My kid finally caught Pokemania, and weāve been watching through the original anime! Which has been awesome. I missed a LOT of episodes, remember more than I expected.
I finally got to see the Dratini and Porygon episodes that got pulled from air. Kid even tolerated watching them despite not being in English. He liked the intro so much he didnāt want to skip 
The copy I had of Porygon included the PSA they aired 5 months after Pokemon went off the air because of that episode. Really neat to see and have the historical context. Always heard playground rumors about the episode but had never seen it. Kinda made me emotional.
Alongside that, we started his first game! Letās Go Eevee. Eevee is now his favorite Pokemon, at the top of a big list of favorites.
Kinda incompetent that you canāt play Letās Go with a normal controller at all (only the Pokeball, ONE JoyCon, or in handheld mode), but he wanted to use the Pokeball anyway, so it worked out. Itās very awkward to control and a lot of time is wasted fiddling with the menus, however.
We figured out the āco-opā mode, which is super jank and tacked on, but is a nice bonding opportunity with battling together (except inā¦ actual double battles?!) and catching together.
I discovered (when thinking weād play separate copies of Letās Go, together) that I never actually finished Letās Go Pikachu, instead abandoning it when Sword & Shield came out, apparently! Need to finish eventually.
I was inspired during all of this to finally start up Fire Red on the Switch - these ports are phenomenal! Patched in the missing content, beautiful on my Switch OLED, and with fast saving and suspend/resume, I donāt even miss the faster speed options of emulator play!
I alsoā¦ discovered an embarrassing factā¦
Iāve been plowing through the game in the past couple weeks, already making my way to Cinnabar Island. BUTā¦ I wound up at Seafoam Islands (surfing from Fuschia City instead of my usual route) and have realized I have maybe never done this content before in any Kanto game.
Nowā¦ Iāve played through these games a lot - so itās quite possible Iāve done it and simply forgot. But I firmly remember that my strategy to get to Cinnabar was always to fly to Pallet Town and surf down from there, even in R/B/Y, soā¦ Iām not sure. I went this way to see what was there, as Iām trying to be completionist/do things differently this run.
And then I stumbled upon Articuno completely by surprise when trying to just navigate through the caves to get to the other side. Level 50, my highest level was 42. I only had 9 Great Balls and 7 Ultra Balls in my possession (plus the Master Ball and maybe 20 PokeBalls, which wouldnāt be useful here). I saved and began the battle, assuming Iād just have to reset and come back later.
But by some crazy chance, I pulled it off! I caught Articuno and made it out of the cave alive, but just barelyā¦
This was a pretty wild experience. I love returning to old familiar games and just challenging myself to do things differently.
This also has me back down the rabbit hole of researching TRUE completionist requirements. Iāve been slowly amassing the things necessary (in a future reply to this post Iāll show off my āPokemon toteā with everything packed in) - but Iāve still yet to stomach spending $1500+ on Pokemon Box for the GameCube (I have a modded one, but I like having the real thing on-hand) in NTSC (I have the Japanese one). And NOW Iāve just discovered there was a second version of the Pokemon Colosseum Bonus Disc in Japan, which not only distributed Celebi, but also distributed a Pikachu?!? This one seems pricey to track down, too. UGH.
Anywho, Pokemon is good, Pokemon is great. I hope Nintendo ports ALL of the Game Boy - GBA era games to Switch like this, not just Virtual Console.
] but if people are aware of some better options, or have some words of caution, I would love to hear your perspective.) Growing up, trading and link play were never really something I got to experience out of one or two times. So, the games always ended up being a very contained experience for me, the mons in that generation were what I had to work with. At this point, those restrictions have just developed into a personal play preference, where I like the restriction of only using mons from that generation, it helps me feel more connected to that specific region & version of the game.