Stefan Mileschin

Animal rights group PETA has slammed the Pokémon computer game for painting a rosy picture of "thinly veiled animal abuse".

The day after Nintendo released Pokemon Black 2 and White 2, the latest games in the franchise, PETA issued a statement condeming the games.

It said that Pokémon are treated as unfeeling objects and used for such things as human entertainment and as subjects in experiments.

Apparently Pokémon are stuffed into pokéballs in a similar way to how circuses chain elephants inside railroad cars.

It witters on about how "circus elephants are only let out to perform confusing and often painful tricks that were taught using sharp steel-tipped bullhooks and electric shock prods".

We think it it got a bit distracted here, there are no elephants in Pokémon.

If PTA existed in Unova, our motto would be: "Pokémon are not ours to use or abuse. They exist for their own reasons".

Peta thinks this clear message that should be sent to children so that they feel nice and guilty about the imaginary creatures they have "harmed" inside their computer box.

They have put their comments on their site, which was where we read them. We are not linking to it because it is a fairly rubbish attempt to attract a bit of publicity on the back of a video game release.

PETA also developed and released a flash-based parody game which it calls "Pokémon Black and Blue."

It is clear that no one in PETA has played the game either. It is one of the tamest video games out there and the theme of it is that Pokémon should be treated humanely and live as our equals.

Players are often lectured about the true friendship between man and Pokémon, so we would have thought that was PETA's ideal game.

This is not the first time that PETA has attempted to attract the attention of the game playing public. Last year it hit out at Mario for wearing "fur" that grants the ability to fly. It also was upset about a 2D leaf.

http://news.techeye.net/software/pet...r-animal-abuse