>>37622306My story with the series feels quite odd. To start with, my earliest memories with it were of playing Stadium 2, aimlessly and without even understanding much of the game, since English isn't my native language. My brother had Silver and later Crystal, but he was kinda stingy, so it was an rare and momentous occasion in which I got to either play them, or plug them into the N64. All of Gen 1's main games and Stadium 1 felt like this mysterious side of the games, since I had seen S1 in other places, and we had an older cousin who did own Yellow, and we even had one of his teams saved on our cartridge. I think the furthest I actually completed was just the Gym Leader Castle, all the way to Red.
From there, I remember we were bought a couple of GBAs, along with a few games. I rarely got to see my brother's Sapphire game, since he was also worried I'd erase his save. Shortly after, I found another copy of Sapphire in a bargain bin, boxless. So without understanding multiple versions I doubled up on Sapphire. Similarly, I ironically didn't have the sense to just erase the previous save, so my memories of Hoenn start at Fallarbor, with little more than a Blaziken, a Skarmory, a Spinda and a female trainer named MAY.
A trip to the US later, we got a Gamecube with some games, including Pokémon Colosseum. My brother had begun to grow out of "kiddie games", meaning after a couple of months and separate memory cards, the game was mine to enjoy. Since I was too young to grasp shit in the N64 and I never restarted Sapphire, Colosseum became the first game I actually played through and enjoyed fully. To this day, I still have some of my mons with ribbons for being purified and beating Mt. Battle's 100 floors on Sun and Moon! Afterwards, my campaign across the games played a little more standard for a Dex-filler, and getting into the ritual of blind nuzlocking every new release. As of recently, my Pokémon Bank is filled with over 2000 pokémon from 19 different games.
