https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnt7BpC0fwgAlways takes me back. If only I knew the real world as well as well as Johto. I'll never forget my first pokemon game, pokemon Gold, on a gameboy advance, (My dad made me wait until the advance was released because he said it would be better by then) Having to always borrow peoples gameboys to play red blue and yellow as a kid was torture. I could play their games, but it wasn't mine. I could get far in the game and save but then I'd have to give it back. I loved the concept of training pokemon so much, especially like waiting in the doctors/dentist's office as a kid i thought "man i could've leveled up pidgey in this time!" Anytime I saw a kid with a gameboy color I got green with envy. I had an n64, pokemon stadium, but you couldn't level up your pokemon in that. So I would literally make fake battles, like a pidgey vs metapod level 5 both, have them fight, then when i would win the battle, i would artificially set the level up number up one so It would feel like I was training it and it was mine. Even the gameboy adapter on pokemon stadium taunted me and reminded me of what I didn't have. But then one day, some sunny day in 2002, i was ten years old just like Ash, and I finally got pokemon gold for my birthday. I don't think I can describe to you the feeling of owning your own cyndaquil and getting to train it. I would eventually sell the game cartridge at a garage sale years later, but I knew it was going to a kid who would appreciate it. Where it is now I can only wonder...I like to think that kid held on to it.
