Favorite Answer

If a world really existed that actually had Pokémon in it, then life, society, and culture would be entirely different in the following ways:

If people were aware of Legendary Pokémon, then there would be a mad rush to get them. There's not a single person alive who doesn't think it would be awesome to control godlike abilities. Everyone would like to have an easier life, everyone would like to be in a higher position than they are now. If it's possible to take a 15 minute bike ride from your house to a lake and catch the God of Water, then you'd do it. Instead, we see countless individuals just sitting around, plodding about their mundane, pointless lives, when THE POWERS OF THE GODS are a few towns over, at the cost of a few dozen Ultra Balls. If godlike beasts were just sitting around in caves waiting to be captured, people would be all over them. These Pokémon would not be wasting away, they would be hunted down every moment of their lives.

Perhaps most people in the Pokémon world don't take the legends seriously, kind of like how most people consider Bigfoot to be a hoax. But there WOULD be some crazy people who actually believe in the Articuno legends, and guess what - they would be right. Pokémaniacs would be crazy enough to devote their lives to catching Zapdos or whatever, and they would eventually track it down. What's even scarier is that all of the power of the gods would then be in the hands of a crazy, obsessive loony.

Supposedly, the main character of the Pokémon games is a prodigy who possesses phenomenal skill as a trainer and a pure heart, both of which allow him to capture legendary beings that no one else can. However, I have two words for you:

Master Ball.

Even if you ignore the legendaries, people would still be abusing Pokémon in general. You hate someone? Catch an Onix and tell it to roll over that person's house. Actually, you could probably use 6 Onix to hold a whole town hostage. Just make sure there aren't any water or grass Pokémon and you should be fine.

A trainer with sufficiently powerful Pokémon would be able to do whatever the hell he wanted and NO one would be able to stop him except for another equally powerful Pokémon trainer. Let's say the police are packing Pokémon, too...they'd better be walking around with lvl 100 Pokémon, or else they're just so much fodder to be chewed up and spat out. People would use Pokémon for whatever they damn well pleased until they were taken out by a S.W.A.T. sniper.

Pokémon have magical, godlike abilities and can cause catastrophic devastation; putting that kind of power into anyone's hands is insane. Giving a child a Pokémon is worse than giving him a loaded gun, it's like giving him a nuke. A stupid kid could make a Muk spew poison into a city's water supply, or use Flamethrower to start a forest fire, or cause a Rock Slide that crushes a mountainside town, killing hundreds. So many disasters could be brought about by Pokémon that it would be absolute insanity to put that power into anyone's hands, even the law or the army. If Pokémon were not outlawed altogether, their usage would be heavily regulated. At the very least, giant Pokémon such as Wailord would be outlawed, as would any Pokémon who can use devastating attacks such as Earthquake or Surf.

However, owning a Pokémon would practically be necessary, since you need a Pokémon for things as simple as walking through tall grass. If it is impossible to do something as simple as leaving your hometown without a Pokémon beside you, then it would be MANDATORY for every citizen to own a Pokémon. But, at the same time, it's absolutely insane to put a blindly obedient supernatural creature into anyone's hands. The only logical answer is that tall grass would be eliminated as soon as possible, or that humans would be required to own at least one docile Pokémon in order to survive in the outside world. Since the Pokémon would be a necessity, children would probably be assigned a Pokémon at birth, and share an almost symbiotic relationship with the Pokémon while growing up.

Pokémon have so many advantages that they would probably be used for every aspect of life. I just discussed the reasons why it's foolish to allow anyone to own a Pokémon, but I also have to examine the useful properties of Pokémon. Almost every form of work or labor can be completely bypassed by a Pokémon. There's at least one type of Pokémon to serve the purpose of every tool that mankind has ever invented. If we had Pokémon at our disposal, no human would ever do manual labor again, not with Machamps at our fingertips. There's at least one type of Pokémon that can produce any kind of energy, so forget about engines, generators, or any man-made energy producers, just use an army of Raichu to do the job. People could use Pokémon for everything, for every aspect of life where Pokémon apply.

Cars? What cars? Cars would never have been invented in the Pokémon world, nor would boats or planes have ever been invented. There's no reason to invent any vehicles when Pidgeots can fly at Mach 2, and all Abra come with Teleport as their first default move. The moment that Pokémon were domesticated and trained, all human ingenuity and invention would come to a grinding halt, and Pokémon would simply do everything for us. In fact, if you catch a Gardevior or a Lopunny, you wouldn't ever need a girlfriend. In the Pokémon world, a person who doesn't use Pokémon would be as ***-backwards as a person from our world who doesn't use any electronic devices.

If Pokémon were real, there would be more than just a handful of scientists interested in compiling information about them all. Considering the many uses and properties of Pokémon, modern man would organize a systematic and efficient campaign to discover, classify, categorize, and control every type of Pokémon. The process of listing and detailing every Pokémon in existence would have began decades if not centuries before the Pokémon games begin, and by the time the main character gets his or her hands on a Pokedex, it would already be completely full. You don't send TWO KIDS to complete an encyclopedia; you send an elite team of experts to complete the list. And you don't wait until some random day to do it, you do it every day until it's done from the moment you know Pokémon exist.

An organized group of Pokémon Trainers led by a madman seeking world domination would have the potential to topple nations. If there were any such thing as Team Rocket, it would be a national emergency. The police would be after them nonstop. The army would be after them. Pokémon have the size, strength, and magical abilities to crush anything they want, and if a group of people were armed with enough sufficiently powerful Pokémon, they would be stronger than any army.

Pokémon are intelligent enough to campaign for their own rights. Pokémon are sapient. They can make plans, communicate, use logic and reasoning, exercise compassion, form societies, and even learn languages. If Meowth could learn English, then there are doubtlessly other Pokémon who also have the same potential. Look at Alakazam for example - his Pokédex entry describes him as having an IQ of over 5000. Pokémon are intelligent beings, that have the capacity to become just as sophisticated and civilized as human beings, and if Pokémon really existed, they would not be content to remain pets and slaves. Pokémon would organize themselves to topple their human oppressors, and would be campaigning for their own rights.

In the Pokémon world, all forms of travel should be considered irrelevant, because mankind has invented teleportation technology. Pokémon can be stored in the form of energy and teleported across countries distances. Sylph Co. has invented 'warp panels' that instantaneously transport you elsewhere. At this point, almost all forms of travel would no longer be relevant. The teleportation technology that mankind has apparently invented would replace many aspects of daily life.

Humans have the ability to create Pokémon, thereby making themselves gods. Porygon and Castform are relatively weak, while Mewtwo turned on its creators, but once humans perfect the ability of creating customized Pokémon, we will truly obtain the powers of the gods, and daily life will transform in ways that we cannot even conceive presently.

Therefore, I'd have a balanced team that allows me to control the world.