I remember 23 years ago when Pokemon Red and Blue came out.  I remember playing it on this long Thanksgiving weekend.  My brother and I didn’t know what we were doing, but we were having a blast.  We only had one Gameboy at the time (the giant OG one) so we had to take turns playing while the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was on in the background.  I remember being hooked on it though.  Absolutely hooked.  We played for hours, days even.  Somehow, some way latter on in the year without the internet we heard about the rare-candy trick and we immediately went to power up our guys.  To this day, Red is the only game where I caught all 150 of them.  I’ve played most of the mainline games over the years too – Gold, Emerald, Black, Heart Gold, and X.  I skipped Diamond/Pearl and Sun/Moon, I’m not sure why, probably because other things were happening and I didn’t have time for the grind.  I never got as hard core into it as others, grinding for the absolute best IV/EV pokemon who knew moves he couldn’t.  That’s just too much work, I wanted to catch them all, and I’m happy to let someone else be the very best.

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