Games on the Birthday List

We have been busy with Thanksgiving and my son's 9th birthday. We got him to write a wish list. At first, he could think of only two things, Pokemon Silver and Marioland. These are both GameBoy games. I don't quite know how the people at Pokemon have kept this game fad going. Our neighbor had a similar list, but got Pokemon gold and a gameboy survival kit. They are now the happiest of kids.

One of the new and interesting things about the pokemon games is that you can transfer Pokemon from one game into the another game. That is, if you catch a certain valuable Pokemon in the Gold game, and need it in the Silver game, you can link gameboy devices together and trade Pokemon. I have never seen this as part of a game before.
As part of the mission in the Pokemon games, players need to "Catch them all." All the Pokemon are not available in any one game, therefore, players need more games to capture more Pokemon. In the meantime, Pokemon the company continue to invent new Pokemon. What a catch!

How can educator use this in a classroom? If students form a group and each find certain information, maybe solve some math problems and all group members share. Maybe we are doing similar things in our WebQuests.