I was sitting in my bedroom in 2001 with Pokémon Crystal in my atomic purple Game Boy Color. My friend’s Game Boy was connected to mine by the link cable so I could show him a neat trick. I could clone my Suicune at level 100 and send him a copy.
Thinking back now, it was not a smart move, but it worked. I had to do something like turning off the console when the game was saving while I placed Suicune in a PC box. This could corrupt any save file, but it didn’t. There they were: two Suicune at level 100, and my ecstatic friend finally got one.
Now, I'm 31 years old and played Pokémon Crystal this year. It wasn't nearly as fun. This isn’t one of those articles like, “This game was so much more fun when I was a kid, being an adult sucks.” While it’s true, there are less obvious reasons why the game wasn't that much fun this time.
Sharing the moment
When I was seven, I had friends who were also playing Pokémon. There was no online connectivity, no Discord or anything where we could at least hang out together and chat while we were playing. Playing it was mostly a solo activity, but it wasn’t a lonely one. We would chat about our teams, where we were in the game, and trade Pokémon. Playing alone now was much less fun than when I was able to share even the smallest things with friends, like “I finally evolved Eevee into Espeon!”
As a kid, I had no shame in using cheats and glitches. I didn’t use them all the time, but I remember cloning Pokémon, duplicating items, and doing other stuff to make the game more fun. Now, the most transgressive thing I did was a trick to evolve Kadabra into Alakazam without trading. I might have turned into a boring adult who thinks you can't cheat in games. But now I think I should’ve cheated the hell out of it. It's just a single-player game, it really doesn't matter.
I used walkthroughs as a kid. I read guides on how to get to Cinnabar Island when Route 19 south of Fuschia City was blocked, and how to capture Ho-Oh. I did this because I couldn't read English since I'm not a native speaker, so I didn’t understand character tips. My only option was to read walkthroughs to capture Raikou, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Suicune, etc.
But this time in Pokémon Crystal, since I, as you can see, understand English, I decided to find these mysteries myself. I didn’t follow side quests, though. I’ve completed the game and defeated Red without capturing any legendary Pokémon. I don't have Lugia, Ho-Oh, or any of the legendary dogs, and I can't remember how to catch them. I thought I didn’t need a walkthrough because Pokémon was supposed to be a simple game. That was my ego talking, just as it talked about cheating. But I should have used a walkthrough because legendaries are part of the fun in Pokémon.
I also think reading walkthroughs is like sharing the game with someone you don't know, so it could've been a company for me in this new playthrough.
I crushed Pokémon Crystal as a kid
There weren't that many games I could play when I was a kid. Not just because it was much harder to buy games, but there weren't that many out there to buy. No free mobile games were released every day.
This made me not care about my save files in Pokémon Crystal, and I probably finished that game five times or more as a kid. I would just erase my save, start from scratch with a different starter, and finish the game again. I didn't have any pity for my Pokémon. I wasn't attached to my save. I would just restart the game and play it again because it was all I had to play.
That’s all part of why the game didn't hit me this time as it did before. The fun back then was, ironically, in the limitations I had, which made me explore the game to its fullest. This has nothing to do with nostalgia.
So my adult, ego-driven brain sabotaged what my free and childish self had fun with in Pokémon Crystal. Even though the playthrough now as an adult wasn't as exciting, it made me think that the new Pokémon games aren't as bad as many people think. Pokémon Crystal and Pokémon Emerald aren’t the only good games in the series. They are amazing, but I don't see how Pokémon Scarlet and Violet or Pokémon Sword and Shield can be seen as bad games compared to them.
The post I played Pokémon Crystal like a modern gamer. Huge mistake appeared first on Destructoid.
