Pokemon

I first heard the franchise from way back in the early 2000s'. I watched some episodes of the original anime series back when it used to air reruns on Cartoon Network in the mid 2000s'. I know some of the Pokemons (the Kanto starters, Pikachu and Eevee), but I really never got into the franchise proper. But it wasn't until during Thanksgiving Break in 2015 when I was watching an old LPs (Let's Play) of a YouTuber that I used to watch and the game I saw was Pokemon FireRed, the first Pokemon LPs on their channel. I don't know how, but watching that LP, caused the franchise to "clicked" and now I was in it. Later on, I watched their Pokemon Crystal LP and Pokemon Emerald LP. And the funny about that is halfway of watching Emerald, they announced that they're going to start their LP of Pokemon Platinum. So while I try to finish their third Pokemon LP, I was also watching Platinum LP as well!

Eventually, after catching up all LPs of the first three games (they also did two Pokemon spin-off LPs of Pokemon Colosseum and its sequeal Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, which I didn't watch until Winter Break in 2016), I decided that I want to play the game myself, but I only have my 3DS with me. So, I end up buying a used copy of Pokemon X, a Gen 6 and the latest game at the time, on Amazon and I think it took me a month to beat the game!

Later that year, I preorder Pokemon Moon, the Gen 7 game that was going to be released in November 18, 2016. I remember making a mad dash from one of my classes to the Package Center on campus since my copy has arrived and it was about to close for the weekend! As for the game, I play 3/4 of the it before abandoning it as I was an archiect major at the time and I have no time for anything non-school related. It wasn't until a year later after I transfered schools and switched my major is when I finally finished the game by barely beating the Champion.

Then one week before Christmas in 2018, my mom gave me the Nintendo Switch and Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu as an early Christmas gift and I remember liking the artstyle and the remastered music since it's a remake of Pokemon Yellow, a Gen 1 game for the GameBoy Color. But I didn't like the weird way of catching the Pokemon in this game, which was by aiming the Poke Ball with motion controls. Despite that, I beat the game in less than 10 days as I have plenty of free time during Winter Break.

In summer of 2019, I bought Pokemon Crystal for Virtual Console for the 3DS. Unlike the other three games above, this was my first "classic" Pokemon game I played. And it was actually hard! There was no EX Share, so I have to manually grind Pokemon so I can beat the next gym leader. I remember Whintey and her Miltank kicking my ass a few times over before finally beating her! Beside that, my memory of that game is very limit other than that I beat the Elite Four and the Champion.

Around February 2023, I finally managed to play Pokemon Emerald for the Game Boy Advance via emulator. I know some have opinions on whatever emulating old games are legal or not. But the fact I don't have my GameBoy Advance SP anymore and if I did, a used copy of the game is over $130! So, emulating was the only option I had. Despite that, I enjoyed the game. But some of the later gym leader battles were actually hard and I later suffer from burnout trying to grind levels so I can actually beat them! Because of that, it took me almost two months to beat the game (and reset a few times in order to beat the Champion, that jerk).

I have played some of the spin-off Pokemon games, which include Pokemon Shuffle, Pokemon Rumble World, Pokemon Picross for the 3DS and Pokemon Go for the iOS. Funny thing about some of the spin-off games is that I think I played some of them before playing the main series! As for Pokemon Go, I played the game on day 1 and struck around when most of everyone else abandoned when Niantic nerfed some of the things that made the game great when it first came out.

Even seven years later, I still play Pokemon Go. I don't do raids as much anymore since Niantic jacked the prices on the remote raid passes. Then where I currently live, there's no nearby gyms and there is only one Poke stop in my neighborhood (and I live in a suburb of a major city in Texas)! At least one good thing about Pokemon Go is it actually forced me take walks now and everytime I do that, my mom likes to joke that I'm going on a "Poke walk" and to beat up the gyms. That was because when we used to live in Germany from 2019-22, the city we live in have plenty of gyms and I used to flip them all the time until I get gold ranking in them!

As for the other games, I haven't touch Gen 4 or Gen 5 yet and if I do, I'll emulator them too since used copies of the game are also too expsenive to buy (and I don't have income to spend it on)! I didn't touch any games from Gen 8 or Gen 9 due to hearing bad things about the games (mainly the graphic issues that they both had when it was release due to being rushed and the infamous "Dexit" that plauge Gen 8 for the longest time). I know about the remake of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl that came out on the Switch in 2021, but I heard mixed things about the game, so I won't touch it either. However, I hear good things about the spin-offs game from the Switch, which is New Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Legends: Arceus. I haven't played them, but I hope I would one day.