dailynewsnblog
Like many middle-class millennial families, our February school vacation weeks were sometimes spent making regular pilgrimages to Disney World. By the late ‘90s, every family trip also involved an obsessive amount of time spent with my Game Boy. (To this day, I always feel compelled to pack my Nintendo Switch on every trip, even though having two young daughters means I get very little time to actually play any games.) Pokémon wasn’t just a video game, a cartoon, or a trading card game for me. It was a lifestyle. Hearing about its impending 30th anniversary makes me feel like that Saving Private Ryan meme where Matt Damon mutates into a frail old man in real time. It sends me reeling back to the earliest days of the Pokémon craze, when a random encounter with a fellow IRL trainer led to an epic battle that earned me a Mew.
I don’t actually remember when I first got into the franchise, but the anime began airing in the U.S. in early September 1998 when I was nine years old. We had a VCR attached to every TV in the house (sometimes two of them!) and were big on shooting home videos with my dad’s clunky video camera, so we had a stockpile of empty VHS tapes. At some point, I began recording every single episode of the Pokémon anime, as if documenting this cultural milestone was one of the most important I could do with my free time. Did I even rewatch episodes? Probably not. I hate rewatching things. Those tapes are also a total mess, with none of the episodes in the correct order.
Pokémon Red and Blue launched just a few weeks after the anime, and I know I was among the first of my friends to get into it. I probably received it for Christmas that year. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the crushing weight of choosing my first starter. I asked for Pokémon Red because it had the cool dragon. It was out of stock, so I had to settle for Pokémon Blue. As a cure for my option paralysis, I picked Squirtle because its final evolution, Blastoise, starred on the box art.
Sometime after the card game launched in January 1999, I went on to lead a little gang of kids at school that would sneak their Game Boys and pockets full of cards outside for recess. The school had banned even talking about Pokémon because it was such a distraction. We revolted. We’d hide in the bushes admiring our foils and battling in the game. I almost never traded cards, too afraid of making the wrong decision, despite the fact that I hated actually playing the card game. But I developed something of a reputation for being very hard to beat at the game and routinely offered advice and traded Pokémon to my classmates. I loved it. I felt like the Halliwell Memorial Elementary School gym leader.
Playing the game remained my biggest obsession when it came to Pokémon. My fondest memory related to the game happened on a family trip to Disney World in February of either 1999 or 2000. Since we lived in North Smithfield, RI, we flew out of T.F. Green International Airport. It’s only about an hour’s drive south of Boston’s Logan airport and considerably smaller, but for locals traveling to high-traffic destinations like Orlando, it’s always cheaper and easier.
Per usual, I buried my face in my Game Boy and followed my parents and brother around the airports on brainless autopilot. If this was indeed 2000, then that would have been my Special Edition Pokémon Game Boy Color. If it was 1999, then it was my bright red Game Boy Pocket. I carried these things around with my Game Link Cable used for trading and battling in a special little case with a long strap that could also fit a handful of game cartridges and a console. (I still have all of these things today!)
I’d beaten the Elite Four some time before this, narrowly defeating the champion’s Venusaur with my Moltres while the rest of my party was knocked out. In an era long before detailed guides and tier lists, I obsessively studied type match-ups and worked to build a well-balanced party that could handle any threats. I often favor Pokémon with high speed and sweepers with a variety of offensive moves. Despite that, I was a bit underleveled going up against the Elite Four, narrowly squeaking by with this victory. But I did it on my first try!
By the time this Florida vacation came around, I’d also already collected all 150 Pokémon in the first generation and basically platinumed the game, completing every bit of content it offered. I wanted a Mew more than anything to complete my Pokédex, but I wasn’t allowed to go to any events and get one the official way. In many ways, I’ve always been a compulsive rule-follower. I refused to even consider using a GameShark to cheat my way to capturing a Mew. Like everyone, I’d heard the rumor about that stupid truck near the S.S. Anne. I tried using Strength on it at different times of day and from different angles, desperate to prove the impossible true, so I might claim that mythical little nymph.
I had nothing left to do in Pokémon Blue, so I started on this brainless loop of talking to the old man in Viridian City, flying to Cinnabar Island, and surfing at just the right spot to fight and capture MissingNo. all so I could duplicate a single Rare Candy infinitely. My goal was to get all 150 Pokémon to level 100. I made thousands of Rare Candies and forced them down the throats of Pokémon I never even used in a single battle. Why? Because it was something to do that kept me in Kanto, soaking up those vibes. But I was so very bored. I’d soundly defeated every trainer I’d ever come across.
As I contemplated this from seat 24B, headphones absolutely blasting Pokémon Blue’s chiptune tracks, a tap on my shoulder startled me so badly I nearly leaped toward the emergency exit. I wish I could remember his face or name, but it was a random boy about a year older than me that we’ll call Red. He held up his GameBoy and asked if I wanted to play. I was super shy and almost said no, but our dads quickly offered to switch seats so we could sit next to each other. With folded arms, the dads sat back and chattered about dad stuff. Red and I talked about our starters and favorite Pokémon as we set our parties up for a battle. I explained proudly how I refused to use legendaries because I thought it felt like cheating. Red laughed and asked if I had a Mew.
His eyes lit up when I told him no, and Red raised his little fist up to his face like Ash Ketchum gearing up for a bout. “I have a Mew!” he said. “If you can defeat me, then it’s yours!” Then Red asked if I knew about the link-cable trade cloning glitch where two players trade a bad Pokémon and a good one then yank the cable out at just the right moment, both trainers get the good Pokémon. I was offended. Of course I knew about that. I was the best trainer at my school! And so, at 35,000 feet soaring above the east coast of the United States, I had the greatest Pokémon battle of my life that remains one of my fondest childhood memories.
I don’t remember either of our parties clearly, but I definitely used my beloved Blastoise. Jolteon has also always been one of my all-time favorite Pokémon. (Did you know it has one of the highest Speed stats among non-legendaries?) Alakazam was also probably in my squad. In those days, I was pretty into Tauros because my birthday is in May, making me a Taurus. Fire dogs are cool, so my Arcanine replaced Moltres once I made my non-legendary rule. Rounding out my party was probably either a Snorlax or a Gengar. The battle was as close as you could get, and Red laughed at the fact that my Blastoise didn’t have Hydro Pump. (Back when I got Blastoise to level 68, I was already pleased with Bubblebeam’s performance and stupidly kept it, later replacing it with Surf.)
Red was my one true rival, yet unlike a petulant and rude Gary-type, he seemed chill, wise, and experienced. When I secured the win, he was gracious in defeat. Red said he just loved the game and collecting all the Pokémon. He was never into battling that much. Was he just saying that? Did he let me win? He made good on his word and traded me a Mew for a random Caterpie (I had a stockpile for this very occasion) — and I pulled the link cable out at just the right moment. Just like that, my Pokédex was complete.
As members of our respective families chatted, we learned that Red lived in a town not far from us. His family was also going to Disney World for February vacation. The Reds were even on the same return flight a week later with us, so he and I played a bunch more matches with random rules: Pokémon had to be a certain level, or we were limited to certain types. I remember having a lot of fun. For some reason, Red and I never exchanged any information when we went our separate ways. But the experience of meeting him and earning my Mew through battle remains a beloved gaming memory — even if, as I’ve matured, the games themselves have started to feel stagnant and uninventive. Black 2 from 2012 is probably the last entry I actually beat. Like many of my fellow millennials, I wish the series would mature a bit.
Holding my yellow special edition Game Boy Color all these years later, it feels small. My thumb cramps after only a few minutes of using it. The tiny screen is so hard to see. Navigating through the computer at the nearest Pokémon Center, I’m quickly annoyed at how clunky the interface feels as I search Bill’s PC to find what Pokémon I still have, almost three decades later. Sure enough, over in box 9 is the Mew. At level 100, it has 1,059,860 experience points with the moves Psychic, Transform, Mega Punch, and Metronome. And what do you know? It lists the original trainer as a person named Ben.
