Pokemon Blue: Gotta catch them all!

Pokemon was one of the first games of the RPG genre I played, so this is a title I'm quite fond of, but before I tell the story of how I started to play this saga, I'm going to tell a little story of how I got and then lost my first GameBoy Color, because of my stupidity as a child.

I don't remember exactly what age I think I was around 10 to 12 years old at that time, but at that time I had a friend who had a GameBoy Color yellow and I had never seen one in person and the moment I saw that GameBoy Color I knew I must have one, luckily, that friend was selling his GameBoy and with my school savings I bought it and started playing. My friend only had one game, which was Wario Land 3, a pretty good game that gave me several hours of fun, in fact, because I only had that game I played several times. Unfortunately after a while, because of my stupidity, I sold my GameBoy Color along with the Wario Land game, it was an act that to this day I regret and if I could go back in time I would never do something like that.

Anyway, during the time I had my beloved GameBoy Color, another friend lent me what would be the first Pokemon game I'd ever played: Pokemon Blue, it was quite exciting for me to play a Pokemon game, because by that time I already saw the anime and liked it a lot, so playing a game from one of my favourite animes, at that time, was a dream thing, so I started playing.

Obviously, when I started to play Pokemon Blue I was a little shocked due to the design of the Pokemons, since I was very used to see them in anime, whose design was totally different from what you could see in the video game, even so, it didn't take me much time to get used to its aspects, in fact, I spent too many hours a day playing and raising the level of my Pokemons, however, there were two "small" details regarding this game.

The first detail was that the game was in English and for those who don't know, I'm from Venezuela, so my base language is Spanish, so there were many things I did in the game by instinct and mere luck, because in reality I only understood 40% of what the game told me hahaha, many times I got stuck because I needed some object to complete a mission or to overcome an obstacle or talk to a certain character that gave me the necessary answer to move forward and not understanding almost anything I had on screen I often got stuck at some point in the game, for example: the part when Snorlax is blocking the way and you need the "Pokemon flute" to wake him up and get him out of the way, I remember that that moment of the game I was in total despair because not understanding almost anything the game told me, I had no idea what to do and I remember spending several hours trying to find the solution, until I finally came up with the answer and my stress under 90%.

However, this is when we enter into the second detail of this game. After my stress level dropped 90% when I was able to get Snorlax out of the way, I saved my game and set out to rest, as the GameBoy Color had no screen illumination, so my eyes got very tired.

Anyway, after I rested for a while, I turned on my Gameboy again to continue my adventure, but for my misfortune my departure had not been saved, so I lost all the progress I had made that day. After my stress had dropped 90%, it soared 200% to see that I lost all my progress. That day I didn't play again, so the next day I started again, but before going much deeper into the adventure I had to check something, after I received my initial Pokemon, I saved the game, even twice, and restarted the game, when the game started again, the game hadn't been saved and I did the same thing again, and nothing, even so the game wasn't saved.

My friend "forgot" to tell me that that Pokemon Blue game was defective and couldn't save any progress, so every time the GameBoy was turned off, you had to start a game again. It was a pretty disappointing moment for me at that time, as no matter what I did I was always going to lose everything once I turned off the GameBoy, however, despite that, I continued to play, improve and learn.

Since progress was always going to be lost, my intention was to see how far I could go in a day before I turned off the GameBoy. And so it was, for many days, I turned on the game and tried to go as far as I could, every day I went further and further, and even learned, because as I said, I couldn't understand almost anything the game told me, but by playing every day and repeating the same thing over and over again, sometimes in a different way, but essentially towards the same thing, little by little I saw better ways to complete and overcome certain obstacles and in the same way, I also learned a little more English.

Day after day I trained my Pokémon, every day I chose a new formation and created new strategies, every day I went further and raised the level of my Pokémon, until finally, after several days creating better strategies, I was able to complete the Pokémon league and it was one of the best moments of my childhood, that feeling of "completing" a video game that you invested so many hours is an excellent feeling, but at the same time, a bitter feeling, because at the moment of turning off the GameBoy, I was going to lose everything.

Pokemon Blue was my first interaction with the videogames of the Pokemon saga and although the first interaction with this saga was a little disastrous, due to my little understanding with the English language and with the problem of saving that the game had, that didn't take away the desire to continue playing nor much less the interest of knowing which were the other games that this saga has to offer, later to Pokemon Blue I played Pokemon Gold, the one that is now my favorite of the whole saga, however, although that specific game is my favorite, I keep quite fond of Pokemon Blue for everything it offered me and for everything I experienced while I traveled all the routes, forests and cities that have this game to offer, but above all the challenge of wanting to capture all the Pokemons, that even if I do not succeed, that still does not take away the good memories that I have left this excellent game of my childhood.