Alright, time for the game I thought was going to start this series. In previous entries of this series, I have talked about early gaming memories, games that left an impact on me even though my relationship with them was ultimately fleeting. The first game I ever played and one of the earliest memories of a game that would stick with me for my life, be a hanging mystery over it into adulthood. But today's subject is, perhaps, even more important than either of those because of its longevity. I had simply played those other games, they were things to do for fun when my aunt/uncle/cousins babysat me. But today's subject? This is the first game I ever owned. I had asked for this game myself for either my birthday or Christmas in 1998 and my parents had bought me it, alongside a Game Boy Pocket. This is the big point where video games stopped being a toy I would play with sometimes and start being my dedicated hobby. This is, more than any other game in this series, probably the most important game in my entire gaming history. And as a child in the late 1990s who is just starting to get into gaming, it can only ever be one game. Ladies and gentleman, it's been a long time coming, but welcome to the stage: Pokemon Blue Version.
If you weren't present for Pokemon's North American release, I don't think that you can really grasp how truly massive the franchise felt. Like, I am sure, nowadays Pokemon is bigger than ever, between the large collecting community for the TCG, the massive competitive events for both the TCG and the video games, the massive sales numbers of said video games, the rise of the mobile Pokemon market, the toys, the anime, etc. Especially considering the sales numbers of the mainline Pokemon games have naturally caught up to the numbers that Pokemon had during Pokemania, and it's very likely that the next Generation at the time of writing, Gen X, may in fact surpass it. And there are other moments in Pokemon's lifespan that likely far eclipse it. The summer of Pokemon Go was arguably way more massive than Pokemania ever was, where over a hundred million players were united around this one mobile game and for the first time in many of our lives the noise we all feel eating away at us was quiet. But even as Pokemon has been and likely will continue to be bigger than it ever was, it never felt as massive as it did during Pokemania.
There is a word thrown around by pop culture historians nowadays to describe the pop culture of the latter half of the 20th century, in particular regarding the 80s and 90s. That being "monoculture". The idea of the monoculture is that during the 20th century, due to America's relative wealth and stability, the rise of the middle class, the eventual deregulation and rampant consumerism of television and the centralization of shows, movies, games, etc., that there was formerly a unified popular culture in America. That we would, largely, watch the same must watch TV, go to the same movies, listen to the same popular music, play the same video games, and so on and so on. Now, many people argue both for and against the monoculture, in particular citing that it's easy for us to believe that there was a singular unified pop culture in hindsight due to having the knowledge of what was both popular in the present and would last.
I personally think the monoculture idea has legs in some respects, like Weird Al definitely has a point when he says that doing parodies now would be harder than it was in the 80s, 90s, and 00s because in those days when he would lampoon an artist you generally knew the song or style he was riffing on. Whereas now he could just parody the top 10 songs on the most widely used music streaming platform and there's a good chance that a massive chunk of his audience doesn't even know the song or the artist. Like I don't know who this Tyler Shmock person is but apparently their song has been listened to 47 million times. But at the same time, I do feel like the idea of a monoculture is grossly exaggerated and seemingly meant to argue that the world is more different post-streaming than it actually is. Like sure, you might not know a lot of people who watched whatever Netflix movie that's been apparently watched millions of times, but everyone you know watched Stranger Things, even after the show stopped being good.
If I could be convinced of the monoculture, though, Pokemania is definitely a strong argument for it. It was a rare moment in time where something came out that demanded everyone's attention. I remember it, not well mind you because I was 5, but I certainly do remember it. Pokemon was such a massive pop culture boom that everyone was talking about it, everyone was discussing it. Adults you'd never think could ever find out of about video games, besides ones they might've played decades ago, knew about Pokemon. True story, my grandparents used to babysit me a bunch and my grandfather would tease me about my obsession with Pokemon and I would always be like "they're big scary monsters!" or something to that degree and he would shoot back with "no they're not, Pokemon stands for Pocket Monsters, they fit in your Pocket" and I would get very frustrated by it. And then I found out how big Onix was, that it is canonically almost 29 feet long, and I went back to him like "see, look, Onix is huge" and he went "well I would be scared of that one, I guess".
So, needless to say, Pokemon became THE thing at school. I mean it became THE thing at every school, but it was very prominent at mine too. My memory is that everyone was playing it, but that's more than likely inaccurate. It's more likely that a large chunk of my class was playing it and then there were demographics that didn't. Like the sports people kind of stuck to sports, there were a couple people who always tried to be contrarian, some people were PlayStation kids, etc. But enough of the class was into Pokemon that it was a very prominent part of the day to day life of Kindergarten/First Grade for me. Long before my parents even bought me the game, I was already hooked. I watched the anime religiously, I even had the majority of the Indigo League VHS tapes at one point. My dad worked at a bookstore chain at the time (not the one you're thinking of) and whenever there was a new VHS tape he'd take me out to our closest store to get it. And also a puppet, I had a lot of puppets as a kid. That bookstore is also where I went to in order to buy the Harry Potter books as a kid, because my childhood was just every millennial childhood. Maybe there really was a monoculture back in the day.
And even before I got my chance to "play Pokemon", I was already playing Pokemon. Video games were banned at our school growing up, it was a small independent grade school in a suburb and it was very strict about what we could bring in. Very much a "if we catch you with something, you won't get it back until the end of the year" type of school. Video games were banned. toys were banned, eventually trading cards were banned and someone who I thought was a friend ratted on me that I had brought my Harry Potter trading card game cards to school and had them taken away and I never got them back because they "kept them until the end of the school year" and then I come to find out that the teacher actually just threw them away at the end of the day they were taken. So what we did to play Pokemon is that a bunch of my friends would get together and we would choose which one of us were trainers and which one of us were Pokemon and then we'd have mock Pokemon battles. My friend Allie was always a Pokemon because she was kind of nutty as a kid on account of having unmedicated ADHD and she loved wrestling with kids 3x her size.
This is all to say that even before I played Pokemon myself, I was hooked. Pokemon was already my hyperfixation when I had decided to ask my parents to get it. If I even did. For all I know, my parents just thought "everyone is playing video games now, Pokemon is the video game, we should get it for our child". Or, more likely "he likes Pokemon the show, we should get him Pokemon the video game". It doesn't really matter, what matters is that I had already built up a reputation for myself for being "the Pokemon kid". I remember, I sadly don't have this anymore, but my second favorite stuffed animal of all time and one that got me through a lot of nights after my brother tossed my first favorite behind the washing machine to tease me (he's rescued, don't worry, he sits on my shelf in my room), was little Eevee plushie that used to have a really poofy, soft neck but we washed it and its neck became very stiff and I loved him. It's funny because I'm not a massive fan of Eevee nowadays, but I was on the Eevee train early. Anyways, I was obsessed long before I even played the game. After though? Oh man.
Playing Pokemon for the very first time is, in general, a very special experience. Part of the reason that, while I still will obviously criticize the games when I feel it is necessary, I don't go too hard on Pokemon is that I always feel dirty about it? Like, this is a franchise for children, and ultimately I cannot stop them from having a special, life-changing experience similar to the one I had as a kid. I don't think it's right for me to sit here and make definitive statements about the quality of a Pokemon game when, to the audience it's intended for, it's still going to be as magical as it was for me as a kid. I had never played a game of the size and scale of Pokemon before. Compare Pokemon Blue to the previous games in this series. Lion King is great but it's a very short, quick 2D platformer that covers the events of the movie as quickly and efficiently as possible. Ecco the Dolphin is a much grander adventure but I never saw that growing up and even still, it's a pretty linear sidescroller whose size and scope are more in its atmosphere than its gameplay. Pokemon Blue Version was the very first game to ever make me feel like I was going on an adventure. That this is my story.
And man do I wish I remembered more about that adventure. Recalling specific memories of a game you probably played the opening to like 50 times 30 years ago is hard y'all. To give you an example of how much my memory fails me in this respect: for many many years, when asked what starter Pokemon I started with, I would say Bulbasaur. Bulbasaur makes sense to me. Oak tells you it's going to be the easier path, it is probably my favorite of Ash's team members in the Indigo League section of the anime (Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village might genuinely be my favorite episode in general), because I had a bunch of merchandise, I had like Pokedex books with strategy components to them so I knew the type chart roughly and what gym leaders were present. Which meant I knew Bulbasaur was the best pick matchup wise. It makes logical sense I would choose Bulbasaur.
I did not choose Bulbasaur. I know I didn't. Even if logic meant I would've, even if I have led myself to believe that Bulbasaur was my first starter, I wouldn't have chosen it because, as a child, I had a very weird belief about Pokemon. I believed that, because Charizard and Blastoise were on the box arts of Pokemon Red and Blue, you would get some inherent, undescribed advantage for picking the Pokemon that matches the one on the box. I don't know where I got this information from, I don't know why I believed this, I don't know why I continued to believe this all the way until Diamond and Pearl where I could not longer justify the idea that the starters gave you advantages in certain versions. But I believed it. And as such, child me would've chosen Squirtle. Squirtle was 100% my original starter, there's no way it wasn't Squirtle, and I have just been lying to myself and others for decades.
My poor memory extends to my actual playthrough. I do not know what team members I used when I first played Pokemon Blue. I know I never beat it back in the day, I got past Koga and then could just never figure out what to do next because the game doesn't make it apparent that the roadblock you had before for getting into Silph Co. is gone once you beat Pokemon Tower. So I had to have gotten very far into the game and likely had a pretty dedicated team with me. Obviously, Blastoise would've been there, he's my GOAT apparently. I am tempted to just say that I ran with the first five Pokemon I caught, a bad habit a lot of children have. You get too attached to the early Pokemon and get anxious about switching them out anyways because you already know how these guys work. If you even caught Pokemon at all, I was one of the only people in my friend group who figured that part out, most people powered through with their starters. And they were mostly Charmander heads, how did you know? So like, that would've been Rattata, Pidgey, I probably wouldn't have caught Spearow because of the anime villainizing it, Nidoran I guess, likely Nidoran F, probably Caterpie, and then like. Jigglypuff.
But then I think about the fact that I was an anime fan. I wouldn't have just used whatever, I would've tried to catch and use as many Pokemon as Ash did. Obviously you can't do that 1:1 in Red and Blue, you could only really do it in Yellow (and even then, not entirely because Yellow stops making decisions to adapt the anime like halfway through). So I probably would've picked up my Squirtle, caught a Pidgey, caught a Caterpie, caught a Pikachu, realized my team was insufficient at handling my problems, caught a Nidoran, realized that I wanted to catch 'em all, and started filling up my empty slots with random Pokemon until I stumbled into another anime Pokemon, which wouldn't be for a very long time in Pokemon Red and Blue. And I would've given up by then, probably, because that would've been the Safari Zone.
But also also, I know that I loved playing with new toys. I loved changing out my team to train new ones, to find a group that I really liked. I didn't do dedicated team building until Generation V with B2W2 (shoutouts to my first dedicated squad, Emboar, Lucario, Ampharos, Gothitelle, Altaria, and Wailord, they were my Trick Room sisters), but I would try and use everything at least until it evolved. And I remember, boy do I remember, my sheer frustration with trade evolutions. There was something I wanted that was locked behind a trade, and I cannot tell you what it is, given where I stopped playing it could've been anything, but I remember wanting to trade and not knowing anyone who owned a Link Cable. I never traded at all until they introduced wireless trading in FRLG. So I am just going to tell you the team that feels the most right to me and we'll just accept it, cool? Blastoise, Pidgeot, Nidoqueen, Machamp, Jolteon, Exeggutor. It's not right. It's really not right. But that feels the most right to me in my soul, and that's why we're running with it. It is very likely to be the most comprehensive and diverse team I would've run given the Pokemon I had access to, the things I was going into the game desiring, and also it doesn't have a Fire type. I have been a fire type hater since day one and it's still true bby!!!
The other thing that muddies the waters for me to remember is that I restarted games very often when I was a kid, and especially Pokemon games. What I would do is that I would play the game up until a point where I would a hit. That wall might be difficulty based, it might be that I did not know where the go, it doesn't really matter. The point is that I would just hit a wall. Instead of attempting to find a way forward past said wall, however, I would just. Restart the game. Redo the opening over and over again until I would inevitably hit the wall again and restart. I joked about "playing the opening 50 times 30 years ago" and while I don't have an exact number, it happened often enough that I know I started playthroughs with all three starters multiple times. I remember my last playthrough on my original cart was the first time I beat Brock with Charmander and got through a significant portion of the game with him. I for some reason remember having a level 24 Charmeleon specifically, which means I probably made it through Misty and was training for Surge. As such even if I did remember team members, it'd be nearly impossible for me to determine which playthrough they came from at this point.
What I remember, instead, is how much this game caused me to come out of my shell. I wasn't necessarily a "shy kid", I think if anything I've retreated into myself way more as I've gotten older. I'm on the autism spectrum and as a kid I just had no filter. I was extroverted to a fault. But I had trouble connecting to people, I was very loud and a lot and didn't really know how to tone it down enough to talk to people. But now I had an interest that other people understood. Now I had a connection point. We would talk about our favorite Pokemon, share tips and secrets, discuss the anime. We would continue to "play Pokemon" at recess, at least until we moved playgrounds and the new one was primarily harder concrete and so we could no longer wrestle. We would bring our cards into school and look over them at recess (my very first Pokemon card ever was an Ekans that my brother found on the street and brought home to me, which in hindsight probably started me on my path of loving Poison types). And yes, I realize I literally just said not too long ago that my school banned fun that wasn't school related, we were sneaky about it. Everyone we doing it, I was just one of the only people to get caught doing it because someone who apparently didn't like me very much ratted me out.
At this point, I was already gaining reputation as "the Pokemon kid". A reputation I would carry with me for my entire life until very recently. We did this thing in first grade where we would trace our hands and then decorate them however we wanted and our teacher would staple them all together in a giant roll and my hand has a Pikachu tattoo on it. That's how I chose to decorate. I wasted a lot, and I do mean A LOT of Scholastic Book Fairs on buying Pokemon books that were just novelizations of episodes of the anime I had already seen, and not even like good novelizations. Literally just transcripts of the episode. I went to see Blues Clues Live as a kid and my parents bought me my own Handy Dandy Notebook and I burned through all the pages as soon as I got home by drawing my Pokemon cards. Which I'm mad about, I wish I still had that Handy Dandy Notebook. And because my parents would buy me literally all Pokemon stuff, I was kind of the authority figure on Pokemon in my class (again, some things never change). I figured out how to catch Pokemon before most people did, how to train them, I had all the books that told you where to find rare Pokemon or how to evolve them. I wasn't "popular", I was never popular, but I was in demand. But the greatest resource I had was that I had older cousins who were in the perfect age range to both play Pokemon and know more about it than I did.
I was the kid who knew about Missingno. In hindsight this knowledge is actually probably why I never finished Pokemon Blue. My cousin talked me through the steps on how to get Missingno, this is why I'm even confident that I had beaten Koga because I definitely did Missingno. But they played kind of a prank on me, because after I did it, I excitedly told my cousin I had and they went "you just ruined your game file". Because you know, that was the rumor, that Missingno would corrupt your file if you did the glitch. Panicking, I quickly reset my game so it wasn't corrupted, only for them to then tell me that I was overreacting and it didn't actually do anything besides duplicate stuff. These were different cousins than the cousins from entries 1 and 2, for the record, I had allies and opps in my cousin pool. But, I used this knowledge to become "the guy" at recess, letting people cheat out as many Master Balls and healing items they'll never use as they wanted. It was a high I've been chasing for my entire life, being the guy who could tell people the secrets hiding under this adorable little kid's game.
I can also say, very confidently, that Pokemon forever changed the course of my life. Like, I can only speculate what Ed would've been like if it wasn't for Pokemon, I might've latched onto other gaming hyperfixations, but if I had to guess: I would've been really into books. Like REALLY into books. Too into books, like, in an uncomfortable way. BookTok coded. Anyways, Pokemon being my main hyperfixation led me to play more video games. My very first home console that I ever owned was the Nintendo 64, and I asked for it specifically because of the Pokemon games that were coming out on it. I ended up not getting much else besides it, by the idea of me owning a game console past the Game Boy spawned forth from Pokemon. The later releases of Colosseum and XD on the Nintendo GameCube inspired me to purchase that system, and from there I played my first Zelda, my first Mario, my first Metroid, my first Mega Man unfortunately. And getting invested in those series continued to lead me on my gaming journey, something I would maybe not have done if I hadn't been swept up in Pokemania. I am here writing to you right now because of Pokemon Blue.
But the winds began to change. It is not accurate to call Pokemon a fad, because it's obviously long lasting and is probably bigger now than it ever was, but Pokemania definitely was a fad. Generation 2 was on the horizon, Gold and Silver were imminent, and less people were on board. Fewer people were going to buy Gold and Silver than their predecessors, either because they already had their Pokemon fixed fulfilled through Red and Blue, they had aged out of the demographic for Pokemon, they were just not as into it now that it wasn't a huge craze, or maybe after playing Pokemon they realized they didn't like it in the first place. They were moving onto other interests, Harry Potter, YGO, Beyblade, Star Wars, superheroes, skateboarding, and any other number of interests that went through the schoolyard back in those days. Those who stuck to Pokemon were a much smaller and tighter knit demographic, we ended up gravitating towards each other as we played through Gold and Silver. By all accounts a much better game, but it's difficult not to feel, especially in hindsight, that Gold and Silver lost a lot of the magic of Pokemon Red and Blue because it wasn't a massive phenomenon.
Of course, as a kid, you don't think of games like that. Basically everyone saw Gold and Silver as a replacement for Red and Blue. It was, in a sense "everything you loved about Red and Blue but bigger and better". I'm not going to go into this here but nowadays I don't really agree with that notion, but back then it definitely felt like Gold and Silver were replacements for Red and Blue. Combine that with the fact that Pokemon Yellow also came out in the meantime and that allowed me to play through the anime essentially, which is kind of what I wanted to do anyways, and my beloved Pokemon Blue kind of fell to the wayside. The fact that I was doing a Charmander run probably didn't help, again, Fire type Pokemon hater, day one, this is not a safe space for Charizard fans, I will give you Stealth Rock PTSD. By all accounts I was done with Pokemon Blue. Which led me to make a decision that I don't necessarily regret but I kind of wish I hadn't done it in hindsight because it meant I lost the first game I ever owned.
So, in 2001-ish, I moved churches for the first time. My mom was a music minister professionally and the church I had been at had become a hostile environment for her, and an old family friend had recently moved back into town to preach at a different church and wanted my mom on his staff. So we moved from our existing congregation to a new one and I began the process of inundating myself into that area. There was a kid there who was an immigrant, adopted by missionary parents who worked in China and who had brought him back to the States. He was little and his parents, being missionaries, weren't the wealthiest people. A lot of their money went to the work, you know. But they had scraped together enough to get him a Game Boy, so that he could play video games. But like, he didn't have a lot of games for it, his family couldn't afford the premiere titles, so after much consideration I passed on my copy of Pokemon Blue to him. After all, I had Gold now, which fulfilled my Pokemon fix. And this was 2001/2002, Ruby and Sapphire were on the horizon and I was about to even "upgrade" from Gold (RSE are among my least favorite mainline Pokemon games nowadays). So even my current Pokemon game was about to be overtaken by an upgraded version. And, within a couple years, FireRed and LeafGreen would hit and I would have the "definitive version" of Kanto. I miss that copy of Blue a lot, not that it would give me some insight into what kind of trainer I was growing up. Just... it sucks losing your first game, you know? I don't regret it, given the context, but I do wish I still had it.
This is not where our story ends though, because of course it isn't. If you know anything about the Pokemon fandom, you know the story of Gen 1 never ends. Which is funny because they often say Gen 1 doesn't have a story in the first place. So, I had the (mis)fortune of being kind of raised online. I was given pretty unrestricted access to the internet growing up and a lot of my discussion with people came from the online space. I frequented GameTrailers forums and YouTube comments sections. I watched retro game reviewers and soaked up their opinions. It has done irreparable damage to my media literacy, I was a major fan of cats like the Nostalgia Critic or Linkara who don't make like. Good reviewing content. And instead just steal from MST3K except they're also summarizing the thing they're riffing on. And I was perhaps too present for the rise of online Pokemon fandom. I remember when Bulbapedia had in-depth articles about literally every ship in the entire fandom and displayed those proudly, and didn't just keep the ones there is evidence for and bury them under a "Project" that makes them difficult to find.
This is all to say that I was in the perfect place to encounter the scourge of the Pokemon fandom: the Genwunner. I was very into Pokemon when Black and White came out, I won't talk about those games that much either as Black and White will be on this series too. Being very into Pokemon when Black and White came out and being very online when it did meant that I was bound to encounter "Genwunners". A derogatory term used by the Pokemon fandom to describe a toxic subset of Pokemon fans who either greatly preferred or only enjoyed the first generation of Pokemon and generally look down upon the games that came after. They were becoming a problem throughout Generation IV, as that was when the people who would've grown up on Gen 1 were in or finishing college and would've been around to be the loudest, but they particularly took off in the midst of Generation V. Namely due to the response towards many of Generation V's more controversial decisions (like only having new Pokemon, which Genwunners saw as a failure both because they did not like the new Pokemon and they believed it was antithetical to the nature of Pokemon).
Now, I just want to say, the Genwunner hate in hindsight was dumb. Genwunners were not as big of a problem as they seemed to be. The Pokemon fandom consistently treated Genwunners as if they were the biggest problem they have ever or will ever face. That these were toxic people with bad takes fueled by an inaccurate view of the original games and that if we did not combat this perspective by highlight either their double standards or showing that the modern Pokemon games are great in comparison, they would overrun the fandom and we would lose sight of what makes Pokemon special. Genwunners aren't really around anymore, and its not because the fandom won a war with them, it's that they stopped being 18-26. They stopped having the infinite freetime that college gave them and started working, raising families and stuff like that. And this was the early 2010s where you could not make easy money by ranting about Brie Larson online, hate content was not a profitable niche yet, so these Genwunners had to back off. It's especially ludicrous in hindsight because, it turns out, EVERY generation has Genwunners. Genwunners were treated as an invading force to unified fandom but ask a Gen III kid about how they feel about Gen IV or a Gen IV kid about how they feel about Gen V and you'll see much worse toxicity than anything Genwunners ever put down.
But, at the time, it seemed like Genwunners were the biggest threat the fandom had ever faced. So much so that proving that Gen 1 was not that great sort of became a call to action among the Pokemon fandom. As if anything we were going to say was going to change the minds of people whose defining argument is that Gen 1 was better because it was the one they played as a kid. This lead to a complete restructuring of how the fandom talks about Gen 1. I think the idea that Gen 1 was a bit overrated was starting to take root anyways, especially as we were firmly transitioning into Gen 2 nostalgia during BW, but it became kind of a fandom philosophy.
While we had always acknowledged and poked fun at the glitches in Gen 1, in the wake of Genwunners, it now became a targeted campaign. The Pokemon fandom sought to catalog every glitch they could possibly find to prove that Generation 1 was "objectively" a worse game than common knowledge said it was so that the Genwunners would be dissuaded that their childhood was good, I guess. Gen 1's now infamous sprites were under scrutiny for the first time, as Genwunners would always state that the art of the older games was better. The lack of story was criticized for the first time, especially in the wake of Black and White which had an amazing story. Every aspect of the game's design became a point of contention, even the parts that are honestly really good. The Pokemon fandom, in a desire to "protect the series from toxic nostalgia", turned itself against Gen 1.
And you know what? I bought it. I bought that Genwunners were a serious problem and that it was our responsibility to combat against. It was difficult not to at the time, many prominent voices in the Pokemon community were almost constantly making videos and posts about how Gen 1 was a broken mess. At best, people talked about it as a great video game for its era but that it had since aged poorly, which was honestly a damning statement in that era as we were in the midst of a retro gaming boom. Like NES nostalgia was just on its way out, SNES nostalgia was at the forefront, N64 nostalgia was starting to find its place. The idea games could age poorly was almost heretical, so Pokemon Red and Blue doing so as the "best case scenario" was condemning. At worst though, people would act like the games were never that good to begin with, that it was being carried by a fad and that the Pokemon series only could go up. And it got so charged at points that liking Gen 1 at all would get people putting words in your mouth unless you were ready to denounce a million things about it each time you said that.
In short, I forsake the most important game in my entire gaming history. Now, I was never on board with the idea Pokemon Red and Blue were bad games. I did, however, get really on board with the idea that the first generation was a stepping stone, that what it did for the Pokemon franchise could not be overstated but it also had far been eclipsed by the subsequent titles. An opinion that only got more solidified due to the next couple Generations and the introduction of Mega Evolution and Regional variants which were, at first, very Kanto centric. It became very easy to state that Pokemon as a franchise was being bottlenecked by Kanto, that its obsession with Gen 1 nostalgia was creatively stifling it. Which is not the reason why Pokemon XY were creatively stifled, let me tell ya, but it seemed like the games were being actively sabotaged by an obsession with Gen 1 nostalgia. Pokemon fans had already been sick of Kanto by this time, many Pokemon fans will state that we have been to Kanto too many times between the Gen 1 games, the Gen 2 games, the Gen 1 remakes, and the Gen 2 remakes all being in back-to-back-to-back Generations. Even though one of the reasons Generation 2 is often cited as the best Generation IS that you get an entire second region to explore and you get to see how the region evolves. But I digress. It seemed like we should be done with Kanto, that we should put it back on the shelf and not touch it for like 20 years.
And at the worst time they possibly could, Pokemon released the second Gen 1 remake: Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee. LGPE seemed to confirm what a lot of people thought about the Pokemon series at this point, myself included. That Kanto was holding Pokemon back and their constant tapping from that well has been causing it to run dry. LGPE is a controversial game in general due to its radical gameplay shift and attempts to appeal to a group that has no reason to make the jump to mainline Pokemon, the Go players. It oversimplifies the Pokemon formula, focusing more on "being cute" and "being like Pokemon Go" than classical Pokemon conventions like team building. You're meant to literally catch everything you come across and then convert the ones you don't need into candy to buff the Pokemon you are keeping rather than focus on training. But this simplicity also seemed pointed. Like Kanto had become a region with so little to concretely add to a series that had long since surpassed it that it has become self-parody. A region for nostalgia baiting, fanservice, and to make a group of people who did not want to play mainline Pokemon hopefully pickup a mainline Pokemon game.
This was also when I was, just in general, reevaluating my own relationship with nostalgia. In fact, I honestly might go so far as to say that one of the driving forces to make me reevaluate my relationship with nostalgia was this growing resentment for the Kanto region. I had realized at this point that I had cloaked myself in nostalgia, both my own and others', and it was becoming unsatisfactory. I was simply cutting myself off from new experiences and clinging to games I was more and more feeling pretty mixed about. So the idea of clinging to Gen 1, clinging to my nostalgia for these games, was feeling more and more like something that I didn't want to do. That I was personally opposed to, in fact, and kind of still am. Gen 1 was something that was obviously always going to be important to me, but I felt like it was something I should keep in the past. That it held little value to me in the present, especially at a time where my wants for gaming were so radically shifting. Generation 1 was something I used to love, but it seemed like the time had come for me to move on.
...at least that's what I thought. For many years, I thought that was where the story of Pokemon Blue would end for me. As a game I played as a kid and was foundational for me but I had long since moved past. But in the past few years, that's changed. I don't know why but I got really in the mood to play Pokemon again from the start during the pandemic. Like REALLY play through it. In a way that is completely unfeasible given the many games I also wish to play. Now, I did not get very far into this project ultimately because I have too many other games to play and like. Replaying every Pokemon game is such a massive task, you know. Like, I was sitting there at one point and remembered I would have to replay XY and I went "nah, I think I'm good, actually." But, the project went far enough to where I played through the first couple Gens. And playing Pokemon Red and Blue for the first time as an adult did something to me. I had played these games "as an adult" previously, of course, when they released on the 3DS VC I ran through them a couple times. But like, I don't think I need to tell you that playing Kanto so soon after the Genwunner stuff and right in the midst of the criticism that Pokemon was overreliant on Gen 1 nostalgia doesn't make you like playing through Gen 1.
This replay of Gen 1 was the first time I was able to see Gen 1 with fresh eyes in decades. Divorced entirely from the Pokemon fandom's contempt for it, divorced from my own resentment towards how much Game Freak mines it for nostalgia, just allowing myself to feel these games for the first time since I was a child. And it was good. Like REALLY good. Like shockingly good, actually. There is so much in Generation 1 that I found myself really appreciating, so many intentional design elements that later games just don't have anymore. So many unique ideas that the franchise has kind of gotten rid of in future titles, primarily due to designing around a competitive scene that makes up a substantial part of Pokemon's focus. As I played Gen 1, and more importantly, as I let Gen 1 set with me, I came to realize something: Pokemon Red and Blue are my favorite Pokemon games. Not just that, Pokemon Red and Blue, particularly Blue version because it's the one I grew up with, are among my favorite video games of all time.
Like, take Brock for example. Brock is one of the most mocked gym leaders of all time. He has two very easy to deal with Pokemon, one of which has arguably the worst stat layout in the entire game. In the first Generation he doesn't have a single move of his type on any of his Pokemon, relying instead on his Pokemon's high defense to outlast his opponent's Pokemon. And his signature move just lets his opponent get two free turns to end him, or, barring that, lets them sit for two turns and either setup or heal. Brock seems like one of the worst designed gym leaders in the game's history. But genuinely, I think the opposite is true. I think it is important that Brock is designed how he is, because what Brock is designed to do is teach children that they can't just mash A. They have to learn how to play the game.
Brock's fight is entirely designed around being a giant wall, you deal very little damage to him or his Pokemon if you are just using the default attacking move on your Pokemon, and in return he can deal massive damage back to you with Bide. It's why Onix is designed how it is, a Pokemon lacking in every stat except for Defense, which is a ludicrously high number. Brock is designed to teach the player that they have to learn how to play the game, either by using type advantages or statuses or catching other Pokemon. Teaching them how Pokemon works through the game's first real boss fight. This is something that no other Pokemon game really does, you'll usually either be given moves on your starter to easily deal with the first obstacles or the first gym leader will be cake. Brock in Gen 1 is actually very good game design, and you knowing how to outplay him is proof that it worked.
Replaying Gen 1 made me realize why certain Pokemon, especially in the early days, were just bad. Nowadays it feels like Pokemon has adopted a design ideal of "every Pokemon you encounter in your journey being at least a little bit usable into the endgame". There are certainly still "bad Pokemon" in each generation but on the whole, if you pick up a Pokemon and go "I want to use this", it'll probably be usable into the late game. And to be clear, this is a good decision, especially as Pokemon becomes more and more about forming a core team of six and bonding with those six Pokemon. But in Gen 1, Pokemon were bad, like, decisively bad. Fully evolved stat totals in the 300s bad. The reason was, well, the catchphrase of the franchise. Gotta catch 'em all. You were not meant to grow attached to a specific set of 6 Pokemon, you were supposed to be always catching whatever you came across and then shaping your team based on the area you're in and the challenges you'll be facing. And if a specific Pokemon isn't up to snuff? You trade it out for something better. You weren't meant to be going "I want to use these six and I won't catch anything else besides that", you were meant to be letting the journey shape what ends up on your team. And only making the decision of what your "real team" is on your E4 run after having experienced a wide variety of Pokemon and knowing what works best for you.
I truly appreciated stone evolutions for the first time on this playthrough. Something I feel like the series has lost over the years is its actual RPG elements, the parts of it that force players to make decisions and then live with the consequences of said decisions. Pokemon nowadays tends to favor having every element as accessible as possible, both for making the most fun play experience for new and returning players and also because they need to prioritize a competitive scene that demands having every option as available as possible so that the biggest roadblock in the tournament scene is your play and not how much time you can devote to it. But, the old way of handling stone evolutions is the better RPG design. It makes the player choose between having more power immediately or training a Pokemon's potential to evolve it later on in the journey. And does it suck having to make that choice? Yes. That's why it's good. Games gotta suck a little to be good, y'all.
The more environmental style of storytelling is also something that is lost in modern Pokemon games. Nowadays Pokemon, ironically given that it seems like they've done a lot of legwork to remove a lot of the RPG-ness of their games, focuses very heavily on grandiose RPG storylines. Games where you fight gods and stop villains with ambitions of recreating the universe in their own image. I'm not going to sit here and tell you the simplisitic storytelling of Gen 1 is better than those later games because like, that's not what they were trying to accomplish so why would a simpler story be better. But I will say that I really appreciate how Gen 1 communicates information to you. It tells you about rare Pokemon through just exploring the world and seeing them. Having areas where rare Pokemon are sanctioned off in a game preserve, highlighting to the player that these are special Pokemon. Showing you directions where rare Pokemon might appear through interacting with the world rather than leading you in a specific direction. Having the player go through areas that were abandoned in the recent past and learning about the information they found. Generation 1 has a distinctive feel of being an adventure you are going on and learning about in real time, something that the later games don't prioritize as much with their more dedicated plots.
I will never sit here and tell you that the criticisms leveled at Gen 1 are inaccurate. It is a buggy mess. It is unbalanced. It is artistically eyebrow raising. And especially if what you enjoy about Pokemon is the lore or the character writing or the ability to play with whatever team combo you want, Gen 1 is going to be insufficient for you. But I think the fandom has gotten so used to hating on Gen 1, used to proving that it isn't all it was once believed to be, that we've almost lost what makes Gen 1 so special. All these things that it does uniquely well that the series either does not or can not prioritize anymore. It's kind of a brilliant little adventure and I think we are losing something by continuing to treat it as outdated, something we have moved past so the franchise could soar. The Genwunners are gone, and in their wake we have grown to hate the object of their love for no good reason.
Falling back in love with Gen 1 was sort of a healing experience for me. It's funny, I talk a lot about nostalgia on this blog, and I do so in real life too. I think the fact that so many of us chase nostalgia isn't healthy. That we are closing ourselves off from having new experiences to encase ourselves in the familiar. I tend to be very critical of people who only engage with the familiar. But playing Gen 1 felt like learning to reconnect with my own nostalgia in a healthy way. To not be defined by it but to learn to be one with it. I connected with my inner child in a way I haven't in many years and it felt like we were having a conversation. That we were understanding each other. I sometimes can feel like reconnecting with childhood is a war I'm trying to win, that I need to prove I'm beyond that, that I need to prove that I am not defined by the opinions I held when I was young. But playing through Gen 1 again like this gave me the space to love it again, and to connect to the me I once was in a mature and healthy way. It was liberating. It was healing.
Pokemon Blue may not be my favorite game, and there likely will be times in my life where I don't consider it a favorite anymore. I do go back and forth on what my favorite Pokemon game is a lot, my opinion always changing and evolving. But it is, unquestioningly, the most important game in my entire life. It is not just a game that shaped me, it is THE game that shaped me. I owe it literally everything. You know me right now because of this game. You, who is reading this post, know me and probably think I'm pretentious and need to stop using a million words to say one sentiment right now because of this game. And I'm happy to say that I love it, maybe more now than I ever had before. I'm still a Fire type hater to this day, btw, Fire type worst type, Grass and Water forever.
