Pokémon's 'maturity' debate revived after Winds and Waves reveal

Is it possible for Pokémon to please both kids and adults anymore?

Like many 30-somethings, I was raised on Pokémon. The original RPGs launched just as I was at my most impressionable age, dictating my personality (and Halloween costumes) for a few years. Ever since then, I’ve actively grown alongside the franchise. Each new game is a marker in time, reminding me to look back at how far I’ve come since my last adventure. You can measure your journey to emotional maturity in Pokémon generations.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that so many people in my age group have grown frustrated with Pokémon’s own inability to grow up in that time. With each passing entry, the series has struggled to find the right balance between its youngest and oldest players, a trend that's likely to continue with the Gen 10 games, Pokémon Wind and Waves. The tutorials get wordier, the combat becomes more streamlined, and the difficulty only dwindles. It hasn’t helped that the tech powering it all has even taken a nosedive over the years, too.

All of those factors began to really hit a breaking point in the Switch era as games like Pokémon Sword and Shield left aging fans eager for a series that felt like it was maturing with them. But what does a “grown-up” Pokémon game even look like, anyway? The complicated nature of the series’ enduring fanbase shows why The Pokémon Company’s juggling act isn’t as easy as players wish it was.

Let’s be straight with ourselves off the bat: Pokémon has always been a kid’s game first and foremost. The earliest commercials for Red and Blue were filled with smiling, colorful cartoon characters, and that’s exactly why kids like me were so magnetically drawn to it in the 90s. Sure, the games happened to be systems-heavy RPGs, but its rock-paper-scissors combat made it easy enough for a young person to understand. Being a kid wasn’t a requirement to enjoy the series, but you had to have a sense of childlike wonder to fall in love with it.

That has remained true with each subsequent game in the series. Even when the stories of games like Black and White got just a touch darker, the adventures were still anchored in youthful joy. You pretty much always played as a child who started out by picking one of three adorable starters. Even at their most lore-intensive, the stories were filled with kind-hearted kids who banded together to save the day. The colors only got brighter with each hardware jump to bring the games a little closer to the cartoon visuals the series always leaned on in its earliest advertisements. It’s a fine-tuned operation that still brings in new fans regularly; my youngest goddaughter just started FireRed this week, following its Feb. 27 release on Nintendo Switch. That’s endurance in action.

But the core hooks in Pokémon transcend generations. Beyond the cartoon joy, the RPGs sport fine-tuned battle systems and an engaging collect-a-thon hook that appeals to players of all ages. It was only natural that people who started the series as a pre-teen would continue on their journey and come to appreciate the nuances of competitive battling or monster breeding, all while soaking in the good vibes that come with a friendly game.

That’s where Pokémon gets complicated. Pikachu isn’t teaching you how to add two and two together. Any hallmarks of kid’s media, like educational moments or big morals, are cleverly worked into smart game design instead. There’s rarely a moment where you turn it on and realize, hey, this is written for an 8-year-old. Pokémon always feels like it’s meant to be a match for whatever age you are when you play it. The disconnect comes in when it no longer nails that all-important feeling. (Just look at the fan response to polarizing efforts to skew the RPGs explicitly younger, like the Pokémon Let’s Go entries or Diamond and Pearl’s toylike Switch remakes.)

Fans have caught on to that more and more with each passing game, and put forth their dream solutions for keeping the games enjoyable for grown-ups. Some demands are more reasonable than others. For many, it’s about bringing difficulty back to games that have become a cakewalk. New Pokémon games do a lot of work for you, even telling you exactly what attacks will be super effective against an enemy. The strategic deduction puzzle of seeing a new monster and trying to figure out its deal has begun to wane in the modern era.

In fact, many of Pokémon’s other puzzle instincts have. The original games almost played like Metroidvanias, where HMs gradually opened up the world and secret routes. The series’ push towards open-world design has taken a bit of brainwork out of exploration in exchange for frictionless freedom. There are some actionable takeaways there that could perhaps serve all ages without taking away the kid-centric spirit of these games or making them too hard.

Other players have hyperfixated on graphics and performance with varying degrees of validity. Look, I don’t care what an Instagram account pushing AI-generated monsters says. There’s not really a world in which Pokémon is going to adopt Unreal Engine 5 graphics and turn every monster into a slimy, scaly monster that’s realistically lit to highlight all its grotesque details. Pokémon works because it’s a good-natured cartoon that connects with children and nostalgic adults alike. The sweetness of it all is the selling point, and players who aren’t on board with that may have to accept that they really have grown out of it.

That said, there’s still a kernel of legitimacy to that line of thinking. The declining performance of these games has cut into that cartoon appeal over the years. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were so technically busted at launch that you couldn’t buy into the fact that you were living in a real place full of critters. The chugging framerates, the ugly textures that popped in mere feet away, the constant glitches — all of these things broke an illusion that Pokémon relies on to keep you feeling like a kid.

It’s not that the series needs to mature; it just needs to remain a compelling enough space to play make-believe. Look to Pokémon Pokopia as proof. Omega Force’s new spinoff life sim doesn’t run away from the kid-centric nature of the series. Instead, it doubles down on it even more with an adorable cozy game made for young players who love Minecraft. It’s the experience of playing with building blocks turned into a video game, and that’s already resonating with adult critics big time. It’s currently one of the best reviewed games in the series’ history despite having tons of hand-holding tutorials, no difficulty whatsoever, and very cheery visuals that are bound to make you smile. If the game is well-designed to the point where you can’t see the seams, you can make players forget how old they are.

As we look ahead to Generation 10’s kickoff in 2027, I hope Pokémon Winds and Waves can capture that same magic. I don’t need it to throw me in impossible fights against gym leaders or show me a Pikachu that looks like a dirty, feral rat. I simply need a game that invites me to get lost in a breezy world and check my adult problems at the door. Maturity doesn’t have to mean throwing your inner child out to sea. Just give us a sturdy playground that’s not in danger of falling apart.