Topic: Pokemon: How old are you?

*Looks around the message board to see if there's anything Pokemon related within the first 3 pages... finds nothing relevant.

Okay! There's actually a lot I'd like to talk about related to the Pokemon franchise but for the purpose of keeping things focussed I'd just like to bring to attention one issue. Now, I haven't actually played the newest Pokemon games, so correct me if this is already in there. At the beginning of each game, you have the pokemon professor ask you "Are you a boy or a girl?" followed by "What's your name?". Now, what if they were to ask you one more question? "How old are you?" Sure this would be an interesting opportunity for character customization. After all, you would now get to choose whether you are a toddler, a 10 year old, a teenager, an adult, or an elderly person, but this is also an opportunity for Game Freak to collect some valuable information about it's base of gamers and how old they actually are. After all, if you started out playing red/blue when they first came out, you're not exactly 10 anymore are you?

Do you think this is a good idea? Do you play Pokemon? How old are you?

Edit: Didn't know *'s made things go bold. My bad...

I guess the older you put your age the darker the could make the story. Other than that I wouldn't really care for a feature like this.

Being able to choose if your character is a child, teen, adult or an elderly person would be fun (My dream of being
That option could create some cool minor changes like the way others will talk to you or your relation with some characters.

I am pretty sure Game Freak already knows the general age of Pokemon players.

I kind of like the preteen/young teen thing going on. It's the age of adventure after all.

I don't think it would provide any age information to game freak, as I would definitely just pick toddler every time. Unless it doubled as a difficulty setting, in which case I'd choose 90 year old.

But as a purely cosmetic option, I'd appreciate the extra customization of choosing my in game sprites beyond gender.

GameFreak cannot gain valuable information about the age of their fanbase by this method because none of the information is fed back to them.

Not yet. Their next games will undoubtedly be on the 3DS (which is why I posted here). Meaning that whenever you sign online to use their matchmaking service for trades or battles, you'd be sending them this information.

That's a cool idea,and I wouldn't it being used in a real Pokemon game.

Screw a choice of age, what about full character customization? Why not get to choose everything? Age, skin tone, eye color, clothing, etc. That's what I want.

It wouldn't be very accurate. People would probably be just as likely to make their character 100 years old or 1 year old as to use their real age.

I think choosing the age of your character would be a nice addition. I'm just turned 30 and still love and play Pokemon. No shame, I just love the in depth hidden world of pokemon customization. Maybe even with an age selector the game's storyline, along with npc interactions could be more adult oriented so to speak; and a darker game would be very interesting.

I guess a character creator wouldn't be THAT out of place. Since they will probably be replacing all of the sprites anyways it wouldn't even be all that difficult to swap out some clothes, change skin tone, or even create a character based on your Mii...

I'd imagine that those would be spread out pretty evenly. Maybe it could use the birthday you input into your 3DS already? Even if the information isn't accurate, it's still valuable, as it tells you what age everyone wants to be.

I don't think a darker storyline is the way to go for Pokemon, but it would be nice just to have a more detailed world. When was the last time you saw a police station in Pokemon? A fire station? A hospital for humans? A bank? An army base? A game retailer? A car dealership? A restaurant? A clothing store? A warehouse? An industrial park? What does everyone eat in this universe?

Honestly, I don't think it would be bad, but I don't see a reason it would be good, either. You can, in a way, select a general picture of how old you are for battles, by selecting if you are a 'youngster' or other things that might suggest it, but that's not too specific. As for character customization... the trainers thus far are fine, IMO. I don't see anything in changing how my character looks as anything great, but I'm sure a lot of people would.