Yaw Amanquah

As described by Know Your Meme, "Genwunner is a pejorative term used within the Pokémon fandom to describe those who only appreciate the first-generation of video games for GameBoy, namely Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow, and tend to bash the sequel titles and monsters in the franchise." Under this definition, I wouldn't be considered a genwunner because even though I consider the first-generation of Pokémon to be the best, I still have an appreciation for the other games. However, even though I haven't drawn the ire of the Pokémon fandom I disagree with the notion that it is unreasonable to prefer the first-generation of Pokémon over the others.

One of my favorite video games of all time is Boktai for the Game Boy Advance. Now make no mistake when I say "Boktai," I'm only referring to the original game in the series Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand. While I still think the sequels to Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand are enjoyable games, I believe they stray too far from the original to deliver a satisfying follow-up. So, to highlight where the Boktai series went wrong, I'll need to break down what changed throughout the series.

With its long history and many games, the Mega Man series may at first appear to be a wildly successful franchise up there with Mario and Sonic. However, this isn't true of the Mega Man series as a whole with only a few games selling more than one million copies worldwide. This made me wonder how the Mega Man series could be so well known but rarely be the huge success we would expect from a long-running franchise.

My favorite RPGs are those that can be played with other players. This doesn't only include RPGs that have multiplayer modes, but also those that generate a lot of discussions. What makes "community RPGs" hard to come across is the harsh truth that they need to be popular enough to create a community around them. However, there is more to a community RPG than being popular, a fact which is perfectly captured by the GameFAQs top 10 games versus the top 10 message boards. Even though there is some overlap between these lists, the differences show that the games people want to discuss aren't always the most popular games.

Progression systems in video games are not something exclusive to RPGs but it is certainly one of the genre's defining features. While twitch game genres like fighting games, shoot 'em ups, and rhythm games develop the player's reaction time, RPGs have progression systems that develop the player's character or avatar. Unfortunately, most RPG progression systems don't make the player feel stronger in any meaningful way and instead have arbitrary numbers that increase as you level up. An engaging progression system has avatar growth that significantly affects how the game is played and has a level of customization that allows the player to decide how their avatar grows.

The appeal of turn-based RPGs for me has always been how they can prompt the player to come up with different strategies to achieve the most efficient use of their turn. However, this hardly describes most of the turn-based RPGs that I have played, which are often just about finding the optimal strategy and repeating it in each battle. That's why, when other people don't share my enthusiasm for turn-based RPGs, I actually sympathize with them. Though while talking to some friends, I made the curious discovery that, while they find most turn-based RPGs dull, they do enjoy turn-based strategy games and deck-building card games. This made me think that maybe the reason some don't enjoy turn-based RPGs isn't that they're turn-based, but rather because they don't have interesting battle systems or battle scenarios.