When the word Pokémon comes up most people automatically associate it with little kids.  In reality, there are more people in college who still admit to enjoy Pokémon or will make Pokémon references.
Now, I’m not saying people go out of their way to watch every new episode of Pokémon, but college students still enjoy playing the original Gameboy games of the series.
The main reason why I think Pokémon still holds up is because of the jokes about the flaws of the Pokémon world, such as the evolution of the voltorb is really just the Pokémon being upside down or how Gary Oak in the video games is a tool whose grandfather can’t even remember the name of the children of a town that has a population less than 12.
If you really think about how the game works, it makes other games today seem child friendly compared to Nintendo logic.
The game starts off with a senior citizen who spent years of research on Pokémon giving his grandson and the protagonist the quest to leave home at the age of 10 to travel across the region to catch all 150 Pokémon and battle eight gym trainers to collect badges so you can face the Elite Four and become the Pokémon champion.  In other words he wants two children to go out on a journey and make small animals fight for their amusement and take the money of the people they beat.
It also shows how people will also talk to you kindly if you break into their house; on some occasions they may even give you a Pokémon because, according to Nintendo, that is the only solution.
Also, the idea of capturing small creatures just so the Pokémon prof. can be happy is a terrible driving force for the protagonist.
One of the biggest things that college students are also realizing about the games is the lack of adults.  Think about it, you are a 10 year old who is being raised by a single mom and the elderly citizen who can’t remember the names of people closest to him and is recognized as the smartest person in town.
The majority of people you face up until the third gym badge consists of adults, when you are told that there was a great Pokémon war and all of a sudden you start to realize that maybe most of the adults are dead.  That’s right, death is a subtle theme in Pokémon, but later on they stop being subtle about it when you face three ghost type Pokémon and eventually a dead Marowak… literally a dead Marowak.
One of my favorite things in the game is that they have machines that can teleport one Pokémon from one city to another but they still have to use Pokémon to cut down a small tree.
The rules that Pokémon tries to tell its audience are also funny due to the fact that they tend to break them.Nintendo tells people that a Pidgey evolves into Pidgeotto at level 18 yet for some reason they allow you to catch a Pidgeotto in the viridian forest at level 12.  Why this happens in the game I don’t know but hey, Nintendo logic, right?
It doesn’t stop there though; somehow some of the people in the game thinks it’s a great idea to go into battle with a full team of Magikarp because of Nintendo logic. The rule behind surfing is really hilarious, think about it.  A Pokémon can only swim if it knows the move surf, yet if you catch a Pokémon that you encounter in water and look at its move list t it doesn’t know surf… my first thought would be, why didn’t that Pokémon sink down to the bottom and drown; oh wait, Nintendo logic.
People still do love Pokémon mainly because of nostalgia and the flaws behind their logic.  Nintendo realizes this and they will continue to make more games and unfortunately more new Pokémon to the 500+ list they already have to agonize anyone who has the time to complete a Pokedex.