Vol. 1, Issue 17 - The Legacy of Pokémon: Part 3 - Generation 2
A record of the personal journey of a Pokémon fan, along with the latest Pokémon news and mailbag content
It’s time for another issue of the Johto Times! This week in issue 17, I am happy to be publishing another chapter in The Legacy of Pokémon series, a record of my personal journey as a Pokémon fan. This time around, I am focusing on Generation 2. It happens to be my favourite generation and I had plenty to say about it, so please excuse the length of this feature!
On May 31st 2023, PokéCommunity published an interview with me to discuss the Johto Times, something we had been working on for a little while. I was very proud to represent the newsletter to one of the largest and longest running Pokémon forums online. Special thanks to Fact Checking Gardevoir from the PokéCommunity for taking the time to speak with me!
Check out the full interview here.
News
The next Pokémon Trading Card set was officially revealed on May 25th, called "Obsidian Flames", and it will be released on August 11th 2023. The set will contain over 190 cards, including Charizard EX.
Source: Pokémon
Pokémon HOME has finally received its 3.0.0 update, adding connectivity to Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. The Pokémon Company announced on Twitter this week that maintenance would begin on Monday May 29th 2023 in preparation for the long anticipated version. This comes after a retracted statement last week, where the company was forced to correct the record and state that no release date had been decided at the time. All 1010 Pokémon and their forms can now be stored in the app.
Source: Pokémon
Feature: The Legacy of Pokémon: Part 3 - Generation 2
Generation 2
2001 - 2003
Despite Blue being my first Pokémon game, my love for the series originates from Pokémon Crystal and the second generation of games. Back in 2001, I originally had my heart set on purchasing a copy of Pokémon Silver with my pocket money. I remember vividly going into a local ASDA supermarket and staring at the box on display in their video games section, mesmerised by how shiny it looked. I wanted the game so badly and spent weeks saving up all the money I could in the hope of buying it. I even bought a magazine from a newsagent called Pokémon Monster Guide, which had details on all the new Johto Pokémon.
I remember reading it over and over in eager anticipation. One afternoon I met up with a local friend called Adam, who brought along his pink Game Boy Color and a copy of Pokémon Gold, which he let me play with for a little while. I was super excited and loved what I saw, but sadly I wasn’t able to get enough time with the game before he took it back home, leaving me even more determined than ever to own a copy of Silver.
When the time finally came to buy Pokémon Silver and I had saved up the thirty pounds necessary to buy it, I went into town with mum, visited a store called MVC (Music and Video Club) and approached the counter to buy a copy. To my horror, they had sold out! The guy who served me instead recommended a completely different version of the game that had just been released: Pokémon Crystal! I don’t remember the exact conversation, but I know that he convinced me that it was an improved version of the same game and that I should buy it instead. At the time I was unsure, because I had my heart set on owning a copy of Silver. Ultimately I trusted the advice and agreed to purchase the game (which had an equally shiny box), and travelled home with it in eager anticipation to play.
On the way back, mum decided it would be a great idea to visit my brother’s home first before heading back to our own, which was definitely not an idea that I agreed with, and I simply couldn’t wait to play it any longer. Thankfully, I had my Game Boy Color with me at the time, so when we got there I opened the game up, put it into the console, and switched it on for the first time. Until this point, I had only used my Game Boy Color to play Pokémon Blue, and while the system colourised the game a bit, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw on my screen.
Previously, I had only experienced a brief glimpse of my friend’s copy of Gold, and screenshots inside the Pokémon Monster Guide magazine. I didn’t fully appreciate the improvements in colour and animation until the moment I played Pokémon Crystal. Once the game powered up, I was met with a vibrant and impressive title sequence! New Pokémon, Pichu and Wooper, popped out of the tall grass! Several Unown were sending waves of energy across the screen! An animation of Suicune’s shadow raced quickly through the tall grass with catchy music complementing the scene. That image of Suicune bravely leaping towards the Unown was so impressive that every time I see it I am instantly transported back to sitting on the floor in my brother’s kitchen, mesmerised by that incredible introduction.
As the title sequence ended, Unown appeared on my screen spelling out the word “CRYSTAL,” and I remember quite vividly thinking: “This is going to be the best Pokémon game ever!” While my opinion may be clouded by the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, there’s still some truth to this as I continue to appreciate and write about the game all these years later. I guess it left a Crystal-clear first impression?
My time with Crystal was an absolute joy. I loved exploring the land of Johto and seeing the vast improvements over the first generation of games. Full colour, animated sprites, a more detailed world, and quite notably: a solid soundtrack. Once again I was wowed and inspired by the music of Pokémon Crystal. Go Ichinose, Morikazu Aoki, and Masuda-san created what continues to be my favourite Pokémon soundtrack. There were so many fantastic compositions and sounds from this game that I hold very dearly, including Route 38, Bicycle, and various battle themes such as Team Rocket, Rival, Champion, and my favourite of them all: the Gym Leader (Johto Version)!
Pokémon Crystal was the source of dozens of memories that I will never forget, for better or for worse. I remember Gym Leader Whitney’s stupid overpowered Miltank, riding up and down Goldenrod City to hatch eggs, tuning in to Buena’s Password on the radio and obtaining prizes at the Goldenrod Radio Tower, and my first ever shiny Pokémon encounter: a Wooper in Union Cave. At the time, my Pokémon used Strength on the shiny Wooper and unfortunately it fainted, leaving me sitting there in disbelief and feeling distraught that my first shiny encounter had ended in complete and utter failure. The best memory of all was the discovery of the Kanto region’s existence within the game. I crossed the water from New Bark Town, and once I reached the land on the other side, an NPC confirmed that I had taken my first steps into Kanto. I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading! Despite it being a watered-down version of what I experienced in Pokémon Blue, the addition of Kanto was hugely significant at the time.
About a year after first purchasing Crystal, I befriended someone from the street over called Mason who also had a copy of the game. We would play it together a few times per week: battling, trading and performing Mystery Gift trades in order to obtain items or decorations for our character’s rooms. One distinct memory I have is performing a Mystery Gift where I received a Nintendo 64 decoration for my room and he received a Tropic Plant. He was so upset by this, he stormed into his home and didn’t play for the rest of the day!
A Mystery Gift could also be performed between a Game Boy Color and a Pocket Pikachu Color, a peripheral device I was fortunate enough to own. When I saw it in the window a few months after purchasing Crystal, I noticed that it had an infrared port which connected to the Game Boy Color to trade items to other generation II games. It was one of the main reasons I picked it up, and it even had its original box! One of the exclusive items I was able to distribute was an Eon Mail, a piece of exclusive stationery for use in Gold, Silver, or Crystal. It was probably my favourite of all the mails in the game, and we made good use of it! We would sometimes trade Pokémon to one another overnight with a mail attached to the Pokémon, leaving messages to read later once we were at home. I remember that Eon Mail was used quite a lot!
We would also make good use of the Viridian City Battle House to face a CPU-controlled version of each other’s team and gain experience from battles to level up our own Pokémon. Trading, battling and using Mystery Gift to interact with Mason allowed me to explore Pokémon Crystal to its fullest potential. As a result, it helped me appreciate the game even more than I would have otherwise. Unfortunately, the battery in my copy of Pokémon Crystal has since died, and I am saddened to know that all of those mail messages, the Battle House data with Mason, and my Pokémon have been lost to time.
Similarly to Pokémon Blue, I don’t remember a huge amount about my original Crystal team or what I did during my first play through. I remember my starter was Cyndaquil, which I evolved to Typhlosion. I managed to level both it and a Jumpluff to level 100. I traded my original Charizard over from Pokémon Blue. I also had fun with a cheat device at one point (blame my local friend David), where I taught my Victreebel Sky Attack and destroyed Mason’s team. We also traded a Missingno from Pokémon Blue to Pokémon Crystal, and discovered it turned into a Remoraid! At this point, I think we had both decided that it wasn’t really fair to battle one another any more with overpowered and hacked teams.
Another cherished device I bought back then (on April 12th 2002), which no one else I knew seemed to have, was a Pokémon Mini. I always felt that this console was pretty cool due to its functionality and it being, at the time of writing, Nintendo’s smallest video game system ever made. Sadly, it was ultimately a commercial failure, with just a handful of games ever released for it. One of these games was a pack-in title called Pokémon Party mini, a collection of several mini-games and applications. One of the applications, Celebi’s Clock, had a stop-watch function that I would use to time my friends as we raced around the block. I can’t remember who used to win those races, but it was probably Mason. It’s such an obscure memory to have, yet a fun one that still stands out. Years later, I tried to obtain the rest of the Pokémon Mini’s English-released games. I found a sealed copy of Pokémon Pinball mini from a stall at a large video game event for a mere five pounds, and a copy of the rarest English title for the system: Pokémon Tetris mini from a seller based in Portugal. This completed my collection of games for the system in English.
Mason was a generous friend who occasionally gave me some of his spare Pokémon cards, usually from the Base and Jungle sets. I was really thankful and happy to receive them because it meant I finally owned some cards of my own. I believe one of the first he gave me was a holographic Nidoqueen from the Jungle set, and his spare holo Mewtwo from the Base set. I’m fairly sure he parted with a variety of common and uncommon cards too, but these stand out the most, and I still have them in my collection.
I was also using the internet at school more actively to search for all the latest Pokémon news, information, and cheats. Some of my favourite websites back then were Pokémon Elite 2000, Pokéschool, and most notably Serebii, which was, and continues to be, my go-to source of Pokémon information. I remember reading about two fake Pokémon games at the time called Diamond and Jade, which were actually romhacks of games called Keitai Denjuu Telefang (Power & Speed versions) for the Game Boy Color. At the time I believed they were official Pokémon games and was disappointed when I learned otherwise. I clearly did not learn from my Mew-under-the-truck betrayal. It would actually be a few more years before an official Pokémon Diamond would be made and released by Game Freak.
During this generation money was a little more accessible to me and I was able to buy a lot of awesome Pokémon merchandise, most of which I still own to this day. There were a number of items such as plush toys, a Battling Coin game, Tazos, and of course, many packets of trading cards. I started collecting the cards when the Fossil set was released and at the time I managed to collect 56 of the 62 cards in the set. I took a break from collecting cards for a while, but started again during the Neo Genesis, Discovery, Revelation and Destiny sets, before throwing in the towel entirely. During that time I was able to amass a fairly decent number of trading cards. My more memorable pulls were Gengar and Dragonite from the Fossil set and first edition Neo Genesis cards such as Ampharos and Slowking. Mason had also generously given me his Shining Magikarp from the Neo Revelation set, an incredibly rare card, and something that I am proud to still have as part of my collection.
I remember watching the Pokémon anime once again, specifically the Johto League Champions and Master Quest arc (series four and five). I’m not sure if I started watching it again because it was on television more, or if I was just very interested in the Johto story. Every episode would have the same premise: Ash and company would find a random trainer with a new Pokémon, cue Jessie and James running in to try and steal it with some elaborate machine, only to be blasting off again with a bolt of electricity from Pikachu. There was just something really nice about that era of the anime, and the aesthetic beauty of the art and animation. Seeing the world of your favourite games coming to life, and learning more about each character was quite nice. Other than watching the odd clip here and there in the years that followed, Master Quest was the final series of Pokémon I watched.
A fond and heartwarming memory involved my nephew and niece, hiding a ton of my Pokémon plush toys around the house. I challenged them to locate each one, usually with clues on where they might be able to find them so they could bring them back to me. While my niece didn’t take to the series, my nephew used to buy the cards and play the games a bit during the later generations of Diamond and Pearl. I hope my influence played a part in encouraging him!
Mason eventually moved away from Pokémon, after he told me that someone had stolen his Game Boy Color. Sadly, we drifted and went our separate ways. Shortly after, I got my own internet connection, allowing me to explore Pokémon websites and communities from home. I spent time online playing an unofficial Pokémon game called Pokémon Crater. I spent time in their IRC server, which is like a network of chatrooms, and met many of my online friends there. While I enjoyed the community, I made my own and eventually my own Pokémon fan website called Shining Misdreavus!
The community I created began as a chatroom, where a small and close-knit group of Pokémon fans would come to hang out. I made many great friends there such as Mr_J, Mlu, Hydros, Poochyena, Silver, Rainbow_Eevee, MegamanX, Kizera, and many more. Shortly after the creation of the chatroom, a website was made that had news, sections for art and fanfiction, and helpful game guides and walkthroughs. My friend Mlu even offered to host Shining Misdreavus, and we moved from a free service to paid hosting, which I will always be grateful for. Various layouts and content were created for the website by a number of people in the group, which helped to make it look more appealing for our readers. A forum was also set up, full of discussions on games, trading cards and anything else you could think of relating to Pokémon, helping to bring the community closer together.
One of those friends in our community was Hydros, someone who I kept in touch with for many years. He would often mail me gifts, letters, Christmas cards, or items I had agreed to buy from him, such as his Pocket Pikachu Color, a Game Boy Advance e-Reader, and various trading cards. Sadly, I was given the tragic news by his sister that Hydros passed away in 2018, and only heard about it about two and a half years after that. It was something I found very difficult at the time, processing the news and coming to accept the finality of it. It was the first time a friend of mine had passed away. We hadn’t spoken for a while, and I continue to have regrets over that. I’ve been keeping him in my thoughts ever since, and have been trying to honour his memory where possible. When I play Pokémon, he’s occasionally in my thoughts, especially when I see a Gyarados. This is because his online name came from a nickname he gave his first Gyarados.
An acquaintance I met online around this time was DJ Bouche, a musician who loved to talk about Pokémon and video games with me. They knew about my love of Pokémon music, specifically the Gym Leader (Johto Version) theme. Back then I had a Nokia 3330 phone, and they kindly created a ringtone of the theme and sent it to me. I was amazed by the technology, that a ringtone could be composed and sent from the other side of the world to a compatible phone in this way. While it probably didn’t take a huge amount of effort for someone as experienced as them, it meant so much to me and I was super thankful. It was my ringtone for a long time before I eventually got a new phone.
By this point, my online friendships thrived, but the same couldn't be said for my local friendships. I had very few of them, and even less who enjoyed Pokémon. During school I was bullied quite severely, which made it difficult to form any meaningful friendships. The people I met online back then thanks to Pokémon were super valuable in helping to shape my later teen years when things weren’t so great. I am thankful for the many friendships and experiences it brought me. It came at a perfect time too, as generation III was right around the corner…
Click the links to check out Part 1 and Part 2.
Mailbag
Want to be a part of our newsletter? You’re welcome to submit content including (but not limited to) questions, fanart, short stories, memories, photographs of your collection, or even Pokémon tattoos! We will happily publish them in our mailbag and share them in future issues of our newsletter. This week’s question comes once again from a reader called Altair.
Did you (or someone you know) ever get to complete the Pokédex in a Generation 3 game, like Pokémon Emerald? I remember that there were quite a few hoops to jump through to get this done, since at the time of release, not all Pokémon were obtainable in the game, forcing players to wait for Fire Red and Leaf Green later, and even trade over from Pokémon Colosseum to complete the Emerald dex.
Altair
Thanks for your question once again, Altair! To my knowledge, I don’t remember any of my friends telling me that they completed the Hoenn or National Pokédex for Generation 3, although I’m sure some of them did. It’s not something I usually attempt either, but maybe that’s something that will change in the future!
On top of jumping through hoops, I do recall how much effort it would take in order to obtain every released Pokémon in Generation 3 games: Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen, Pokémon Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness, plus additional games such as Pokémon Channel to obtain a Jirachi, all necessary pieces of hardware and link cables, and any time-limited events necessary. If you didn’t have friends to trade with, it could end up costing a fortune!
Thankfully, it became a lot easier as the generations rolled by, allowing fans to obtain Pokémon with the Global Trade System (GTS), WiFi trading, and Pokémon Bank and HOME services.
It's been ages since I've seen that Shining Misdreavus logo, good to see it again!
That's for the TCG update, too, I gotta go through that