I’ve often thought, actually, that being a friendly NPC would be more fun than being the hero, at least some of the time. Being a Gym Leader would obviously be extremely baller, and I even know what my team would be if I were (take a guess in the comments at what type of Gym I’d have and what my team would be, go on!), or perhaps being a merry merchant who stocks any and every item under the sun, but won’t sell it for any less than it’s worth! (Maybe that’s why I got along with Recettear, which I’ve… still not finished my playthrough of. Whoops.)

So when the Later Levels QOTM for May turned out to be my couture compatriot, Pix, asking this…

If you could live in any video game settlement (ie a town, village, city, etc), where would you choose to live and why; and what role would you play in it?

… I thought: ‘well, what a great question!’ And then I realised I didn’t actually have much in the way of a good, specific answer. In fact, I still don’t as I type this, and I have my Poe-pastiche from last month’s QOTM to live up to, so this is a bit tricky.

Okay, let’s think about this. If I were to live in a video game world, I’d certainly want it to be a happy one where villages don’t regularly come under attack from undead dragons or anything like that. But then again, variety is the spice of life, so perhaps I don’t want it to be an entirely peaceful world, maybe just one where NPCs are generally not all that likely to get burned/ stolen from/ murdered.

And what would my role be? Well, I’d want to be someone who could make a decent little living, so I’m either someone who serves a purpose that the heroes of the world will pay me for or I’m a member of some sort of guild, most likely.

Y’know what? It might seem like an obvious answer, but I’m gonna go back to my first thought: Pokémon. My first thought of being a Gym Leader seems like it might be quite stressful, though, when I think about actually doing the day-to-day of the job, so perhaps one of the friendly Bike Shop owners?

These guys have a pretty great time: own their own business, which usually isn’t doing all that well, so they give a free bicycle to the first ten-year-old who passes through in order to make sure that somebody’s riding around on one of their products. It’s great advertising!

That said, it might get a bit monotonous doing nothing other than bicycle sales (and/ or non-sales) every day forever. I mentioned that I liked Recettear, but I don’t think I want to go into retail again just yet.

Maybe I could be a radio host! At least a couple of the regions in the Pokémon universe have their own radio stations; some  broadcast Poké-playlists, while others are talk shows featuring special guests like Professor Oak himself, sharing all his wisdom and such. I’ve actually done radio before: I had a radio show on my university’s student radio network where I chatted nonsense and played whatever the heck music I felt like, and I also got to do a ton of weird voices when I was part of – and later head of – the network’s drama section (basically, we put on a bunch of terrible radio plays, sketch shows, the occasional audionovela, all featuring the atrocious voice acting talents of yours truly!).

What other sorts of services feature in Kanto, Johto, and all-the-other-tohs? Well, there are always Trainers wandering around to battle; I think I would like to have some Pokémon companions, but I don’t think I’d be a battler. Perhaps I could run a Day Care?

Hm, maybe not. Those breeding groups are weird.

There’s the guy who captains the boat, the guys who block off bridges until the kid has enough badges, the guys who develop the software that allow people to store their sentient friends in a computer in the back of a store, the fishermen… the world of Pokémon contains all sorts of people, and I think I might just have thought of the one I’d most like to be.

From Gen 3 onwards (or at least, I know Gen 3 definitely has it, no idea whether it continues into later ones), there are contests that you can enter your team into to win ribbons and other cool prizes. You can enter different categories of competition including Beauty, Coolness, Toughness, Cleverness and Cuteness, and… well, these contents basically boil down to being glorified Pokémon fashion shows.

So, Pix, you who’ve been my compatriot in all things fashion, you asked which gaming world I’d like to live in and what I’d do there. I would live in a Pokémon world, and I’d be… a fashion contest judge.