The Existential Dread of Pokémon in the Postgame

I kinda makes sense that Red ends up just standing on a mountain. Nothing else to do.

Most games at the time didn't have a postgame. "You can catch a secret legendary pokemon after the elite four" was top school rumour.

I got the same feeling from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon as a kid. My teammate went from a dynamic emotional friend to just another NPC

I’ve been trying to articulate this since I first beat Blue Version back in 1998. I always just felt… sad, because everything felt kinda lifeless. No one left to battle, no more surprise events. Just your trusty team and the lingering fear that, having conquered the highest (Indigo) plateau of your chosen “profession,” you’ve peaked at age ten and there are no heights left to climb. And then Gold and Silver came out!

Cinnabar being made uninhabitable by a volcanic eruption within three years has got to count against it being a place I'd want to stay in after completing the game, personally

Cerulean City - a Sims starter home, several meth houses, and swimming in a 2x2 square

As a kid, and even now, i get this sadness after I beat a game; especially a game from before "post-game content" or even "NG+" was a thing and all we had was rumors, starting a new file, or be one of the first speedrunners of a game. It always felt haunted to me. Not as in "a presence where one should not be" but more like "an absence where a presence ought to be". With nothing left to do or achieve, the world felt barren and desolate. Everyone and everything was frozen in time right there and then. I did that. It made me feel like, for the benefit of the world and its occupants, maybe it would've been better if i had never played the game at all.

Pokemon Stadium is Kanto's postgame Before anyone asks; -Gym leader rematches -Challenge cups -Minigames -A secret super boss you can unlock

Pallet Town's color scheme always made me feel really depressed, like it's the archetypal "small town you swear you're gonna get out of someday but you never manage to get it together enough to actually leave".

The 4 boys walking along the railroad tracks are a reference to the movie "Stand By Me" (1986) which is actually based on a Stephen King novella.

Fun fact about the jigglypuff in Pewter: if Pikachu is folowing you while you talk to jigglypuff, pikachu falls asleep and stops following you untill you either talk to him or leave the building.

In gen 1’s defense, it’s a gameboy game on a completely new IP that nobody was aware would blow up in popularity the way it did. It was an experimental game that became larger than life, but they had no way of knowing that would eventually be the case.

No wonder red glitched out of boundaries and lived atop mt silver for 3 years

I am totally here for Pokemon psychogeography

Gold and Silver did a good job with this with the telephone system where trainers would become your friend, call you with tips on outbreaks, sales going on, and even for rematches. Combine that with daily events all over the two region sized world that reset on a bimonthly basis and you have a lot to do and redo post game.

ngl, based on the title, this one thought this would be more of a video essay on the topic of hypothetically living in a world that never progresses past you clearing the final boss, letting you personally keep all that progress, but the world doesn't recognize or change at all, and the existential dread experiencing something like that in person would cause. Like imagine walking up to someone you hadn't seen in months and they just say the exact same thing they did before you went off and did the plot

This is why I nor any of my friends ever completed the Pokedex. It was standard protocol at my school/day care to just wipe and start over with a different starter and use lesser used mons like Dewgong or Venomoth. I must've beaten RBY a hundred times as a kid, just due to how dead the game feels post-E4 and the thrill of putting new teams together.

I've been obsessed with this feeling and have tried to use it as a metaphor and no one else seems to get it. Like, it's the same feeling as being on campus right after college finals are over. It's not necessarily empty - the library is still staffed, there are still some cars in the parking lot, etc. It's not literally lifeless, but that's the only word that can describe it

I love that the scientist guy in Cinnabar says "It never hurts to have extra items", when it's the place where you get more than you should be able to carry.

It’s literally you beat the elite four catch Mewtwo and see how many more times you could just beat the elite four maybe finish the Pokédex but there’s really not much.