‘This is impossible!’ Can kids master the video games their parents loved?

Keza MacDonald plays Pokémon Shield For years, I hoped that my children might develop a love of video games – not just any games, obviously, but specifically the ones I like. Naturally my oldest son only wanted to play ad-infested garbage on his iPad and/or Fifa, and my youngest showed no interest at all. What changed this was Pokémon.

Last Christmas I got Let’s Go, Pikachu! out of the cupboard, reasoning that my wee guy might be able to use the simple Pokéball controller that came with it, and Pokémon is now an obsession for both of them. I was delighted. But then we finished Let’s Go, Pikachu!, which was a remake of the Pokémon games of my youth, and they started asking for one of the new ones.

I haven’t played Pokémon seriously since about 2003, so I’m a little trepidatious. They’ve now independently played through Pokémon Shield, which is vaguely set in Britain, if Britain were comprised entirely of castles, villages and London. I have no idea who any of these Pokémon are.

One of them is literally a sentient globule of milk with a face. “That’s Milcery , mama,” explains my four-year-old patiently. Evidently he has acquired encyclopaedic knowledge of the thousand Pokémon that have been invented since I was a child.

I miss my brief period of omniscience, when I knew more than them about virtual monster pets. The longer I play with them, though, the more amazed I am by how beautiful and welcoming Pokémon is now. It’s like a living cart.