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« on: March 29, 2019, 01:01:55 AM »
I'm too busy and riddled with children to replay this along with you all, but I wish I could.
I'll share this story instead.
Pokemon Red and Blue came out when I was 10 years old. Pretty much the perfect age to be obsessed with it for the next 10 years.
Pokemon Black and White came out a few months before I got married. I had 7 groomsmen, since we had all grown up playing Pokemon together I thought it would be cool if I got each of them a version of Black or White as a gift for being in my wedding party.
Some of the guys were lapsed gamers, or not really into handheld games anymore, so they didn't have a DS of their own... So I scoured some local online classifieds and bought 3 used DS Lites on the cheap (in good condition) as well as 8 copies of Pokemon Black and White. A month before the wedding we were all together and I gave them all their copies of Black and White. Everybody was excited, and the three guys who didn't have DS's were happy but were saying, "now we need to pick up a DS so we can play with you guys!" Then I pulled out 3 DS's and gave them to those guys and they lost their mind. I had a lot of fun giving these to my friends.
All next month we were a Pokemon cult. We played and traded each other every chance we got, and on the wedding day, we all had our DS's in our suit jackets all day. There is a lot of waiting around while you get ready, prepare for the ceremony, take pictures and wait for the reception, so any downtime we all popped out Pokemon and played together.
Not everyone stuck with the game all the way to the end, but most of them did, and in the very least the first couple of months were a pretty special experience. I hadn't been that invested in a Pokemon game since Gold and Silver and had a great time with it. I always appreciated the bold move of going with all new Pokemon at the beginning of the game. It really lets you bond with the new Pokemon instead of relying on the old familiars.
Reading through some of the posts in this thread has reminded me of some of the things I love about this game and brought me back to that experience around what was already a really special time when I got married, so thanks!