Before Pokémon Go, There Was Pokémate

Pokémate was a mobile Pokémon game that was meant to be played on a specific brand of phone.

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For a brief period, Pokémon Go was so popular that it seemed like it was going to bring about world peace. People around the world gathered together to walk around with their phones out looking for wild Pikachus and Rattatas. Its popularity has waned a bit over the years, but there’s no denying that Pokémon Go is Nintendo’s most successful title in their mobile gaming line-up.

However, it wasn’t the first mobile Pokémon game. In fact, there was a mobile game based on the lovable pocket monsters that was somehow released back in 2006. It was an obscure Japan-only project known as Pokémate.

Long Before Go

Pokémate was a mobile Pokémon game that was meant to be played on a specific brand of phone known as the NTT DoCoMo FOMA 900i (man, phones used to have long, dumb names.) What’s kind of incredible about it is who it was developed by: Square Enix. That’s right, the makers of Final Fantasy were somehow hired to create a Pokémon phone game. It’s strange to imagine how different things could’ve been if Pokémate had been a success. We might’ve lived in a world where Square Enix focused on Pokémon mobile games and nothing else.

This title was introduced to Japanese gamers and phone users in April 2006 and released in June of that year. Considering the timeframe in which it was developed, it was a highly ambitious game. Much like Pokémon Go, you would use your phone to catch various kinds of Pokémon. But unlike a lot of games in the series, this one would require you to take care of your captured Pokémon. Essentially, this turned out to be a virtual pet game where you looked after Bulbasaurs and Charmanders like they were Tamagotchis.

Gameplay was relatively simple. The player would catch Pokémon with a limited amount of Pokéballs. They didn’t level up or learn new moves. In fact, they didn’t even fight. This seemed to be more of a collection game where the object wasn’t to become a master Pokémon trainer, but rather tend to them like you were the owner of some kind of Pokémon sanctuary. It’s possible to see some appeal in that idea, as some may like the idea of getting to look after a Clemfairy without having to worry about them getting beat up in battle.

If anything, Pokémate seemed more focused on its chatting and messaging functionality than its gameplay. Players could chat with up to 16 of their friends using the app. They could even send emails, text messages, or voicemail using Pokémate features. In what was probably a main selling point for the game, you could choose one of the Pokémon you’d caught to be your avatar. It would even react and make its signature noises when the player received a new message.

It would be easy to imagine how this could have created some friendly rivalries between Pokémon-loving friends. Sending a message to one of your buddies with a basic Pikachu avatar while they answer you back with something awesome like a Zygarde or Sharpedo would definitely be enough to inspire some to do whatever they could to catch something better.

Pony Up For A Ponyta

Pokémate may also be one of the earliest titles to offer a free-to-play business model. Initially, the game was free to any Pokémaniac that wanted to download the application. They would receive 10 Pokéballs along with three Pokémon that the game would choose at random.

But that was all you got if you didn’t want to fork over any money. The only way to catch more Pokémon was to pay for a monthly subscription which would grant the player five more Pokéballs and open up their selection of Pokémon so they could catch rarer and better ones. It would cost 210 yen a month, which in American dollars works out to about $1.99.

The subscription was necessary to use the chat functions as well. Square Enix would give players a taste of what they could have by allowing them to chat freely for the first month, but after that, it was radio silence until they pulled out the credit card.

While it’s hard to believe that anything with the Pokémon name slapped on it could fail, Pokémate didn’t last very long. The service only ran until January 2008, shutting down after about a year and a half. The game did show up at E3, but Americans never got to experience the joy of raising their own digital Poképets. Which is probably for the best, as cell phones at that point would have had a hard time giving us the true Pokémon Tamagotchi experience.

Pour One Out For Pokémate

Pokémate was an intriguing experiment, but it seems like it was always going to be nothing more than that. The ability to design games for phones in the ’00s was limited and this seemed like more of a glorified messaging app than a full-fledged mobile title. Not to mention that both companies thinking that this service was fleshed out enough to justify a monthly subscription fee was just plain foolish. It’d be like trying to charge people to use Facebook Messenger. Sure, having a Dragonite send you messages is neat and all, but it’s not enough to pay anything for, even if it’s only $2.

Nintendo has gone on to make other mobile titles since Pokémate crashed and burned (some of which have much worse monetization schemes.) While this has been mostly forgotten by the general public, there’s no doubt that it planted the seeds for the much more financially successful Pokémon Go. So in a way, Pokémate was the prototype for the game that brought together millions of fans, and for that, we can be thankful for this plucky little failure.

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