#94

Pokémon! Nintendo released Silver, Gold, and Crystal versions for download on their e-lectronic shoppe, so I grabbed up Gold version and started tooling around just to hear the midi soundtrack (still the best of the lot, no contest) and look at the pixels and sprites. Before I knew what was happening I was rotating all my game cartridges in and out of my 2DS, furiously loading up the Bank to move things around, evolve certain Pokémon in one game and bring them into another, getting one game past the Elite Four as I start another in a different version as I put a few miles into the mid-game stretch of a third. I am a crazy person and this is not an okay thing.

Now, it is not that I just sat on my ass and did nothing else; also read some comics (Cigarette Girl, by Masahiko Matsumoto, and King City by Brandon Graham) and most of a psychology book (albeit a short one; The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm), helped a friend clean and reorganize their room, bought some books*, walked around a bit. It's not good for me to have two whole days off, maybe. For it does remain fact that I feverishly played X, Y, Omega Ruby, and Moon versions for a non-trivial portion of the last three days. It could have been worse. I have more versions.

*

My very first Pokémon game was Blue Version. It was also my very first personally-owned game for my first personally-owned system, a yellow Game Boy Color. More about that another time. For now, it is enough to know that I'm a Blastoise Boy. 

Second was Silver version. On my first playthrough of Silver, I logged more than two hundred and fourteen hours and got a couple of my boys up to level 90. This was, at the time and amongst people in my age group, an astonishing demonstration of attention span and focus. That I was able to do that and still read my usual steady diet of books, learn to play a musical instrument, and attend school is a mark of just how much free time children have, but also shows how good I am at logging massive hours while leading an apparently normal life. The Fire Emblem series are another good example of this manic tendency. 

As Blue once called to me, so too did Sapphire version. So far, so consistent; always the sleeker version mascot, always the lower-temperature color. I chose Pearl over Diamond, White over Black, Y over X, and Moon over Sun. I will refer you to this chart, and you will see that every last one of my choices is on the right of the column! What a serendipitous occasion. Or does it mean something true and irrevocable about my deepest self?

Probably it does not, especially as given my own personal aesthetics and color value, the chart would have to be modified. Black and White cancel each other out, for starters. Y version was a marked departure for me aesthetically; I prefer X as a letter, and the bright metallic blues and greens of X are more my speed than the violent deep-pink-and-reds contrasted with black of Y version. But sometimes the mascot itself pushes harder than the color scheme; I prefer Yveltal to Xerneas. I do not like organisms styled along the infraorder Pecoria that go so far as to join Cervidae. I don't like cervids, basically. Never raised a Stantler, or a Deerling. Fuck deer, when you get right down to it. Don't like 'em. Don't trust 'em. Don't shoot 'em, personally, either; but I don't truck much with their kind. Some deer are cool.

Anyhow, with re-releases, I try to play the other end of things, except, notably, with HeartGold and SoulSilver; I love Silver version very deeply, and chose to ride with Lugia once more. I went with FireRed instead of LeafGreen and OmegaRuby instead of AlphaSapphire. And now I've gone back, sort of, for Gold version. Probably I'll download Red version, too. I lost my Pearl version, and I replaced it with a Diamond version.

Of course I have gotten the extra versions, for the most part, at the appropriate times; I have Yellow and Platinum, and have Played Crystal and Emerald though I do not own them--yet. Why do I say yet? Because all that "probably download" or replacing one with another was bullshit, and doesn't cut it, really. I shall be more honest about the situation.

You see, I loved Y so much I got X a couple years later, and I loved having them both so much that I got Moon and Sun at the same damn time--I only played Moon first. And you know what? I'm going to get myself AlphaSapphire, too. And get a Pearl version again, and the sequels to Black and White, and the Ultra versions of Sun and Moon. And every other version they've ever made, I will get them all, so help me Jesus, I will reclaim what I let go and I will forge ahead and never, ever--I will never--stop catching them all.


--JL

*
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin
Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens
Danse Macabre and Just After Sunset, by Stephen King
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
The Painted Bird By Jerzy Kozinski
The Maid by Yasutaka Tsutsui
Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and The Garden of Cyrus, by Sir Thomas Browne