i know this might come as a surprise, but... i absolutely love pokemon. the pokemon series has kept me firmly in its clutches since i was around six years old. my very first pokemon game was pokemon red for the gameboy, and i still have that cartridge. in fact, i still have all of my childhood cartridges - safely stored in one (highly decorated) container, dry batteries and all.

when i was taking on the ribbon master challenge for the very first time, i found my old gameboy advance sp. this sp was crucial in transporting reides the kingdra between my copy of emerald version and pokemon colosseum for the gamecube - but, since the sp can play gameboy games, i ALSO decided to use it to take a peek at those old carts to see if any of my old saves were still around. sadly, most of my oldest pokemon games - namely, red, yellow, silver, gold and crystal - did not have their save data intact anymore. this didn't come as a surprise - i knew that most of the really old pokemon games tend to lose their save files eventually. (thankfully, my saves were intact for my gen3 games onwards.) since i truly expected not to see anything, i wasn't too torn up about losing these files...

...but, to my surprise, one save file from the early 2000s remained. this sole survivor dwelled in my childhood copy of pokemon blue.

while blue wasn't my 'main' file (it was a gift that i got from my parents sometime after playing through pokemon red), i was utterly thrilled to see my pokemon from so many years ago. careful not to make any sudden movements lest my game somehow delete itself right in front of me, i took this picture of my team, which i was training up sometime around the age of 7 years old. (i'm 30 now, so... these pokemon are roughly 23 years old!)

as you can see, my sp's screen has seen better days. i still cherish the photo for what it is: a list of my oldest 'surviving' pokemon team, taken while i was practically shaking with excitement. after peeking around the file a bit and taking some more photos, i stowed my cart away carefully and hoped that the save wouldn't corrupt over itself any time soon.

but my lil tale with this copy of blue wasn't over. i got an analogue pocket last year and was astounded by just about all of its features (i definitely recommend investing in one if you play a lot of gameboy/gba games). one of its features is that it allows you to back up your games' saves by extracting a copy of it to the pocket's sd card. naturally, i had to do this for my pokemon blue cart!

the backup process was successful and my childhood save was forever immortalized... but then i realized that, with the analogue pocket's screen, i could take some more... presentable pictures of my save. and that's exactly what i did - and what i want to share with you all in this blog post! i know it's probably shorter compared to some of my more recent posts (which chronicle pokemon challenges that i took on over the course of MONTHS... rest assured that i am taking on even more challenges and am hype to write about them in the future, haha!), but i thought it'd be cute to share regardless.

so, with that lengthy backstory out of the way... welcome to my childhood copy of pokemon blue!

first of all, here's the title screen in all of its glory (ft. my two squirtle plushes - milo and marlo). upon loading up the game, i noticed something pretty iconic about my save file's name.

"PLAYER GARY." as a kid, i absolutely LOVED the rival character in rby, and that love was compounded by seeing gary oak himself on tv. my rival bias in pokemon games hasn't waned, as silver is one of my favourite characters of all time in any media PERIOD, but it was really funny and cute to see that reflected in a save file from when i was so young. given the sort of kid i was (and, tbh, person i still *am*), i'm sure i had all sorts of imagined scenarios in my playthrough as gary oak himself.

even though gary hadn't quite become the champion yet, i think that getting this amount of badges in my 'side game' was still very impressive. compared to modern pokemon games, the classic pokemon games were REALLY difficult, imo. i've replayed quite a few of them as an adult, only to be astounded at how much more training and grinding i had to do in order to have a strong pokemon team. speaking of teams...

...here's a more high-quality picture of my pokemon blue team! from this point on, i'll be doing a bit of an in-depth look at each of these team members.

first up is Blaster, my starter pokemon. it makes sense that i went with blastoise, as, in my copy of red version, i chose charmander at the start of the game and saw 'gary' take squirtle. blaster is clearly the carry of the team, too - look at that level difference! he's a level 62 POWERHOUSE compared to everyone else! the Overlevelled Starter is such a timeless phenomenon. the introduction of the party-wide exp share lessened the extremity of it, imo, so it's really great to see it in action here.

then we have DUX. you can get DUX (who comes with that nickname) by trading with an npc in vermillion city. the npc wants a spearow for DUX, and DUX is the only farfetch'd in the whole game! i thought farfetch'd's rarity was awesome, so it's no wonder that this little one ended up tagging along for my pokemon adventure despite their low level.

i can honestly feel the adoration emanating off this flareon, tbh. Cutey is very aptly named. apparently, the gift eevee that you can get in pkmn blue is level 25, so Cutey was trained up a bit in addition to being evolved into a flareon.

next up, this lapras is likely the gift pokemon that you get from the employee when you save silph co from team rocket. unlike Cutey, i hadn't gotten around to training this lapras at all. pure vibes. you love to see it.

as a little aside, i thought it was pretty interesting that squirtle, lapras, AND eevee were targets featured on my leafgreen badge quest in addition to being present in this team from my childhood. though i evolved my eevee into jolteon for that quest, each of the eeveelutions available were strong contenders, and i planned to evolve the shiny one into flareon if she was a girl. in my badge quest writeup, i mentioned the strong sense of nostalgia which was tied to each of the hunts i took on, so it's neat to see the roots of that nostalgia made manifest in this save file!

this rhyhorn also accompanied the gang on this team. i'm pretty sure that i caught them in the safari zone, as you can find level 25 rhyhorns in there. i also remember that i had a rhydon in my copy of red version (and i thought it was CRAZY strong!!!), so i think this rhyhorn was in for a similar fate. moreover, your rival in rby has a rhydon on his team, so i may have been taking (yet another) page from his book.

i WISH i nicknamed it (as well as the lapras), but i cherish it nonetheless! seeing it kind of makes me want to go for a shiny one in the leafgreen safari zone... hmm.

my final team member is this absolutey baby: NIDDY the nidoran. nidoran was one of those pokemon that i went through a hugeeee phase with back when i was a kid. you know how kids love to play pretend? Back In My Day(tm), most of us loved to pretend to be pokemon. in addition to smoochum and togepi, nidoran was one of the most common pokemon i sought to emulate during those lil pretend games. i think i also partially wanted nidoran on my team because gary had a nidoking in the anime, but i went for nidoqueen instead.

that was my main team... but i wondered if i had any more notable pokemon stowed away in my in-game pc. i left the pokemon mansion on cinnabar island (where i had last saved) and headed for the pokemon center, booting up the professor oak portion of the pc boxes.

immediately, i met this brave soldier. the lone bastion of box two... a single diglett. pretty inspiring stuff. thankfully, while diglett was the sole sentinel of box two, they weren't the only pokemon i managed to catch (team members aside).

boxes two and three were full of pokemon! i'll stick to mentioning the pokemon that i nicknamed here.

Slepey the snorlax is truly an icon. (again, another badge quest pokemon that i shiny hunted for last year.) its pokemon blue sprite is absolutely adorable, and i think the nickname i went with is absolute perfection.

lovefox was right next to slepey in the box! yet another adorable nickname, fitting for an adorable pokemon.

CUTEY the meowth - not to be confused with Cutey the flareon - has been at 5hp for years upon years, but i think it's still thriving in its own way.

meowth was another pokemon that i loved back then (and still do), largely due to the meowth featured in the pokemon anime.

BELLE the bellsprout is another very aptly named pokemon.

...as is HOOOYAAAA the machop, who has one of the best sprites i've ever seen in any pokemon game. LOOK AT IT!!! this is incredible stuff. no wonder i was so enthused when i nicknamed it.

finally, there was CRINKLES the tangela. i was a bit confused about where this nickname came about from, since it seemed a bit different from the other names that i gave my pokemon. i researched it a bit and, as it turns out, CRINKLES is from another in-game trade! apparently, i traded a venonat with an in-game npc for this specific tangela. pretty awesome!

after taking all of these pictures, i moved gary out of the pokemon center and took a moment to let the nostalgia of cinnabar island wash over me.

revisiting blue and taking a look at some of my very first pokemon was an absolutely magical experience. i'm really glad that i was able to do so; i think that this save lasting this long is nothing short of a miracle. it got me wondering about my older teams, too - and feeling grateful for the adventures that gen1 allowed me to go on as a little kid. being able to take a short tour of this game really got me reflecting on what the series has always meant to me, and it also got me hoping that it will always mean a ton to me.

here's to more adventures in (narrator voice) the World of Pokemon - and i hope that you enjoyed this little snapshot into my childhood!

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mood: nostalgic
music: old ocean - cosmo sheldrake