Read, Play, and Enjoy

If you've ever possessed the Pokémon main series games and their boxes, you might have snooped around the boxes to read the various notices written on them. And one of those notices might read something like this:

"Basic reading ability is needed to fully enjoy this game."

This notice is by no means unique to the Pokémon games; a few other games bear this notice, most notably RPGs on the same platform as the Pokémon main series games. Still, because of the notice majorly present among the Pokémon games, there is an implication that the games are best played and enjoyed when one is able to read the written texts in the games.

For the English versions of the games, this notice implies that some English proficiency is needed for playing and enjoying the games. Likewise, the same would conceivably apply to any of the other language versions of the games. This seems reasonable considering that there is a good amount of text in the games. It may be possible to get through the games by not reading every single piece of text, but some important details may be missed; however, if one's reading abilities in a language are lacking, then this may be a difficult proposition.

This does lead to the questioning of some of my local colleagues' achievements in the main series games, which are most likely played in English. For those who excel in the arts of VGC, it's somewhat clear that their reading abilities are beyond basic, for otherwise they wouldn't peruse the supplementary resources (necessary for these arts) effectively. Even if they don't play VGC but totally enjoy Pokémon, like I was before I knew about VGC, they probably have better-than-just-basic reading abilities. The ones that are up for questioning are those that have played the games but don't continue to do so; the question becomes how much of the games they enjoyed, as well as how much they were able to understand to get through. It becomes a real wonder.

The issue of reading abilities and the Pokémon games is worthy of some consideration. On one hand, because of the notice, there is an admission that one has to read so one can get the most out of the game; on the other hand, it seems that one can play and enjoy the games regardless, even if reading abilities are rudimentary at best. Perhaps the latter is more important than the former, yet it's also clear that reading abilities help, due to the amount of text in the game. It may just be that Pokémon holds a sense of wonder for those who are able to play and enjoy, regardless of their reading prowess.

One year ago: A Camera and a Pikachu Doll