498 Words About: The Disappointment that was Mr. Mime
Screenshot from playthrough by Vari Primedus
One of the reasons I spent so much flipping time trying to catch a dang Abra was because I wanted a Mr. Mime. I had only seen his Pokemon card and not the in-game sprite.
That’ll be important here in a minute.
Like any good Millennial I played Pokemon Blue when it released for Gameboy in 1998, I collected Pokemon cards, I drew Pokemon in the margins of every piece of homework, I read every magazine article I could find about Pokemon, and I watched the Pokemon anime on Saturday mornings. What’s important here is that I consumed multitudinous images of Pokemon, and this in turn created certain expectations. Somewhere in that media blitz I saw Mr. Mime, and for whatever reason my brain latched upon it as one of the coolest Pokemon designs around. The perception only increased when my parents bought me the official guidebook for Pokemon Red & Blue, and I once again ingested every image of every pocket monster that had been lovingly drawn.
Consulting the book I discovered that there was a non-playable character on Route Two who would trade me a Mr. Mime for an Abra.
Say less, I said.
Actually, in hindsight, I’m positive I screamed I NEED AN ABRA!
I caught one, huffed it through Diglett cave, and traded my Abra away. With bated breath I watched the trading animation sequence until the pokeball dropped into the dull void of my Gameboy screen. It wiggled once and then exploded open. I audibly gasped.
Then silence.
Disappointment is too soft a word to describe my emotion. Sublime devastation and repugnance is only marginally better.
Mr. Mime looked sick. He appeared to be a rotund mound of fat. His black wisps of hair swung down behind his head like demonic horns or oil slicks. His expression resembled a middle-aged man who was discovered hiding under a jungle gym in a public park.
Simply put, Mr. Mime sucked.
And when I discovered Haunter not long thereafter I dropped him in Bill’s PC and never looked back.
Every iteration of Mr. Mime since Pokemon Blue has revamped and adjusted the character sprite so that he’s now what he was always meant to be: a colorful clown or a children’s doll come to life. Though he remains an underpowered psychic type when compared to Alakazam (the second reason I wanted an Abra), he’s a cute Pokemon that adds to the world players will encounter, and when he told Detective Pikachu to “shove it” through charades it genuinely made me laugh.
I’ve never forgotten this original disappointment though. Videogames are a visual medium, and design choices, even if they’re aesthetic, will impact the reception of a game. The shift from obsession to disappointment was entirely because the images I consumed didn’t match up to reality. Just like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, the difference between corporate promotion and art is often a lesson in disappointment.
Mr. Mime was yet another example, but at least Haunter totally owned.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
2.23.2026
The cover and top image of this essay were provided by the YouTube Playthrough of Pokemon Blue which was done by the host Vari Primedus who has played the game and assembled a playlist for content creators wanting to write or vlog about the original Pokemon Games. I cannot express how helpful this playthrough his given the fact I can’t get the saves in my Gameboy emulator to work, not to mention the fact that I don’t have enough free-time to playthrough Pokemon again at this stage of my life. So, to Vari Primedus I say thank you. You can watch his playthrough by following the link below.
Go check it out, if not for nostalgia, but because Vari totally owns.
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