1636 - Pokémon Fire Red ((top)) -

And yet, play FireRed today, and you feel the ghost of 1636.

So when you finally turn off the GBA, the screen shrinking to a white dot, you realize: FireRed is not a game about the future. It is a game about the moment before the future calcifies. 1636 was the seed of an empire. FireRed is the seed of a champion. Both are just a kid with a backpack, a map, and the terrifying hope that over the next hill, something uncatalogued is waiting. 1636 - pokémon fire red

You are a cartographer, just like the Dutch. You sail not on a galleon but on a ferry from Vermilion City. Your "New World" is the Sevii Islands, an archipelago that appears only after you've conquered the mainland. Your compass is a Town Map, your sextant is a Silph Scope. Every tall grass is an unmapped territory, every new Pokémon a strange flora or fauna awaiting Linnaean classification. Professor Oak, with his white lab coat and bushy gray hair, could be a 17th-century naturalist—a John Ray or a Georg Marcgrave—cataloging species by type and movepool, desperate to complete a folio before the next expedition. And yet, play FireRed today, and you feel the ghost of 1636