily a complete about-face. Twitter VP Esther Crawford clarified that you'll still see the marks, but that the social media giant is handing them out to "government and commercial entities" at first. The focus just isn't on individuals, the executive said.

In justifying the move, Musk reiterated his view that tying the original checkmark to a Twitter Blue subscription will democratize the service. The blue check is the "great leveler," he said. Crawford, meanwhile, stressed that there were no more "sacred cows" and that Musk was willing to try things that might fail. The company is willing to reverse course if feature changes don't pan out, to put it differently.

The statements add to the confusion beyond the "official" label launch. While they indicate that Twitter will concentrate on a narrower group of accounts, it's now uncertain just when celebrities and other public figures might get (or rather, reclaim) verification. This also creates uncertainty around Twitter's feature updates — Musk may axe or limit an update even while it's reaching customers.

It will take some time before it's clear just who gets what checkmarks, and what vetting will be necessary to get the "official" tag. For now, the only safe assumption is that Twitter will tie its original tick to an $8 per month Blue subscription.

In a few short hours, Nintendo will stream its latest Indie World Showcase. Announced on November 7th, the company promised approximately 25 minutes worth of information about upcoming indie games that are coming to the Nintendo Switch. You can watch the entire event unfold on the gaming giant’s website, as well as its YouTube and Twitch channels. If you miss the livestream, don’t worry: we’ll have you covered with coverage of the major announcements from the event.

What will Nintendo announce Iduring Indie World? One can always hope for a more definitive release date for Hollow Knight: Silksong. Based on Microsoft’s recent announcement that the game would be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass on its release date, some have speculated that Silksong would arrive before June 2023. That said, Nintendo is more likely to share updates about games like Oxenfree II Lost Signals and Metal Slug Tactics. The latter was delayed this past summer until 2023.   

After finally allowing posting last year, Instagram continues to make changes to its desktop web app. The latest update introduces a refresh user interface that takes better advantage of large screens rather than looking like a larger version of the mobile app, TechCrunch has reported. 

Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri announced the update along with the new in-app scheduler revealed yesterday. "We know a lot of people use the web to multitask and we wanted to make sure Instagram was an as great experience as possible online," he said in a video. "So it is cleaner, faster and easier to use and it’s designed now to take advantage of large-screen monitors."

Steve Dent/Engadget

As shown above, the home, search, explore, messages and notification menus were moved to a new side rail that collapses to icons depending on screen size. Stories are shown at the top, while your profile, suggestions and more are off to the right. When selecting any menu option, the left menu bar remains, making navigation quicker and easier. 

The new interface makes Instagram easier to use on web, but there's still no sign of a dedicated iPad app, as 9to5Mac notes. Earlier this year, Mosseri said that iPad was "not big enough" to make a dedicated Instagram app a priority. Now, at least, you could use the web version instead to get a better experience.

This story contains extensive spoilers for the 2018 game ‘God of War’ and light spoilers for ‘God of War: Ragnarok’.

The God of War series has thrown nearly everything you can imagine at its protagonist Kratos since the first installment arrived way back in 2005. He's ridden giants up Mount Olympus, murdered the pantheon of Greek gods, come back to life from the underworld (several times) and, in 2018's reinvention of the series, dealt with an unruly pre-teen who just learned he was a god. But God of War: Ragnarok, which arrives tomorrow for the PS4 and PS5, manages to add to that impressive list. It throws Kratos and his companions in the middle of a full-on war, the kind of battle that calls to mind epic cinematic showdowns like the climax of Lord of the Rings:Return of the King or Avengers: Endgame.

But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. God of War: Ragnarok is the direct sequel to God of War, which saw a semi-reformed Kratos and his son Atreus try to carry out his wife's final wish. Along the way, they inevitably caught the attention of the Norse pantheon of gods, which led to Kratos killing the deity Baldur. Kratos meant to save Baldur's mother Freya from death, but he instead turned Freya into against Kratos and Atreus and also brought about Fimbulwinter, a years-long winter that is the precursor to Ragnarok, which it is said will bring about the end of the nine realms.

Got all that? Clearly, you won't want to play Ragnarok without playing the 2018 God of War first, because you'll be missing a lot of backstory. Assuming you are caught up, you'll feel right at home in Ragnarok. The game quickly and clearly lays out the enemies and the stakes: Odin, leader of the Norse gods, knows Ragnarok is coming, and wants to work with Atreus and Kratos to try to survive it. Kratos, on the other hand, has a more than healthy distrust of Odin, and isn't interested in anything besides staying out of the gods' affairs and helping his son stay safe and prepared for the harsh world they inhabit.

Sony / Santa Monica Studios

Whether by prophecy or their own decisions, Kratos and Atreus unsurprisingly get pulled deeper into the machinations of the gods and begin journeying through the nine realms looking for a solution to the potential world destruction that is now at their doorstep. From a gameplay perspective, that means a lot of the familiar combat that Santa Monica Studio introduced in 2018's God of War. Kratos is again equipped with his Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos, and they remain a formidable and extremely fun pair of weapons to use on the many mythical beasts Ragnarok throws at you. Throwing the Leviathan Axe with the PS5's DualSense controller and magically calling it back to you remains one of the most satisfying moves I can think of in all of gaming.

As before, the game starts you out with a powerful but relatively basic set of moves and you can add to that arsenal by upgrading your weapons, finding powerful runic attacks for each weapon, crafting new armor and magical items and unlocking new skills in the game's fairly complicated upgrade trees. As in the 2018 title, there are a dizzying array of moves you can unlock, as well as a treasure trove of armor, all of which affects Kratos' stats. It can be overwhelming, but I also found that I didn't need to think too hard about it, at least on the difficulty level I was playing on. If you play on the harder settings, though, you're going to need to spend a lot of time doing side quests to get the resources you need so you can constantly optimize your gear.

Regardless of the over-abundance of customization, going into battle as Kratos remains extremely satisfying. Whether you're fighting a massive swarm of enemies or focusing your efforts on a massive, ultra-powerful beast, there's a level of fluidity to the combat that makes the player feel, quite simply, god-like. It takes a while to upgrade Kratos and figure out what style of play works best for you, but sometimes you can get into a flow state of total destruction that is a delight.

One of the complaints I had about 2018's God of War was that, while the combat was great, the variety of enemies was lacking compared to earlier games. Santa Monica Studio seems to have taken this to heart and mixed things up significantly in Ragnarok.There are a greater variety of basic enemies, though undead soldiers remain the game's bread and butter. But those armies have some tricky new powers this time, including the ability to hit Kratos with a multi-colored “bifrost” blast — while you're in that state, a single hit explodes that bifrost and significantly reduces your health. There are also new small and agile enemies that I think of as puppet masters; they keep reviving and healing the ordinary soldiers, so unless you track them down and dispose of them quickly, you're in for a rough fight.

Sony / Santa Monica Studios

More significant are the variety of bosses in Ragnarok. In God of War, the larger battles mostly consisted of a few different types of trolls and ogres along with some elemental, but that is most definitely not the case this time. I took down a massive realm-shifting serpent, a building-sized wolf rampaging through Hel, and that's not even mentioning the inevitable battles against the Norse gods.

Once again, the nine realms Kratos and Atreus travel through are simply stunning. Ragnarok, like some other recent PS5 games, has both “favor performance” and “favor visuals” modes. The default performance mode runs at a locked 60 frames per second and scales the resolution between 1440p and 4K. Favor visuals instead locks the frame rate at 30 fps and delivers native 4K graphics. There are also a variety of options if you have a HFR TV; Polygon did a great job of breaking down the technical details here.

Sony / Santa Monica Studios

Whether in performance or fidelity mode, God of War: Ragnarok looks beautiful. The snowy vistas and frozen lake of Midgard put a chill in my bones, and the lush and swampy confines of Vanaheim were real enough to make me want to sweat from the humidity. All of the character models, from Krato and Atreus down to minor characters you only meet a few times, are equally well-rendered — Kratos in particular is more detailed than ever, with his scars, beard, world-weary eyes and callused hands showing the hundreds of years and innumerable trials he's been through.

I would be remiss not to mention the incredible skill and performances from Ragnarok's cast. Returning actors Christopher Judge (Kratos), Sunny Suljic (Atreus) and Alastair Duncan (Mimir) reprise their excellent performances and have a wonderful rapport throughout their extensive time together in this game. Danielle Bisutti, meanwhile, takes her performance as a grief-obsessed, revenge-driven Freya to new levels of desperation in this installment.

A couple of newcomers almost steal the show, however. Ryan Hurst as the overweight, overburdened, often drunk Thor is both comical and terrifying. But Richard Schiff (perhaps best known as Toby from The West Wing) steals the show as the conniving all-father Odin. Schiff perfectly executes the many facets of Odin's character in Ragnarok — he seems to want peace and knowledge, and is almost fatherly at times. But even when he's being kind, Schiff's unsettling performance never lets you forget Odin's long list of cruelties, and the fact that he simply cannot be trusted.

Note: the following section contains light spoilers for God of War: Ragnarok

Despite all this, Ragnarok felt a little too familiar in the first three or four hours, a bit more like an expansion than an entirely new game on a more powerful platform. That all changed at the end of the game's first extended mission, however. God of War: Ragnarok has the same impressive direction as the previous game, where everything is done in a single, hours-long camera shot, without any cuts (aside from when you die, of course). This time, however, the camera panned away from Kratos and slowly, as the cutscene proceeded, settled in behind Atreus. And when the game was back in my control, I was playing as Kratos' son for the first time.

It was a brilliant reveal, and playing as Atreus makes the story far more complex and less linear than it was in the prior game. Atreus naturally has an entirely different combat style, based on more on his bow than hand-to-hand combat. But more than the gameplay, this choice greatly expanded the narrative of the game. It marks the first time the series shifts away from Kratos and gives you a more up-close view of the struggles that persist between father and son as they both try and do the right thing for each other throughout the game.

This also opens up the opportunity for new pairings, as Atreus and Kratos are both accompanied by characters familiar and unknown. These new pairings expand the story far beyond just Kratos and Atreus, showing a variety of different conflicts between parents and children all dealing with generational trauma and trying to simply be better than they were before, with varying results.

End of spoilers

Thanks to the many new characters, the world feels more alive and populated than any other previous God of War game. The dwarven realm of Svartalfheim has a number of settlements along its vast lake, and you meet a number of new allies in Vanaheim, the home realm of Freya and the other Vanir gods. We also get to meet both the human and godly residents of Asgard, Odin’s homeland. It makes sense that in the brutal conditions of Fimbulwinter you don’t run across a lot of ordinary humans, but I do wish that the main area of Midgard did contain at least a few more glimpses of how humans live in this universe.

While I’m a big fan of Ragnarok’s story, the game does occasionally feel overlong. God of War was one of my favorite games of the PS4 generation, alongside The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn. The sequels to those latter two games were both masterfullyexecuted — but also occasionally hampered by the need to make everything bigger and grander than the prior games. The same is true for Ragnarok: it took me about 28 hours to play through the main quest, with very little side questing done. More than just the sheer hours, though, was a simple feeling that the narrative got a little too weighed down at times when I was eager for some momentum to bring through to the game's climax.

But what an ending it was: The last three hours or so of Ragnarok pull together everything God of War does well, from difficult, high stakes combat, majestic and massive set pieces and surprising narrative twists to a satisfying and emotional denouement. I won't say any more, but a little bit of narrative flabbiness was completely forgiven by the breathtaking finale.

It's slightly too much of a good thing, but not enough to keep me thrilled about the idea of playing again at a more leisurely pace, where I can do more exploring. And when you finish up the main story, there's still plenty you can do around the nine realms, including a few side quests that only unlock when the game is complete (I definitely caught a tease of another incredibly difficult battle to come).

While God of War: Ragnarok may have benefitted from a little bit more editing, it's not nearly enough to deter me from recommending it. Anyone who enjoyed God of War should play Ragnarok as soon as possible — and if you never played the first game, give it a shot and then move right along to this brilliant sequel. I don't know if or when we'll see Kratos and Atreus again, but Ragnarok was a fitting conclusion to the Norse saga and one of the best games I've experienced in a long time.

Netflix has released an interactive experience that you can fire up and play with the trivia-loving members of your family these holidays. It's called Triviaverse, and it was designed to throw rapid-fire questions at you, which you'll then have to answer within a time limit. You can play it alone and contend with three rounds of increasing difficulty per try, but you can also play with a friend in a turn-based bout with two rounds each. The one who's entered the more correct answers within the time limit wins the match. 

The company says the show pulls its questions from any topic "you can imagine," from science to history to pop culture, so it would help having a wide variety of interests. You'll unlock badges the higher the score you get, including Bird Brain while you're just starting out. Keep at it for fun or for bragging rights, and you may just get the ultimate Triviaverse God title.

The streaming service has been exploring subscribers' interest in interactive content over the past few years, releasing shows and episodes you can play an active part in, such as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Last year, it took a big step towards achieving its gaming ambitions and rolled out games to all Android and iOS users. And just this September, it announced that it's forming an in-house gaming studio in Helsinki, Finland to create original games that don't have ads or in-app purchases.

Netflix already has a trivia game: It launched its first interactive daily quiz show Trivia Quest earlier this year. Triviaverse has a simpler format, however, and seems like something you could do in between tasks or play with friends in between other games. The experience is available in English, Spanish (LatAm), Portuguese (Brazil), French, German, Spanish (Spain), Italian, Korean and Japanese. It's also accessible from all devices that can run Netflix's interactive experiences, including smart TVs, streaming media players, consoles, browsers and mobile devices.

Instagram is rolling out its in-app post scheduler, allowing select users to plan their posts in advance without having to use Meta's Creator Studio or third-party services. The Meta-owned photo-and-video sharing platform is giving businesses and creators the power to schedule Reels, photos and carousels for up to 75 days within the app itself. Instagram tested the feature over the past few weeks, giving a small percentage of its global community access to the tool, before this wider (but still limited) release. 

To access the feature, eligible users will have to go to "Advanced Settings" after creating their post but before sharing it with their followers. From there, they can toggle on "Schedule this post" and select the time and date they want it to go live. They then have to navigate back to the post they were creating and click "Schedule." According to TechCrunch, which reported on the test, scheduled posts can be seen in the "Scheduled Content" section that can be accessed through the hamburger menu. The process could perhaps be simpler, but the feature eliminates the need to use the separate Creator Studio website or app for a more frictionless experience. 

Whether the feature will ever be available for ordinary users remains to be seen — Instagram hasn't mentioned anything about a full rollout. In the same post announcing its in-app scheduler, though, Instagram has launched Achievements. Creators can unlock them by taking specific actions, such as collaborating with another creator and making interactive Reels with polls and quizzes. 

Netflix's growing stable of video game adaptations now includes one of the Xbox's best-known franchises. The streaming service is teaming with series developer The Coalition to produce a live action Gears of War movie. There are no details for the cast, plot or release date, but Netflix is teasing an adult animated show and the possibility of "more stories."

The series revolves around the Locust, an aggressive species that has very nearly destroyed human civilization. The original Gears of War trilogy centers on grizzled veteran Marcus Fenix, but newer games and spinoffs have focused on his son JD, his frequent ally Baird and the rebel-turned-soldier Kait.

The timing is apt. The Coalition isn't unveiling its next game for a while. The Netflix productions give the Microsoft-owned studio a way to keep Gears of War in the limelight, not to mention spark renewed interest among gamers who have fond memories of chainsawing Locust drones. This is also part of Microsoft's answer to Sony's growing big screen ambitions, which now include planned Horizon and God of War shows as well as movies like Uncharted.

The question, as always, is whether or not the game collection translates well to a linear video format. While there have been some successes with game-based shows, such as Netflix's League of Legends series, these projects still don't have a sterling reputation — even the Halo adaptation garnered a mixed response. It's far too early to determine how Gears of War will fare, but it's safe to say there are plenty of challenges ahead. 

Netflix and developer Tender Claws are releasing a Stranger Things VR game set to arrive in Winter 2023 on major VR platforms, the companies announced at Stranger Things Day 2022. The game will let you play as the fearsome Season 4 villain Vecna, with the goal to "enact revenge on Eleven and Hawkins," according to the press release. 

"Play as Vecna in this new Stranger Things adventure in VR," the video description reads. "Become an explorer of unknown realities as you form the hive mind and tame the void. Invade minds and conjure nightmares in your quest to enact revenge on Eleven and Hawkins. Stranger Things VR is a psychological horror/action game developed by Tender Claws and coming to major VR platforms in winter 2023."

Tender Claws previously developed the VR games Virtual Virtual Reality 1 and 2, along with the "mobile AR virtual pet Tendar, and immersive theatrical adventures The Under Presents and Tempest," according to its about page. Meanwhile, Netflix has previously released multiple games around its flagship series, including Stranger Things: The VR Experience, along with the mobile and console game Stranger Things 3: The Game. 

Before acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk said he was against lifetime suspensions, promising to reinstate banned users like Donald Trump. Now, Musk wrote that Twitter will permanently suspend account impersonators if they are not clearly labeled as parody. The move comes after several verified "blue-check" users changed their accounts to impersonal Musk himself. 

Twitter appears to have just banned comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating Musk, at least temporarily, after she used his name and image in her own verified Twitter account. Other verified accounts impersonating Musk, including Jeph Jacques, also appear to have been kicked off the site.

Prior to Musk's takeover, Twitters rules already stated that users "may not impersonate individuals, groups or organizations to mislead, confuse or deceive others, nor use a fake identity in a manner that disrupts the experience of users on Twitter." Parody accounts were required to say so in both their accounts and bio. Consequences included profile moderation, temporary suspension or permanent suspension — though the latter was rarely imposed.

Twitter has been awash in drama over the last few days. Early in Musk's tenure, trolls and racists flooded the site with epithets and other hate speech, presumably to test the new limits of the site. This week, a flood of advertisers put a hold on spending on the site. In reply to a user who suggested a boycott on those companies, Musk tweeted a "a thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues."

The impact of Japanese RPGs on pop and gaming culture cannot be overstated. From Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star to Chrono Trigger, NieR, and Fire Emblem — JRPGs have spanned console generations, bridged the Japanese and North American markets, spawned entire universes of IP and delivered critical commercial hits for nearly four decades. Modern gaming simply wouldn't exist as it does today if not for the influence of JRPGs. 

In his newest book, Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs, Aidan Moher takes a wondrous in-depth look at the history of Japanese role playing games, their initial rise in the East, the long road to acceptance in the West and ultimate cultural impact the world over. In the excerpt below, Moher explores how Pokemon grew from Gameboy screens to become a multi-billion dollar entertainment juggernaut.

Running Press

Excerpted from Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs by Aidan Moher. Published by Running Press. Copyright © 2022 by Aidan Moher. All rights reserved.

Pokémon, Go

Though it takes many cues from Japanese games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact was developed and published by Chinese developer/ publisher miHoYo. Thanks to gorgeous visuals, free-to-play accessibility, multi-platform release, and easy-to-pick-up-impossible-to-put-down gacha-based gameplay, it took the gaming world by storm after its 2020 release.

Game Boy not only provided greater access to video games thanks to its low price, but it subsequently changed the way we play games. About the size of a mass-market paperback novel, and just barely pocketable, the Game Boy leaned heavily on Nintendo franchises, including Mario and Donkey Kong, and—equally important for a device marketed for children—a ton of tie-in games for popular television shows and movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jurassic Park, and Star Trek.

The appeal for kids? Gaming where mom and dad couldn’t see the action — a private world of adventure. The appeal for adults? Appealing puzzle games, fewer back spasms from sitting cross-legged on the floor two feet from the TV, and a smaller, quieter way to keep the kids distracted before dinner.

“Game Boy had the advantage of being the first on the market before other major competitors,” explained Smithsonian Magazine. Though Sega and Atari soon followed with their own consoles, complete with color screens, they faced an uphill battle against Nintendo’s aggressive strategy of leaning into tech that was older, but also more efficient, affordable, and reliable. Like many ’90s kids, my first game console was the Game Boy. I was a computer game fiend, and we’d rent a NES with a couple of games now and then, but those were ephemeral promises of living room gaming that wouldn’t become reality for a few more years.

After its debut, the Game Boy was rife with puzzle games and character platformers, but by 1993, it had blossomed into a full-fledged adventuring machine thanks to familiar franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and even Wizardry. The game that really sold the system’s capabilities, however, was a new entry in Nintendo’s ambitious The Legend of Zelda series. And, like many others, I was already a big Zelda fan by the time Link’s Awakening released in August 1993 thanks to its Super NES predecessor The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

What living room game consoles offered in scope, visual pop, and impressive technology, portables matched with their flexibility, bite-sized content, and on-the-go possibilities. Every morning, my friend and I would meet under a blanket of dew at our elementary school. Sitting side by side for warmth, Game Boys clutched in chilled fingers, we’d explore Koholint Island on individual journeys to waken the Wind Fish. The intimacy of this youthful bonding cemented Link’s Awakening as a core gaming experience in my life, all made possible by the Game Boy.

Though A Link to the Past and the entire Legend of Zelda series no doubt influenced a lot of JRPGs, especially puzzle-based games like Wild Arms or Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, its categorization as a JRPG is debatable. Personally, I don’t quite consider it a JRPG due to its lack of customizability, but there’s definitely enough overlap in mechanics, pacing, story construction, and so on to create an overlapping Venn diagram of fans.

Imagine the giddy power rush of being a kid with a whole universe in your pocket, out of sight of parents and siblings, with no lobbying for TV screen time required. At first blush, the handheld’s small screen might be considered a flaw, but the paradoxical reality was that the smallness leant to the understanding that it was a personal-sized portal to another world. Only room for one. Plus, you could pop in the cheap Nintendo-provided headphones and the world outside disappeared entirely.

Link’s Awakening was a revelation, a journey into the unknown that belonged only to me.

Wake up.

A dream.

Wake up.

It was euphoric.

Wake up.

And then . . . there was Pokémon.

In a video review of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (discussed in Chapter 6), YouTube channel Austin Eruption examined Square’s failed attempts at catalyzing the Western JRPG market during the early ’90s. “The concept of the entry RPG would be more successful . . . not with Square, but with Nintendo’s wildly popular Pokémon,” they said. “It turns out kids are super down to play RPGs, they just gotta have cute and cool monsters to collect.”

In 1996, Japanese schoolyards were buzzing thanks to the new Game Boy game published by Nintendo called Pocket Monsters. Kids traded tips, creatures, and blows across Game Boys connected by a link cable. These newly trained Pokémon trainers, as they’re called in the game, couldn’t get enough of the 151 unique, cute, and catchable creatures.

Before it was about catching monsters, however, Pocket Monsters was conceptualized by its insect-obsessed creator, Satoshi Tajiri, as a bug-catching simulator. Known to his classmates as “Mr. Bug,” Tajiri spent his childhood dreaming of becoming an entomologist and studying bugs for a living . . . that is until he discovered arcade games like Space Invaders. Though his professional ambitions shifted focus to bits, bytes, and programming scripts, his love for bug collecting remained, and at just twenty-four years old he came up with the idea for what would eventually become Pocket Monsters.

Before his buggy dreams became a reality, Tajiri founded Game Freak in 1989 with Masuda and artist Ken Sugimori, and released his first game, Mendel Palace, the same year. A grid-based puzzler, this game was completely unlike Pocket Monsters, but its success encouraged Tajiri and helped solidify Game Freak. The following year, Tajiri saw two Game Boys tethered by a link cable, and his concept for a bug-catching simulator sprang to life. He saw opportunity not only for players to be able to share and collect bugs, but to competitively face off against one another on their linked Game Boys.

It took over two years after its Japanese release for Pocket Monsters to reach western shores, finally releasing in September 1998 as Pokémon. With its release on the ten-year-old handheld and with the more powerful Game Boy Advance on the horizon, Nintendo released Pokémon on a whim, expecting the series to arrive as a chunky, but relatively unnoticed, oddity before the Game Boy Advance took over. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the weird little Japanese phenomenon appealed to kids in the West just as much as it had to children in its home country. Playgrounds across the United States and Canada were suddenly crawling with kids obsessing over Pikachus, Charmanders, and Mewtwos.

“Although it was made in Japan,” wrote culture writer Matt Alt for the BBC, “for a moment at the turn of the 21st Century, no corner of the world was immune from what came to be called ‘Pokémania.’” Scrambling in the wake of this unexpected success, Nintendo quickly localized the anime spinoff for an American audience to further capitalize on the video game’s hype. A short year later, the follow-up movie adaptation was so popular that phone boards were overwhelmed as tens of thousands of parents and fans sought tickets.

Pokémon’s defining feature was its dual-cartridge release: PokémonRed Version and PokémonBlue Version. The catch was that while each version had most of the same Pokémon available to catch, there were a few dozen available only in one version or the other. To “catch ’em all,” as the game’s tagline implored young Pokémon trainers, you had to find another player who owned the other cartridge. I chose PokémonBlue, and with a set of fully charged AA batteries powering my Game Boy, I started a new game and settled on Bulbasaur as my starting companion. What followed was an experience that made Link’s Awakening feel like The Hobbit—and now I was playing Lord of the Rings. I soon caught more Pokémon for my party: a cute bird called Pidgey, a caterpillar that ensnared foes in silk webbing, and a bucktooth rodent known as Rattata. By the end of my first play session, these little critters became so much more than characters in a game; they tapped into that Tamagotchiesque sense of ownership and quickly became as beloved as my childhood pets.

This wasn’t a party of adventurers; it was a family.

Pokémon put players in the role of a newly minted trainer named Red. (Or anything else they chose to name him within the seven-character limit. My first name fit with room to spare.) Alongside rival Blue, Red arrives at Professor Oak’s Pokémon lab to choose one of the three starter Pokémon: the aforementioned Bulbasaur and Charmander, and the terrapin-like Squirtle. New Pokémon in tow, you leave your hometown on an adventure through Kanto region—a fictional game universe based loosely on Japan’s own Kanto region. With the goal of becoming the region’s greatest Pokémon trainer, you visit Kanto’s eight gyms, wherein you challenge their leaders, powerful Pokémon trainers who focus on particular types of Pokémon, like water-type or electric-type, to earn badges. Conquering the gym leaders then gives you the right to challenge the Elite Four. Defeat them, and the title of Pokémon Champion awaits.

Pokémon combined the sprawling adventure of the JRPG with a narrative focused on personal conflict and growth—not the end of the world. If anything, Kanto felt idyllic, a Star Trek–esque utopia where humans had moved beyond such pettiness as war or raising vengeful gods to destroy their enemies. With nothing else to do, Kanto’s inhabitants could spend their days training the critters crawling through tall grass, prowling in dark caves, and lurking beneath the waves.

Link’s Awakening felt like a limitless adventure at the time, but in reality, there was one critical path to victory, and each player solved the game by following the same steps in roughly the same order. Pokémon was different. Placing the player in a vast world populated by 151 collectable Pokémon, it created an experience that was as unique and individualized as each of its players. Love cute Pokémon and want to fill your team with Pikachus and Eevees? It’s possible. Want to overpower your starter Pokémon, grind your way through the game, and defeat the Elite Four through brute force? Go for it. Obsessed with Psyduck? Um, sure. I guess.

Pokémon offered so much variety and customization for how the player approached building and training their team that each kid could play it in their own way, opening the door to a new style of accessibility lacking in similar games. Kids cared for their Pokémon, and being able to show off a rare or powerful catch on the playground was a badge of honor. And because of its portable nature, Pokémon was able to experience the same social dynamics that drove other popular schoolyard phenomena. It was like Tamagotchi—without the midnight wake-up calls. While other JRPGs gave the player some customization options for their party characters, it was nowhere near the endless possibility of Pokémon’s gotta-catch-’em-all depth.