With the announcement of Pokémon Gold & Silver being released on the Virtual Console this September, I've gotten myself into a nostalgic mood lately, so I thought I'd make this thread where we can discuss our earliest and most cherished memories with our first Pokémon games—mine being Silver, a game that's perhaps closer to my heart than any other game in existence.
I have a whole ton, but I'll try to be succinct for each one.
Though my Pokémon journey truly began with Silver, I've
technically been a fan ever since the first generation. I watched the original anime religiously, and collected toys and trading cards from that era well before the second generation even existed in America. Pokémon: The First Movie was one of my favorite movies to watch, and I thought Mewtwo was the coolest fucking character ever.
That said, when I finally received both Gold & Silver for Christmas in the year 2000, I never really went back to anything else.
Starting with Silver, I played that shit before I could even read or write. Not fully cognizant of what I was doing, I'd walk around aimlessly until I found a Poké Ball sitting on the ground. When I pick it up, the game tells me that I found a "POTION," not a Poké Ball. What the hell does that mean? Maybe it's the Japanese word for Poké Ball, I told my five-year-old self.
And as for that mean red-haired dude, I consistently named him
???, because that's literally how he introduces himself to you.
So when the officer asks if you caught his name, the only answer to give is ???. I mean, saying anything else would just be lying, right. I always wondered why it was so difficult for the developers to come up with a less awkward way of conveying to us that, yes, you can give your rival any name you want. But at the same time, it's still kinda funny to me.
To this day, the red-haired rival—who is the best rival in any Pokémon game, I think we can all agree—doesn't actually have an official name. People like to believe it's "Silver," but contrary to popular belief, that's not actually confirmed. So, as far as I'm concerned, his name will always be ???.
Sadly, I don't remember what my first Pokémon was. It was either Cyndaquil or Totodile—though I'm willing to bet it was the latter, because Totodile was indeed my favorite Pokémon before I discovered Porygon.
Whichever my first Pokémon was, it was eventually Cyndaquil to win the day. Because I was still learning how to read, and this was the first game I've ever played that featured such text-heavy gameplay, I frequently restarted my adventure, because I wanted to understand what the characters were saying so badly. As I kept restarting and kept trying, I understood more and more until I was ready to play the game uninterrupted. You could say that this game, more than anything else, encouraged me to become literate.
Learning to read was one thing, but I still had a lot of trouble spelling at the time. One day, I was fishing in some random town, and I caught a Shellder—a Pokémon I had never seen before, so I assumed it must be rare. I named the thing
LOCKE, because that's how I thought you spelled "luck" as a five-year-old. Go figure.
The Cyndaquil that would eventually carry me to the end of the game was named
QUIL!. [sic], and since I didn't have any concept of strategy, I didn't generally use any other Pokémon except as HM slaves. This way, QUIL!. ended up gaining all the experience points, which made him incredibly overleveled to a point where he would simply one-shot everything in his path.
His nightmarish moveset consisted of the following moves:
- Cut
- Strength
- Flamethrower
- Return
Marvelous. Don't worry—I realized that teaching him such shitty HM moves was a bad idea, and I tried to replace them several times, but to no avail. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really explain how HMs work in a way that small children could understand, so I was stuck with this fearsome moveset for my entire playthrough. Not that I cared
too much, because QUIL!.'s Cut still managed to one-shot pretty much everything anyway (except for Red's Snorlax).
To explain the game's appeal, it simply had this warm, crisp atmosphere of childlike curiosity and sheer, unadulterated wonder that I hadn't experienced before in any other game. The music was cheerful and splendid, the Pokémon were colorful and amazing, and it was just as fun to see the monsters I recognized from the anime as it was to find new discoveries I had never seen before. It also gives you this odd sense of companionship. I found myself growing emotionally attached to my Cyndaquil, and watching him grow into a Quilava and eventually a Typhlosion as I got stronger and cleared through the gyms was an exhilarating, inimitable experience.
And gosh, don't get me started on when I finally discovered that the Kanto region was in this game.
Before my save file was eventually wiped out by the treacheries of battery depreciation, I managed to bring QUIL!. up to level 100. To this day, he's the only Pokémon I've ever managed to bring all the way up to that level.
Not all of my memories of this game are positive, however. I was about seven years old at the time of this story.
I made a lot of friends in elementary school—two of which are my closest, and thankfully, we're still in touch to this day. Only one friend in particular played Pokémon, though, and for as young as he was at the time, he was a genius at it. He had every game—Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and
Crystal, which was a fancy-pants game I didn't even know existed. That was the one he played the most.
He also collected trading cards and had loads of rare ones in his collection. He even had a ton of game guides, which probably accounted for his immense knowledge of how the games worked—if you had a question about what to do in the game, or where to find a certain Pokémon, he would know off the top of his head.
He was also way further than me in terms of game progress. This isn't that big of a deal nowadays, but for me, this was kind of a big deal, because it meant that someone was better at the game than me. He had ten badges, and I only had four. He has a Lugia, and all I have is my stinkin' Typhlosion. Most importantly, though, he happened to own a snazzy four-player Game Boy link cable, with which we had many battles and trades with.
He would never make good trades with me—he knew what was valuable, and I didn't. I probably made a number of bad trades, but at least I got some Pokédex entries out of him. I would just see a Pokémon I've never seen before, like Misdreavus, and I'd say, "Where the heck did you found that?" and he wouldn't tell me. It was a bona fide Pokémon rival relationship—he was the Gary Oak to my Ash Ketchum. He was okay with giving me tips on how to progress through the game, but he would never give me any tips that may help me beat him in a Pokémon link battle.
Our battles were always pretty intense, because I only had my Typhlosion (who was only around level ~70 at the time) against his team of beefed-up killers, like Lugia, Entei, and Tyranitar. As a result, he would beat me almost every time—I managed to beat him
once because of a fluke involving a Focus Band. Even though his Tyranitar resisted every move in QUIL!.'s arsenal, my Typhlosion was at such a higher level that I could two-shot it every time.
And then he'd bring out his Mewtwo—his most prized Pokémon—and that would be the end of it for me. All I could do was watch in awe. It's the same Mewtwo I saw in the movie, and it's just as powerful, just as cool.
I asked him where he got his Mewtwo from, and he told me that you can only get it by transferring it over from Pokémon Red, Blue, or Yellow using the game's Time Capsule facility, found in the far back of every Pokémon Center. Sheepishly, I asked him if he was willing to trade it for something—needless to say, I was denied.
Eventually, I convinced him to trade it to me under the condition that I'd immediately trade it back—I told him that all I really cared about was the Pokédex data, and he was okay with that. Over at his house, I let him handle the trading with both of our devices, because my mother had called in order to check up on me. Normally, she used to require me to check in every few hours, and I hadn't done so at all that day—so she took it upon herself to call me instead, to tell me that she was making dinner at home. She sounded quite frustrated, too, so I knew I had to leave straightaway.
I told my friend, who was still in the middle of the trade, that I had to leave and that I was in a hurry. Before giving him a chance to respond, I snatched my Game Boy and unplugged the device from the link cable...
as the trade was still going on.
Panicked, my friend angrily shouted at me not to leave, because I had just made a grave mistake—and I realized what I had done right away. It was too late, though—in my haste, I had already shut my Game Boy off. There's a very good chance that something bad might have happened to his Mewtwo during that botched trade.
Still panicked, my friend demanded that I check my party to see if a Mewtwo is there, where my Typhlosion was.
I checked, and to my dismay, I only saw five Pokémon in my party. The Mewtwo was gone—his data signal vanished within the cable, never to be retrieved again.
My Typhlosion, however, was safe and sound in my friend's Crystal file.
This almost killed our friendship. Once I told him that his Mewtwo was missing, he started crying, and told me that he's never giving my Typhlosion back now—and to be honest, as bad as I felt, and as bad as I fucked up, I completely understood. QUIL!. was his now. There's virtually nothing I can do to make up for this monumental fuck-up. Since I was unfamiliar, though, I asked him if there was any way to get another Mewtwo—"
NO, there
isn't," he snapped at me. "You can only get it once, and he's gone now."
Feeling all sorts of awkwardness and guilt, I left his house, feeling like the scummy asshole I was. I genuinely felt horrible.
We didn't speak for a whole week, until I was forced to sit with him on the bus one day. I told him that I was sorry about Mewtwo, and that I was sorry that I didn't apologize sooner. He said that it was okay, and that he had mostly gotten over it, but he was still unhappy with me. I understood, but I had to ask about my Typhlosion—that thing was my virtual pride and joy, and I was worried if he had released him out of spite or something.
He told me that he was fine, and that he just stuffed him in the Daycare, where he had gained quite a few levels (he was in the 80s or 90s). He then told me that I could have him back if I wanted—I think he could tell that I really wanted him back, though I never dared say it. I thanked him and told him yes, I'd be glad to have him back. I didn't know how to make it up to him. He told me not to worry about it, because he was starting to lose interest in Pokémon anyway, which made me feel really sad. I asked him if I had anything to do with that, and he said no—but I don't know. To this day, I'm not so sure about that.
Either way, when I received QUIL!. back, I proceeded to train him up to level 100—and that's the story of how I fully trained my first cognizant Pokémon. I had a little bit of... "help," but it was still pretty awesome. Naturally, I had to ask my friend for one last battle, if he was truly done with Pokémon. We must have been eight or nine years old at this point. He accepted, and he used his old team of monsters.
QUIL!. was at a point where he one-shotted everything this time—even Tyranitar and Lugia. Normally, this is when his Mewtwo would be sent out to kick my ass. When it didn't show up, I felt a pit in my stomach.
In its place, however, was something even stronger. It turned out that he had a level 100 Pokémon of his own: A Sandslash, which I never knew about. He told me that he had kept a Sandslash in the daycare since the near-beginning of his playthrough, and never took him out until he had beaten the Elite Four several times over. When he finally took it out, the thing had reached its maximum level—and now he's using it against me.
Of all the things he could've slapped in the Daycare, it had to be a Ground-type—naturally, Ground beats my Typhlosion's Fire, so you could imagine how that matchup ended.
I never got my triumphant victory against his team, and even if I had beat him, the fact that I was never able to beat his Mewtwo would've been a big asterisk on our last fight. As it turned out, the only way I was able to beat his Mewtwo was to inadvertently destroy it myself.
Thankfully, neither of us take Pokémon so seriously anymore—but now I'm the one who knows more than him, and he doesn't really play video games much at all anymore. I never really made up for the Mewtwo incident, which I regret—but he's studying economics and computer science at Yale now, so I'm sure he has much better things to worry about. We're still in touch, though, and every now and then, we still take a trip down memory lane from when we were both fighting to become Pokémon Masters.
Do you remember the first Pokémon you ever caught in a Master Ball?
I remember first
receiving the Master Ball. That same friend from earlier told me about this legendary Poké Ball that could get a guaranteed capture on anything, and without weakening it. It's basically the game's Master Sword, or Excalibur—even the mere concept sounded thrilling. I had to find it, and he told me exactly where.
He didn't tell me what to use it on, though—he just told me, "You only get one, so don't waste it on something stupid."
Heeding his advice, I tried to think of Pokémon that I would actually use it on, and I immediately thought of the legendary beasts (which I called the "legendary dogs" at the time). The trouble is, they tend to appear wherever they want, and they're extremely hard to follow—especially because they run away as soon as you encounter them. The Master Ball solves that problem, but how am I supposed to predict where Entei and Suicune are (this was before I learned that you can use the Pokédex to track down the beasts that you've seen at least once).
I kept the beasts in mind, but I never actively searched them out, because I thought it was impossible.
Then one day, I saw this thing:
I thought to myself, "...Skarmory? Is that some kind of legendary bird, like Moltres?"
It looked pretty formidable, so I thought very hard about whether to throw the Master Ball at it. I've never seen one until now, and I may not ever see one again, so I wasn't sure what to do.
Eventually, I decided against it—but I came SO close to wasting my first Master Ball on a Skarmory, just because I had mistaken it for a legendary bird.
Eventually, I ended up using it on a Suicune that I spotted shortly thereafter.
Much better. That Suicune ended up becoming a valued member, too—if for whatever reason QUIL!. was decommissioned, Suicune was my back-up.
Now we're getting into some bullshit. In Gold & Silver, Unown is a pseudo-mysterious, pseudo-"legendary" Pokémon that are meant to represent ancient hieroglyphics. They have no in-game significance whatsoever, making them one of the biggest red herrings in gaming history.
Unown are not powerful. They have incredbily low stats and they can only ever know one attack: Hidden Power, making them utterly useless for gameplay. What makes them intriguing to a child, however, is that they're all shaped in the letters of the Latin alphabet, which means that they can be used to spell words when ordered properly in your team.
Certain letters of Unown are only available in progressively deeper portions of an area called the Ruins of Alph. So, in order to collect every letter of Unown, you have to progress quite far in the game, which creates a lot of interesting build-up.
Let me tell you—I went and caught every single letter of the Unown alphabet as a kid, and I was so pissed to discover that it gave you absolutely nothing. I was even more pissed to discover that the common rumor where, if you collect the letters C, E, L, E, B, I, arrange them in that order, and head to the shrine in the Ilex Forest, that a wild Celebi would appear—this was
also just a farce.
Everything about Unown is dogshit, and at age seven, I had already declared them my least favorite Pokémon. Please, Game Freak, do
something interesting with these pieces of shit. What the fuck is the point of keeping them around if you're not even going to give them any plot significance? They're so worthless. It's just sad.
Around the time my friend stopped playing Pokémon, he decided to lend me his link cable so that I could do trades on my own. It was during this time that I took an interest in glitches and exploits.
At this point, I had already played my fair share of Red, Blue, and Yellow. My friend was telling me about this new Pokémon he had discovered on the Internet called Missingno., and how dangerous it is for you to actually encounter it in the game. The way he described it, it was like a creepy horror story—unsettling, but likely untrue. C'mon, a glitch Pokémon that gives you infinite items, but destroys your game if you try to capture it? Sounded like BS to me at the time.
And for the most part, yeah, it kind of was bullshit. There was a lot of paranoia going around at the time Missingno. was first discovered—people used to claim that it would delete your save file if you so much as encountered it, but I would discover firsthand that none of it was actually true. It was still an enigma, but from there, I found websites like TRsRockin.com that contained an entire database of all KINDS of weird glitch Pokémon and other weird stuff that can happen under certain conditions.
This was like adding a whole nother dimension to these games that I loved, and I instantly became hooked on finding and exploiting as many glitches as possible. I then tried to find glitches for Gold and Silver, and while there were considerably less of them, I did manage to stumble upon a few of my own.
I was transporting starters using the link cable one day when I accidentally bumped the cable as a trade was going on. The trade still went through, but something very odd happened—the Totodile that I traded over had its name changed to a single dash, hyphen, or minus sign. That was certainly odd, but things didn't start getting REALLY weird until I checked my PC afterwards, which was filled to the brim with a random assortment of Pokémon, all with jumbled names, odd levels (including some level 0s), and some that didn't even have any attacks. One of them was a Raikou, a legendary beast that I hadn't even encountered in my life before. My mailbox was filled with a bunch of spammy nonsense—probably a bunch of love letters from Missingno. and company.
The oddest thing of all was a Snorlax holding an item called a "TERU-SAMA." I had no idea what this item was at the time, and it didn't appear to have any immediate use. For some reason, it didn't even occur to me to simply Google whatever the hell it was—so I just sold it, because it sold for a decent amount of money.
It turns out that the Teru-Sama is an item dummied out of the American version of Pokémon Gold & Silver—there are 29 varieties of them in the game's code, and can be obtained through a variety of exploits. One of the varieties of Teru-Sama occupies the same space as the GS Ball—a Japan-exclusive item that's used to capture Celebi in the Ilex Forest. This means that I may have been able to use that thing to try to catch a Celebi with in the American version of the game,
and I fucking sold it. It was the only one in my PC, too, and I had no idea how to replicate the glitch.
Fortunately, as I later discovered, there does exist a glitch that allows you to catch a Celebi anyway—but as far as I know, Game Freak never actually gave America a single opportunity to catch a legitimate Celebi in the entire lifespan of generation II.
One last story—this is pretty much the last notable thing that happened in my Pokémon Silver game, and it was the first time I found a shiny Pokémon. I was maybe twelve, thirteen years old.
This is well after my file was wiped. Still mourning the loss of my precious file, and my Typhlosion, I began a new game. This time, I was playing the game on a Super Nintendo, using the Super Gameboy cartridge. It basically allows you to play Game Boy games on your television, which is pretty nice.
I started a new adventure, and about ten minutes in, I find an oddly-colored Rattata that gave off this really cool sparkling animation before the fight began. I had no idea what a shiny Pokémon was at the time, but I obviously noticed that there was something very weird about this Rattata, so I immediately caught it and told all my friends about it. They told me that I had just found something very rare, and that I should be very excited.
This was back when shinies had a flat 1/8192 rate of being encountered. There were no cheesy, dumbass methods of obtaining a shiny—it's all sheer, dumb luck. But in my years of playing and being faithful to this game in particular, I was honestly due for at least one, even if it's just a measly Rattata.
Several years later, this eventually came full circle in Generation VII, when I found a Shiny Alolan Raticate randomly in the wild as well. I've found many shinies in my day—at least ten or twelve—but there was something special about my first and last ones both being ugly rats. I don't know, it's oddly poetic.
I obviously have many more stories to tell from this game, and even more from the other generations, but given that this one is my absolute favorite, I decided to talk exclusively about it here. This doesn't have to be about Generation II for you—it can be about anything, as long as it gives you some kind of nostalgia.
Pokémon Memories