Game FreakMy first Pokémon was a Chikorita named Chicky and I loved that tiny green hold with all my heart. I came to Pokémon a little later than many of my friends and colleagues, after losing the Red and Blue Pokémon, not owning a Game Boy, but I spent many hours watching others wandering through the creepy little cemetery of Lavender or showing Pikachu’s smile on his face in Yellow Pokémon.
I knew I wanted to be a part of this madness, so until I got my hands on Game Boy Color, I made sure to tell my parents to bring me Pokémon Gold. My little brother received Pokémon Silver and I shared ownership of a Link Cable. It was a Magic time.
Back then, I didn’t know much about the benefits of the type – and I didn’t really care. Pokémon, for most children, is a game where you get a pet and make it fight against other people’s pets, and although a rudimentary understanding of the basic scissors-paper triangle “Fire beats grass, water beats fire, grass beats water ”will take you quite a bit, it becomes a little more complex when you try to come up with reasoning for the type of error that beats the psychic type or the type of fight that beats the normal type. It is best to ignore all of these things and make sure that you have many movements that hit hard.
My dear Chicky was quickly joined by a number of other Pokémon that I kept mostly because they were cute. Togepi that you give yourself at the beginning of the game was one of my favorites, called “Eggy”, because children are awful when they come up with creative names. He had Metronome, a move that came out randomly from every available move, and although Metronome is not a good tactical Pokemon move, made my battles unexpected and surprising every time.
I also had a Mareep, called – points to guess correctly – “Sheepy” and a Golduck, “Ducky”, in an attempt to fill my party with a little more power. My favorite of all was – and still is – Swinub, the kind of pig-slime that, let’s be real, I probably called “Piggy”. I was incredibly disappointed when he turned into an ugly Piloswine, but at least that meant we could be a little fiercer in battle.
When I reached the seemingly endless maze of tunnels that formed Victory Road to the last step of the Pokémon League, I had level 70 Meganium (Chicky), plus Ho-Oh that I just caught my brother’s Lugia. which I made to change because I’m a terrible sister. The first time I dealt with the Elite Four – well, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that my team of Pokémon chosen for their cleanliness hasn’t gone too far.
Back to Victory Road to punch Onix and a few hours later – there is still no joy. I spent all my money on Revives and Hyper Potions, but I barely had time to use them between the elite movements of Elite Four, with a single shot. It didn’t look great for my team – we were wiped out over and over again, and I couldn’t help but imagine that each of the four Elites saw this idiot kid come into their room again and again and feel a little sorry for me. But I wasn’t about to give up. This was an era before “playing something else” was an option. This was my game and I was going beat even if it lasted forever.
It’s time to get serious, then. Cue music editing.
Back then, the only way to find out about a game was to beg my parents for half an hour on the internet, and because I was using the dial-up modem that used the phone lines, it took a while. lot of persuasion. It was expensive and meant we couldn’t receive or make phone calls, so it was awkward. In that half hour, I would try to find all the information I could on Ask Jeeves, the pre-Google search engine designed around a butler., and print it in huge strips of paper (also expensive, also awkward).
Armed with my new knowledge, a bunch of supplies and my brother’s level 70 Feraligatr (for which I exchanged a Magikarp – sorry), I was finally ready to climb the steps like Rocky.
Finally, painfully, I passed Champion Lance, only to be greeted by Professor Oak. Hey! I know that guy on TV! The Pokémon anime was very popular at the time, so the thrill of being greeted by a real celebrity in the Hall of Fame was almost More more exciting than actually getting there. Too bad the screenshots didn’t exist then, because I wish I had proof that my dear, sweet Chicky was celebrated as a champion.
But it wasn’t the last surprise Pokemon Gold had for me. The incredible thing about playing games before the internet took over our lives is that we had no idea what was in the store. The spoilers were a rarity, and most were communicated through untrue rumors at the playground, such as the possibility of obtaining the Triforce in the Ocarina of Time or that there is a mysterious pyramid in the Gerudo desert. So when Pokémon Gold is over, just to reveal … a whole new world to explore, was one of the greatest moments of my young life.
I was missing Red and Blue Pokémon, but Kanto just opened up for me like a flower, allowing me to experience a reduced version of the original game, gym badges, and all that.
The amazing post-game secret of an entire second world, I would find out later, was thanks to Satoru Iwata, the former president of Nintendo whose legacy affected my life in more ways than I can ever know. His unexpected death came just months after the closure of the Official Nintendo Magazine – my first job in gaming journalism – and the world seemed worse for it. He was a visionary and brilliant creative programmer, whose efforts to learn Game Freak how to compress Pokémon Gold and Silver left enough space on the cartridge for Kanto, a plus that practically saved the Pokémon series.
There are few people in this world who mourn the loss, despite the fact that I have never known them. Steve Irwin is one of them. Satoru Iwata is different. I miss his irreverent Nintendo Direct appearances and finding out that he was often the person behind some of Nintendo’s best business decisions. Iwata didn’t work for Game Freak or even Nintendo, when he helped Pokémon Gold and Silver – he was at HAL Lab, he worked at Kirby and Earthbound – but because of him the games came to the West and Kanto was added to the map, both figuratively as well as literally.
I started Pokémon Gold when I was a kid who just wanted to get into a video game craze, but I ended up as a Pokémon fan for life. I could never have predicted that the game would give me so much beyond what I expected, nor that it would send waves throughout my life. I didn’t even expect to finish this play with a tribute to Iwata, but almost six years after his loss, his story lives on in my fond memories of his work.
I often remember the time I spent with Chicky, the plant horse. No Pokémon game since has managed to reproduce the feeling of connection with my first Starter. Since then I’ve defeated almost every Elite Four, Pokémon League and Champion, usually with a similar party consisting of My Starter, the first bird Pokémon I caught, Legendary of the game and a selection of strong backups. But that amazing feeling of discovering that the world was twice as big as you realized … is a feeling once in a lifetime. Pokémon Gold was the beginning of my journey through the world of Pokémon, but it also allowed me to experience what I had missed. What a fantastic game.