Boasting nearly 30 years of existence, Pokémon is essentially a household name. Created in 1996 by GameFreak as a roleplaying game, it eventually spawned the Gameboy games, card game, and countless cartoons. Short for Pocket Monsters, players collect, trade, and battle unique monsters. It’s a game that Rita and I have been able to share and enjoy with our children.
To my delight, the game was real.
As I started up Pokémon Silver on my JPay tablet I felt a little too excited for a game that was this old — released on November 21, 1999 to be exact. Pokémon Silver was a nice distraction from my grim reality.
Catching a Pikachu while they wheel out the latest guy to OD from smoking paper drugs. Battling the Indigo League while a guy runs out of the unit and passes out on the blacktop, stabbed multiple times for stealing from his bunkie.
Playing a lighthearted game from my childhood while being surrounded by drugs and the constant threat of violence breaking out feels almost surreal. And once everyone else started playing it, it was very cool, but also very surreal. I expected to hear the Twilight Zone theme start to play in the background. I began looking around for Rod Serling to walk in from a shadow.
Quickly, I gained a reputation as a game guru. People I had never talked to before were asking me where they had to go to get further in the story or how to get their Eevees to evolve into something other than Umbreon.
While talking on the phone with my wife, I overheard somebody bragging about the shiny Drowzee they caught or showing somebody where to catch Chansey. This was funny, as it was something that I had just hours earlier asked my wife to look up for me. Apparently word spread faster than I thought.
It was amazing watching people in their 20s talking to people in their 50s about a game that I played as a kid.
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About the Author
Rita Williams
Rita Williams is a Michigan-based judicial oversight analyst and founder of Clutch Justice, an investigative platform focused on court system accountability, sentencing integrity, and SCAO policy. Her work examines how courts, policies, and administrative systems operate in practice, with a focus on where process breaks down and harm is created. Drawing on lived experience and systems-level analysis, she writes to make legal structures more readable, expose institutional gaps, and advocate for reforms grounded in both evidence and human impact. Rita’s writing bridges legal analysis, institutional critique, and public education, with a consistent focus on accountability without losing sight of the people most affected by the justice system.
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