Obsession: 1. (noun) an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind. 2. (video games) GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL!!

It’s Friday again, but not just any Friday, for you see today is the launch of the newest addition to Nintendo’s most successful franchise, Pokémon.

My son, Joshua, has been looking forward to this game since April. Now when I say “looking forward to” I mean “has talked about nothing else.” To him, this is early Christmas.

The latest games, named Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, are retools of Nintendo’s previous Pokémon titles, Ruby and Sapphire from 2003. I owned Ruby and still hold it as my favorite of the franchise thus far, so a relaunch with updated graphics, and new abilities like soaring and primal evolution has gotten me – I mean, Joshua – pretty excited.

Here’s a layman’s summary of the Pokémon universe: you, an 11-year-old child, is left to wander a vast world inhabited by all manner of creatures named Pokémon that possess powerful abilities that could easily kill a normal human. Your only chance for survival is to subdue the attacking monsters by attacking them with your monster given to you by your mentor. If you are victorious you may get the chance to capture the wild animal in a PokéBall which you then use to battle other monsters. You encounter people from toddlers to the elderly who challenge you to fight their biggest and best. You survive life on the road by taking money from your defeated foes. Oh and there is usually a bad organization trying to use Pokémon to rule/destroy the world, and it’s your job to stop them.

It’s like a kid version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but less wasteland-ish with legal dog fighting where the dogs shoot lasers or breath fire without all the blood and Tina Turner.

Class dismissed.