Hello, this is yours truly with another editorial of sorts. So, beware of the wall of text down below. You've been warned.

So, uh, how about them pokeymanz? With the pokeys, and the manz...
About two months ago (at the time of writing) I acquired Pokemon Y, the latest (at the time of writing) entry in Nintendo's Pokemon video game series, for Nintendo 3DS. Before that, I had only played Pokemon Red and Pokemon Silver, in the late nineties, back when the Pokemon craze was at its peak. Back then I also watched the accompanying anime, which is something I did fairly regularly until some point at the beginning of the Advance saga, when fatigue set in and I realized I wasn't enjoying the show anymore. It had become transparently predictable, stale, and pretty much creatively bankrupt, with over 95% of the episodes using the exact same formula (meet guy/pokemon of the week, help him/her/it solve some problem, defeat bumbling Team Rocket trio along the way, everyone laughs ending, the end, rinse and repeat next week). Overall, this effectively killed my interest in the franchise, so I ignored every game that had come since, starting with Ruby/Sapphire on the Game Boy Advance. I was done with Pokemon. Done for good.

Or so I believed! Not too long ago (at the time of writing), someone in Twitch.tv had the crazy idea of streaming a game of Pokemon Red where the commands were read from the chat. This resulted in several thousands of people (way over 9000, by the way. Sorry, Vegeta) issuing commands over the chat non-stop. The result sort of looked like 50,000+ people trying to play the same game of Pokemon Red at the same time. It was fascinatingly chaotic. As you'd expect, the in-game character moved erratically, often bumping into walls, walking in circles and trying to use the wrong items at the wrong time. Otherwise trivial obstacles (such as the infamous ledges) suddenly became nigh unsurmountable roadblocks. Hundreds of memes were born throughout the journey, inspired by the in-game character's unpredictable behavior (such as the whole Lord Helix thing). Eventually, after a little over two weeks of playing non-stop, the mob managed to beat the game, and then they moved onto the next generation.

I learned about this phenomenon sometime during its first week, and became hooked. Suddenly Pokemon was new and fresh again. By playing the game in such an unorthodox manner, they managed to rekindle my long-dead interest in the franchise. Eventually, I decided that maybe it was time for me to get on with the times and try the latest game in the franchise, to see how much it had evolved throughout all these years. Thus, after skipping over three entire generations, I went and purchased Pokemon Y for the Nintendo 3DS.
So what did I find? Well, besides the expected aural and graphical improvement, I saw that not much had really changed. Character movement was still constrained to a rigid grid in which you can only move one "tile" at a time, and more often than not there was no in-between animation when changing directions, not unlike the behavior of the old 8-bit sprites from the Game Boy Pokemon games I had played in the late nineties. Also, some of the sound effects were the exact same as in those games. I didn't think these were good or bad things. I was more like "huh, interesting". Then the improvements started to make themselves apparent. First and foremost, diagonal movement! The main character could now walk in 8 directions, which I thought was a big improvement over Red and Silver. Then I discovered that if you held down B, the main character could also run! Awesome! As I kept playing, I noticed more stuff here and there, such as the streamlined menu navigation, the vastly improved PC mechanics (to say they leave the overly clunky PC mechanics of the original games in the dust is an understatement), the super fast bike, the bottomless bag, etc. I also had to adjust to some battle mechanics that were brand-new to me, like pokemon abilities, weather conditions, double/triple battles, etc. All in all, I liked everything I saw, and soon enough I was hopelessly hooked, traveling around this all-new Kalos world and trying to catch 'em all along the way.

So, this all got me thinking: what is it that makes these games so appealing?
Because, let's face it, the world of Pokemon makes no effin' sense. I mean, this is a world where it's okay to let some 10-year-old kid travel around the land completely unsupervised! Also, drawing comparisons between pokemon battles and cockfights is unfortunately way too easy. So, what is it? What's the hook? In my opinion, I believe it all comes down to one thing: OCD.
Pokemon, at its core, is basically a bar-filling simulator. It appeals to the player's OCD side, encouraging them to go and collect every single critter out there to try and fill the Pokedex (the in-game Pokemon master checklist, which pretty much is the mother of all the bars that needs filling). Also, there's a certain allure in building up a Pokemon's level, making it grow stronger and stronger, which basically takes on the form of yet another, very visible bar that needs filling (with experience points).
Then there are the critters themselves. They run the show. With over 700 of them, there's bound to be something for everyone. What kind of Pokemon do you like? Cute and cuddly like Pikachu? Scary like Haunter? Serious like Lucario? Quadrupedal like Absol? Silly-looking like Slowpoke? Badass like Mewtwo? Anthropomorphic like Blaziken? Awe-inspiring like Yveltal? Completely off-the-wall like Klefki? You name it; they've got you covered. The battles are fun too, and the initial apparent simplicity of its basic rock-paper-scissors framework hides a potentially very complex system underneath (I mean, I've seen some really clever strategies on YouTube that made my jaw drop!).

So, yeah. Pokemon. I wonder if I will be able to catch 'em all? We'll see!