Pokemon 20th Anniversary

Gotta catch em all!

It’s been 20 years since that line took the country by storm.  The Pokemon franchise took over almost all avenues of entertainment from a cartoon, to the card game, to toys.  You name it they did it, I myself took part in the craze via the Game Boy games.  I remember back in 1998 owning an atomic purple Game Boy Color along with Pokemon Red.  I along with some friends were obsessed with the game.  Then when Pokemon Stadium was released for the N64 we spent countless hours battling Pokemon we trained on our Game Boy consoles for bragging rights.  Those were some of the most fun times I had during that time period.

Fast forward to the summer of 2016, I caught wind that Nintendo was releasing a Pokemon 20th anniversary limited edition 3DS preloaded with Pokemon Red & Blue.  I had to have one, so I started my quest to lock one down.  I looked for preorders, they were sold out, I asked a friend who worked at Best Buy he couldn’t help me.  I thought it a long shot but checked out Walmart.com and I hit pay dirt, they had consoles available for preorder.  Giddy with excitement, I didn’t hesistate even for a second and just placed my order.  Once I picked up my new Pokemon 20th anniversary 3DS I was ready to jump into some good old 90’s nostalgia.

I immediately started a new game in Pokemon Red.  As I did when I was a teenager I chose Charmander as my starting Pokemon.  The game was everything I remember it to be, there were quite a few things I forgot over time which were a pleasant surprise playing through all these years later.

There was one aspect of the game I was curious to find out if was still intact, the glitches.  The game had a few famous glitches and I had to test them out.  I was not disappointed, the 2 big ones being the Mew glitch and Cinnabar Island glitch worked perfectly.  This was great to find because those glitches were part of what made those first versions or Pokemon so memorable.

I just finished completing the game recently and of course I caught the 3 legendary birds as well as MewTwo.  Playing through the game was a nice trip down memory lane, but it was for a reason other than just sheer nostalgia.  There are 2 new versions of Pokemon being released in mid November, Pokemon Sun & Moon. Pokemon Bank, which is an online storage system where you can export Pokemon from an older Pokemom title and import to newer Pokemon title will have compatability between the original Pokemon titles and the upcoming Sun & Moon titles.

Now at this point I truly have no clue how many Pokemon exist, all I am aware of are the original 151.  With what I have caught so far and with the help of Pokemon Bank, once the new Pokemon titles come out I will yet again be on a journey to try to catch em all.