Good point, yes. Further, the ghosts do tell you to 'get out,' or 'leave,' etc. Strangely, that just happens to be a means of getting through the area.
Elsewhere, and more amusingly, in a game called Pokémon, the most well-known glitch derives from a 'Pokey-mon,' or Weedle. It is caught in a tutorial, and this allows you to catch Missingno., etc.
Slightly amusing also given that the name comes across as this slightly rude remark about 'Kumon' and similar things no doubt familiar to kids there. The accent in the name is a rather nice touch in this regards. Other than that, it's a slightly awkward-sounding name (especially in D/P where a guy barges into you near the beginning), except for when it applies to the card game where cards can do that kind of thing.
Anyway, Route 1 contains 'Pidgey' and 'Rattata,' which might sound a bit like 'Pidgeot' if taken in a derogatory manner. Curiously, Pidgey does evolve into Pidgeot.
Misty can be found on a date above Cerulean in G/S/C, that is in a couple, but Mewtwo is lacking. You then have to summon Misty to battle you. This seems like a slightly strange take on 'Mew-two,' including their behaviour in the film.
In the film, they are early on seen encased in 'metal,' before proclaiming themselves a
'Pokémon master.'Missingno. is slightly like a Poison so far as the game is concerned. It appears, then can infect the player's Hall of Fame entry and other such things. You're catching a virus, after a demonstration of catching a Poison-type - who incidentally has a type and name resembling the name of the series.
The Old Chateau involves things like people walking through walls, and Pokémon which can be caught via televisions. This seems more akin to 'cheats' than anything. It comes across a slightly more forced than the older Tower, if it's taken to be aiming for something similar, but is still slightly minimalistic. It might be that it's not an attempt at re-doing that kind of thing, though. Certain aspects, such as the painting which follows you, just seem to emulate in part how the game always functions - although you move, it follows you around for wild encounters.
The series starts with 'Red' and 'Blue,' and the theme of such 'dualities' (in a fairly ordinary sense) is a continual one. Pidgey and Spearow, for instance; also Butterfree and Beedrill (or, if you like, Weedle and Caterpie). Mew and Mewtwo aren't really this, as they are more closely related - although you could note how Mewtwo accompanies a Psychic-type gym. These all represent alternative approaches to the game, and generally you wouldn't want to have both creatures of the same type on one team. Often, while Pidgey and Butterfree are more rounded and use more status moves - Butterfree also resists Psychic-types - Weedle is associated with a glitch as well as the early use of Poison, while Spearow can be stolen in G/S/C and also appears in the Mewtwo film. Weedle and Spearow are otherwise also more directed, often, towards moves of their own type. Spearow is usually seen later, while whether Caterpie or Weedle is more likely to appear depends on the version - in Red it might take a while to see Caterpie, but in Blue things are otherwise. In the Red version, two Pokémon Ash catches - Pikachu and Caterpie - are quite rare and could take a long time to both encounter. However, which is which, if we want to compare them to the colours? One might assume that the Poison-type Weedle and such are closer to 'Red,' rather than 'Blue' or even 'Green' (here more associated with the grass-type and status moves.) Butterfree and Pidgey are more 'calm' and use status moves which secure themselves, but Spearow and Weedle are slightly dangerous and attack directly or via damage. However, they are also more subject to attack by the opponent - somewhat like in bull-fighting.
A red and blue alarm is used by things like police cars - which makes 'Pokémon's' choice of them peculiar. The later epilepsy issues are slightly concerning in this light.
'Mankey' is, strangely, a 'key' of sorts in Pokémon Yellow - it's strong against the first Gym, which Pikachu's Electric moves wouldn't damage. Since you can check on the type of the Gym, then return to catch Mankey, it's probably usually a decent choice so far as that game is concerned. A lot of the game is re-treading old ground, however. Weirdly, the Yellow version might have come off as a better game if there wasn't an anime - it's otherwise a fairly well-done edit of the earlier games, with all starters available and some exotic types.
Trade evolution generally came across as weird apart from the context of the game - especially when these Pokémon then have to appear in the anime. The Pokémon being kept in a ball and just changing hands is a lot less convincing than other methods. In general, it can be awkward in other ways, as if you trade your Pokémon off to evolve it, you're expecting it back and people might not always give it back. In that sense Pokémon somewhat required the sense of 'large' communities and hence at least apparently sanctioned spaces for this, a lot of things in the game work on that kind of premise. Anyway, though, Haunter evolving into Sonic is a bit weird. If you were to vibrate the game, Haunter would probably look a bit like Gengar anyway. Most of the trade evolutions are slight shifts of this kind.
After Tyranitar, you had a Dragon named after Salami. Those dragons are seemingly becoming a bit hungry. Perhaps look elsewhere.
Pokémon cards sound both like 'pain' and 'poke.' Cards can do both. Those things are special.
Pokémon sounds a bit like 'bogeyman.' Perhaps part of the point is to bind some of the more intimidating 'actions' or gestures of various creatures into a game. People don't generally consider even domestic creatures to be threatening, considered first of all as attacking creatures, or they would be considerably more antsy about things. They do this somewhat at night, you suppose, where many creatures are associated with transforming into evil creatures or vice versa - the ever-present bats turn to vampires, werewolves involve transformation into wolves, and so on. Dark creatures like ravens are associated with death, but as a portent - somewhat like creatures that look like night but appear in the day before any of the deadly creatures appear. So by the time the ghosts come around in Pokémon, where the creatures do things like poison and attack from early on, people might just be perturbed and ready to be disturbed. There was a persistent sense early on that the Tower and Pokémon generally might be dangerous not only in terms of game-play, but also outside by causing things like epilepsy or worse and often panic-related things, implying that there was a sense in which this Tower was a climax to a fear already building which involves Pokémon's relation to the outside world and need to portray these things as threatening whenever possible.
In a sense, by taking certain perturbing things and claiming that it is 'Pokémon' in a game that do them, these things are bound to the game and no longer appear a perturbing element of things elsewhere. This can be double-edged, however. Nonetheless, these fears are not so much overcome as re-directed, and ready to strike when they appear again.
A glitch is somewhat like 'Weedle.' Poisonous creatures needn't bludgeon you over the head, they can hide in obscure areas of plants and so on and sting lightly - this can be enough to cause serious damage, possibly with great pace.
The anime sometimes involves strange things. For instance, Ash effectively trades their Haunter away for a Gym badge. What kind of racket are these Gyms running?
The game of Pokémon opens with something slightly abstract - a person explaining that there are such things as 'Pokémon,' and that they can do various things in some form or other - but other than that for most it would just appear that you were playing some game or other. So far, it has not distinguished itself clearly as a game. So this might seem slightly awkward for people who have just opted to play the game, who can generally not get the sense of its being a 'Pokémon' game or special until much later. However, perhaps people take other sorts of immediate visual cues? When you play Pokémon, does the screen appear to light up or grow darker than when you're playing most other games? Such things for instance might indicate a certain sense of divergence in the game generally, which however can be slightly sensitive. People around Pokémon kept straining to see things and taking plenty of time in the general early-game, etc., before being able to initiate 'the video game,' so when they were subjected to immediate colours and so on early on there were many concerns about 'Epilepsy.'
Miscellany: Apart from which, here's an eerie song named 'The Tower,' as you mention the 'Tower.' It involves lyrics along the lines of, 'Blood dust of aeons on the floor of empty halls,' 'To see the lost souls,' etc. The next song primarily revolves around the lyrics 'Sun and Moon,' weirdly.
In general, it's very hard to structure your particular plays of the Pokémon game, except through an aesthetic thing (choosing Pokémon of a certain type or arranging them, for example) which over-comes the other aims. Generally, you're focussing around particular Gyms and so on, or in brief discrete challenges. Apart from your overall play-through, which usually encompasses multiple times playing Pokémon, generally you will be looking to defeat just one Gym - in various differently themed, separated cities - or in general taking on a specific challenge. If you were focussing on a certain aesthetic, then obviously the task would not change. However, it would seem to follow that if you were to act consistently with this, that is collect a bunch of Pokémon for the playthrough and then train them such that they can all notably take on the next Gym, you should generally be alright. Obviously, things like the Steel/Ground Aron might be a popular choice for this.
You could, I supposes, just catch all the Pokémon available and throw them at things, but that has the potential to be dangerous - especially in early G/S.
Generally speaking, 'kids' are associated with playing the games looking for stories to play the game around and try to participate in, while 'adults' tend to instead interact with the characters and figures there in some way or other. Is this always that 'adult'? It need not be, but hey. I think the lesson here is that y'all are a bunch of kids (Naw, it's Christmas week, whatever. If you chatted about Pokémon enough, you might actually get a Christmas visit from Satan.)
But anyway, the games tend towards tasks which are fairly serious. While the people in it are fairly unserious, as soon as you under-take a task it's usually something like 'go down a crowded mountain route' or 'cross the sea.' Which, I mean, you should usually wait on doing - it's a fool-hardy adventure of sorts involving swimming around on a Pokémon (which might hate you, faint or be scared off), amidst dangerous and often poisonous Pokémon as well as whirlpools.) Which is a really strange thing to be tasked with in a way involving minimal formal structures. And, I mean, that quantity of poison Pokémon when you're perched on a Pokémon in the middle of a treacherous sea sounds unsafe. And how is that Pokémon supposed to fight without you getting in the way of attacks - though this is a more generic point. In any case, you could form a decent survival-horror variant from all this - where such things must be adjusted to. Nonetheless, a lot about this is deceptive or relies on the words without quite supporting them. As such, taking on less serious tasks or messing around a bit might be optimal - at least generally. Pokémon offers a lot of things which the characters in it don't quite contribute to - most of it is constructed by the audience.
In general, people seemed to prefer the lighter-coloured Pokémon - Pikachu's yellow or Charizard's orange-red, for instance. While Quilava (or even Cyndaquil) does have quite a dark aesthetic, Typhlosion limits this - in part by eschewing that pose (which is deceptive.) That does still go in the other direction, though. However, there are usually occasional divergences, and legendaries are often Pokémon that diverge from this aesthetic. Nonetheless, those Pokémon were usually more emblematic for a time. Even in-game, the 'fan-clubs' and so on tend towards things like Clefairy and Pikachu. If you choose instead Pokémon who are different, like Zubat or , you can end up with some fairly interesting but indirect approaches. On the other hand, Beedrill is a Pokémon who notably contrasts both shades, and it's associated with the slightly strange glitch along a stripe of coast near Cinnabar. Beedrill's sprite in these games also notably resembles an 'M.'
After these, that generally decreases. Obviously, certain things alter between games, but this usually only makes a major difference to people when looking at something like catching all Pokémon or in general in the later areas and sometimes artificial targets of the game. This can be deceptive. It might also lead to different challenges in the game, but often only slightly or one which can be compensated for - unless you're highly specific about these things.
In G/S, the colours are generally more constant - apart from weirder Pokémon like Unown. In addition, in G/S the obstacles to be maneouvred through are generally more difficult to deal with and the goals hence harder to obtain. This hence means that losing a Gym, for instance, can be more damning a result - it's not easily recovered from. Training for them is also more difficult. A lot of the game-play centres around Goldenrod, so that town tends to concentrate this element - after you beat the Gym, you have to wait, and also dispell and fight off a tree (!!), before eventually returning to get the badge, and then after all this fight off Team Rocket in all sorts of places. It's quite a mess. The similarly-named 'Cerulean' also functions like this here. You have to get the Gym leader, get a missing part, climb the bridge, etc., etc. It feels almost like a satire of Goldenrod's Gym. In any case, early Pokémon include 'Sentret,' Hoothoot who evolves into 'Noctowl,' and 'Ledyba' who evolves into 'Ledian.' This kind of sound seems really common in these games, cancerous in fact. Goldenrod itself has a few things surrounding it, but people are generally pressed into the city so far as the game goes. Which seems strangely realistic in a way, but at the same time slightly obstructive. By the time you're done with Goldenrod, instead of a town with many facets and things surrounding it it just becomes a place where things generally take time. Then you move on to Kanto, which is (so far as its own journey is concerned) often not a question of what you're using but how long it takes - it's generally just a bunch of trainers of whatever kind in the way. Is it also slightly disappointing that the embarkation point for your voyage in this 'new region' is just about a minute away from Kanto, the last one? But yeah, the region of Kanto itself comes across as like a repeat or codification of what occurs in Goldenrod City. You keep running into slightly tiring repetitions, of similar kinds, and then can finally progress. Can this somewhat limit the interest of embarking to another region? Realistically, by that point you're manufacturing the enjoyment of the game more than the game itself is trying. But it's at least an acceptable situation for that. In general, then, you might want to look out for your experience of Goldenrod to predict how your journey to the end of the game might turn out or if problems are likely to arise.
Often, Pokémon who look like they could pull you towards them or try, like Zubat, Geodude, Clefairy, Haunter, or Growlithe, which tend to occur more before female Gym Leaders. Which is weird. Where are they taking us? How rude.
But anyway, the general point here is that the game is somewhat like these Pokémon - it lays out a framework but then assumes players will look past the characters and such to form their own pathos. Due to G/S involving many back-and-forth movements, and slightly off-balance stuff, it basically tends to only centre around the particular quests and trying to make something out of this and the various paths it takes. It tends to be simplistic, and hence expects people to come up with something else. However, R/S/E tends to chuck tons of relationships and things which are supposed to have meant something to players, and expects players to come up with a context and so on where all of this has sense. They're getting a bit too close to hijacking your domestic life to enrich their game and explain why you care about things like Norman and so on - and then telling you what to do. Realistically, it's in many ways not worth playing. Still, the net result of this is that even vaguely defined things like the ghosts end up resembling the actions that players can take, and even the passive scenes with Weedle and long-range trainers can be iffy. Pokémon is a game which craves active player interaction, when that isn't present it can be slightly hazy around the edges. But are these the better sections? In some ways, yes.
Which raises another question about the ghosts - in such a game, it might seem odd to have characters telling the player to leave in a vague manner. Obviously, leaving battle does benefit the player - weirdly. An object which avoids wild battles is broken here. Still, what else could benefit the player at this point? In general, the area starts out with a sort of implicit threat - 'Your Pokémon could also be dead.' Then it turns out that your Pokémon are apparently battling ghosts - of Pokémon. When you go up, you are allowed to go a short way, then ambushed by your rival - usually called Gary. Eventually it turns into a bunch of people screaming and baying for blood - and hence the threat extends to you. This is actually quite creepy. No wonder your Pokémon are scared. Eventually a ghost shows up and starts blocking the door, like the Black Knight from Monty Python. It's a Marowak. But you can't usually get past it - you can with a doll, seemingly. However, if you bother to check on your Pokémon, you'll find (possibly in a scary manner) a Gastly or Haunter appears with fangs and etc. - but you still can't fight it. Now that's a powerful Gastly/Haunter, in this context. Eerily, a Haunter in the anime also showed up which Sabrina couldn't manage to fight, although this might be in part a joke about the Ghost-type's problems with Psychic in the game. While the Tower needn't be disturbing in every situation, if the player makes some sort of clear association between themselves and the mourning trainers, or in general the dying aspect, it can come to seem slightly blood-thirsty.
That said, Pokémon can be a bit creepy generally. It's sort of like wax models or re-constructions of animals, that just show up from time to time in lieu of the actual ones. People often relate to Pokémon, in any context, quite differently to how they would animals in the same way. Just like the animals turn to Pokémon, trainers transition continually from static sprites to battles, and then can't be interacted with in the same way again (mostly), and Pokémon OW sprites are stuck there reminiscing forever like Gym leaders. The protag is silent and says nothing nor objects to anything, and players are expected to fill in the gaps (usually) to explain why this is such an epic adventure or journey - to put this statue in motion. Sadly, G/S doesn't really use this optimally - you can be in the TR Goldenrod saga and still have similar dialogue in the Gym area, and so on. The song 'The Tower' mentions being afraid to change, but knowing that things must change - in general, motion which is trapped in stasis.
There is plenty of this in Pokémon, and hence a sense that 'anything can happen' - so unsurprisingly that is what is conveyed by the haunted location.
Anyway, aside from that, then, in general Pokémon is a game which can easily become uncanny - even played 'normally.' There are tasks given which can hinder you - such as training many Pokémon - and the exhortation to explore and look for new things when you should often not enter or explore such places immediately. The route to the right of Viridian City is an example of this, with a battle which could take you by surprise if you opted to explore. Coming after the Dex, it can serve as a useful reminder of how your Pokémon quest can be derailed by spending too much time on collecting Pokémon and such. Well, if you care about this quest, anyway. Still, exploration is often your enemy in Pokémon games. However, it's not just 'exploration' per se, more going forwards towards cataloguing things, attempting to obtain badges or traversing areas too quickly - in a usual manner. The anime is even worse with this - a lot of focus around visiting Gyms first of all, and being accompanied by Gym leaders, as well as continually throwing Pokémon at Gyms. In that sense, even the Pokémon ghosts are something of a re-assuring factor - despite the game continually leading the player into dark avenues, there is something in-game to attribute this to instead. The game continually sets you off on new quests, but often with little relation to the main game which you are continually sent off from. It's a bit morbid. You're almost in a continual situation (so far as pathos is concerned) of getting lost or being lost, in many places - including a place where you're with a bunch of people, then you walk upstairs and start seeing ghosts just a bit above them. It's vaguely 'uncharted' territory, for most, and yet a notable divergence. Other than that, people like Oak remain still in their requests and evaluations, regardless of the situation you have to deal with, and in general people act like walking statues. This leads to a certain kind of land-scape, which the Tower finds a useful place in.
Merry Christmas, everyone. If your weird tree starts lookin' at you funny, remember you can always fight after.