Pokémon-esque

• Pokémonesque

From Pokémon +‎ -esque.

Pokémon-esque or Pokémon-esque (comparative more Pokémon-esque, superlative most Pokémon-esque)

1. Resembling or characteristic of the Pokémon franchise or the creatures featured in it.
   • 2001 April, Spin, page 70:

     Haddock’s online project, titled “Screenshots”(whitelead.com/jrh/screenshots), uses the poppy, Pokémon-esque style of kiddie computer games to re-create some of the most incendiary scenes in recent memory (the Columbine killers in the cafeteria, the Rodney King beating, Elián and the feds).

   • 2004, “Transformers”, in GamesTM, →ISSN, page 084:

     While old-school fans might believe that the whole Armada setting manages to desecrate our fond childhood memories of the original series by changing virtually everything (‘Megatron, a tank? That’s rubbish!’), Transformers turns this negative into a pretty convincing positive thanks to those damn Minicons – the small and almost Pokémon[-]esque robots that seem to be so important to today’s transforming machine.

   • 2007 June, “Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales”, in Edge, page 92:

     Cards, collected around the map, are used to send Pokémon-esque monsters into battle.

   • 2007 December, A. Fitch, “Folklore”, in Electronic Gaming Monthly, number 222, page 110:

     Fantastical beasties from authentic Celtic lore serve as Pokémon-esque companions on the duo’s intertwining quest, so the monster-wrangling is both addicting and educational here.

   • 2009 September, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, page 48:

     Did you know that the world is absolutely teeming with tiny monsters that are invisible to the naked eye? Oh, it’s totally true. Fortunately, a Sony scientist recently discovered that the PSP camera can detect these Pokémon-esque creatures just fine.

   • 2016, Aaron Feinstein, “We Don’t Want to Fit in: A Reflection on the Revolutionary Inclusive Theater Practices of The Miracle Project and Actionplay for Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum”, in Peter Smagorinsky, editor, Creativity and Community among Autism-Spectrum Youth: Creating Positive Social Updrafts through Play and Performance (Palgrave Studies In Play, Performance, Learning, and Development), Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 140:

     Ari played a Pokémon-esque character in our musical performance.

   • 2018, Chris Stuckmann, Anime Impact: The Movies and Shows That Changed the World of Japanese Animation, Mango Publishing, →ISBN:

     Their take on the way Techodes work reminds of a Pokémon-esque feel to a mecha-centered story.

   • 2020, Matt Alt, Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World, New York, N.Y.: Crown, published 2021, →ISBN, page 226:

     It was a business success the likes of which Nintendo had never dreamed—not at first, anyway—but it was also something more: a truly Pokémon-esque moment, in which Japan the nation evolved into Japan the fantasy superpower.

   • 2022, Daniel Dockery, Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All, Running Press, →ISBN:

     In Japan, it had to settle for the silver medal, with the top spot occupied by a Yu-Gi-Oh! game, one that used Pokémon-esque tactics to propel its record breaking to boot.

   • 2022, Randall Munroe, What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Riverhead Books, →ISBN, pages 135–136:

     If you put a million hungry ants in a glass cube with one human, who’s more likely to walk out alive? —Eric Bowman / Everyone always assumes that if you put two animals together like this, they’ll battle to the death, which is a very Pokémon-esque view of biology.