Oh man, I've got so many nostalgic Pokémon memories. One of my first video games being Crystal bc it came with my GBA, playing Pokémon Ranch and Battle Revolution and Snap on my Wii all the time, recess days in elementary school where we'd either sneak in our ds' or just end up roleplaying Pokémon Trainers, even one time in hs where a classmate and I used to battle on chill days near the end of the school year. The Pokémon Go craze back in 2016, Pokémon movies finally being in theaters again, this resurgence in Pokémon media in general has been so wonderful.
But Sinnoh specifically has a ton of memories for me, because that was when I was at my peak hardcore playing. Constantly in the underground, or doing contests, or just using my action replay in any which way I could. I hacked in the Azure Flute and played through the Arceus event at Spear Pillar, hacked my way over to catch Darkrai and Cresselia... and the Toys R Us events... oh my goodness do I miss those. All the freebies they would have out, all the people there chillin, nothing takes me back more than that. Though some of my favorite event Pokémon I have are the Pichu event ones (shiny & spiky-eared)... I don't think I'll ever be as strongly attached to a Pokémon as my Manaphy. It always grew too quickly and went past my badge threshold so it NEVER wanted to listen to me. But by the time I got all 8 badges and manually leveled it up all the way to lvl 100, we were inseparable. It and my Empoleon were the only two Pokémon I had the /refused/ to even visit the Ranch, they'd just come right back. I have a plush, the movie, the whole 9 yards, Manaphy has always been and always will be my baby. 💙
Oh! Also, my friends and I in elementary school had a "pokemon club" we made up, where we'd even make up quizzes, talk about the games/movies/etc, talk about strategies, i had a whole mini database book and pokedex toy and we would trade cards and battle and stuff.. (we even fought bakugan but that's a whole different story). I'll never forget all the fun we had way back then [nostalgia overload] 😥💕
