Pok?mon Timeline

[GhastlyGastly]

Pokémon Timeline

When exactly are the Pokémon games set in relation to our modern day? My current estimate presumes around 20000 years between our time and the beginning of events known in the Pokémon era. But it could be more reent or far more distant. The most important factor is time needed to let tectonic movement turn our landmasses into the ones we see in Pokémon. Depending on how much is differing sea levels and how much is actually geological, the Pokémon epoch could be quite far in the future indeed.

Thoughts? :pink_smile:

 

[Blueredemption]

Hmm, i'll have to make a lot of assumptions with this one.

Starting off, that number for plate movement needs to be way way higher. I think the current average is 2cm a year? Anyway it would be in the hundreds of thousands to even millions of years before Earth could look like the pokemon world.

I guess a mass extinction event like a mega asteroid or a nuclear war could rapidly change the Earth's look too, and that would answer the question of where would all our current and improving technology go. We would all have to die and re-adapt as as species (and reappear?) to break from our current path of life. And given that, pokemon would need to be introduced and adapt as well. All together this stretch would take at least a couple million years becuase of pesky evolution (The Darwin kind).

If I were to pick an exact number, 65 million years sounds plausible :) Google tells me that's how long ago the dinosaurs lived, so it at least sounds right... I think :P

 

[GhastlyGastly]

Hmm, i'll have to make a lot of assumptions with this one.

Starting off, that number for plate movement needs to be way way higher. I think the current average is 2cm a year? Anyway it would be in the hundreds of thousands to even millions of years before Earth could look like the pokemon world.

I guess a mass extinction event like a mega asteroid or a nuclear war could rapidly change the Earth's look too, and that would answer the question of where would all our current and improving technology go. We would all have to die and re-adapt as as species (and reappear?) to break from our current path of life. And given that, pokemon would need to be introduced and adapt as well. All together this stretch would take at least a couple million years becuase of pesky evolution (The Darwin kind).

If I were to pick an exact number, 65 million years sounds plausible :) Google tells me that's how long ago the dinosaurs lived, so it at least sounds right... I think :P

I've considered tens of millions of years also; I think differing sea levels are important too. Which is part of why I can allow for perhaps tens of thousands of years, especially accounting for all the comets and meteoroids and wars that have struck the Pokémon world in its past.

I suppose this also begs the question of where Pokémon came from: I personally favor either extraterrestrial origin or artificial creation by us at some point long before anyone in the Pokémon era remembers.

 

[AdamN]

Wasn't there a clue in the Anime as to what the current year was?
I seem to recall early on (within the first couple seasons) they found something which they referred to as being 200 years old, and at some point in the episode they said what year the item was made... The games and anime obviously take place in the same time period, so do we not already know what year the games take place in?

 

[IggyKoopa]

It's impossible to really put a date on it...

The player has whatever the latest Nintendo console is at the time of the game's release.
One of the actual people who made the game is present in the first-gen games IIRC
The Lumiose taxis are current-generation Fiat Pandas
And other such stuff, and the world generally doesn't seem outlandishly futuristic.

Meanwhile, we have stuff like Pokéballs and the Pokédex that are completely unexplained and rather futuristic. I'd say this places it well into Twenty Minutes into the Future territory.

...Or does it?

If you'll allow me to go off on a tangent, there's something special about apricorns. They have the effect to basically be a Pokéball, and it's been stated that they were indeed used as Pokéballs before they were invented. It makes sense that at some point, some group of engineers would find a way to replicate its effects... and that sets off a chain reaction. Suddenly you can interpret what's stored inside the ball with the Pokédex, you can store it in the Pokémon Storage System, you can do all sorts of stuff with it that we see in the games.

It's a little out there, but for a world that's always had Pokémon and an easy way to capture them, it seems more-or-less realistic for it to take place in what's effectively the present day.

Also, the earth doesn't look any different. All of the regions are clearly based on existing places and it never said they were adjacent to each other (aside from Kanto and Johto, whose real-life equivalents are also adjacent).

 

[KetsuekiR]

There doesn't need to be any plate movements at all! All the regions are based geographically on real world locations. The only difference are the names and buildings (and routes, of course).

Therefore, you could assume it's the same world we live in now but it's a time after an event that pretty much wiped out our current civilization (not the humans, but the things we built) but did not alter the geography. It could be following a nuclear war or even a large scale planetary disaster such as a mega-tsunami.

Humanity would rebuild and this time, Arceus gave us Pokemon to help and we decided to keep them and they decided to stay :P

Considering the time it would take Humans to rebuild six regions simultaneously while also inventing various things (such as Pokeballs) and then not only returning to but surpassing the level we are at now, I'd say it is around 20000 years from now. That would be your first estimation, GhastlyGastly :P

 

[GhastlyGastly]

There doesn't need to be any plate movements at all! All the regions are based geographically on real world locations. The only difference are the names and buildings (and routes, of course).

Therefore, you could assume it's the same world we live in now but it's a time after an event that pretty much wiped out our current civilization (not the humans, but the things we built) but did not alter the geography. It could be following a nuclear war or even a large scale planetary disaster such as a mega-tsunami.

Humanity would rebuild and this time, Arceus gave us Pokemon to help and we decided to keep them and they decided to stay :P

Considering the time it would take Humans to rebuild six regions simultaneously while also inventing various things (such as Pokeballs) and then not only returning to but surpassing the level we are at now, I'd say it is around 20000 years from now. That would be your first estimation, GhastlyGastly :P

The only real problem I have with saying zero plate shifting is that there are slight differences between Pokémon geography and ours: Sakhalin Island for example appears to have drifted southeast. Also coastlines appear slightly different: makes sense after a considerable length of time, whether due to rising sea levels or some other factor, probably both. I personally theorize that Faraway Island was once a tepui in remote Guyana, isolated after flooding of the surrounding rainforest made it even harder to access than it already was. It seems like a number of environmental disasters befell the Pokémon world in its past; perhaps humans engineered Groudon and Kyogre as living super weapons, causing slight alteration of the geography and sea levels when they fought?

On that note I'll mention that I don't believe in Arceus, haha :pink_laugh: I mean, I believe the Pokémon exists, but I don't believe it's a creator god or whatever.