My Pokémon Journey Part 2: 2010-2025

[freshfeeling]

Picking up from part 1, this discussion of my history with Pokémon games starts with the part of my adulthood where I started acting like a more traditionally-viewed adult. I met my wife in 2010 and, while it's little to do with this blog, that has pretty much been a great thing. It does mean, however, that I wasn't as immersed in gaming as a hobby. Like a lot of couples, we did a sort of parallel play where we had to binge watch her favourite shows and then, reciprocally, we had to binge watch my favourite shows. I watched Buffy, and she watched Airbender; you may judge for yourself who came out ahead. Either way, if I were a bachelor that might've been gaming time.

Generations V and VI

Pokémon Black and White came out in early 2011. At this time, one of my nephews was into gaming so for his birthday I got him Pokémon Black and got myself Pokémon White so we could trade - although he wasn't interested in dex completion and mostly just wanted to battle, so this was a raw deal for me. My starter for this one was an Oshawott named Washout. I understood the controversy in the fact that the Unova regional dex was entirely new Pokémon and that transferring was locked to the postgame, but I think I really liked the Unova games. I adored the animated sprites.

The transfer process between Generation IV and V is somewhat awkward, requiring 2 DS-family systems. I think I borrowed a DS from a friend to do a bit more of this. Despite the relative lack of gaming time, I had the overwhelming majority of my Pokémon White living dex done by the time the sequels were announced.

My living dex from Pokémon White.

Between the Unova game releases, though, we had our wedding and welcomed our first child. It was a busy time in my life! I remember a few months after my son was born he was sleeping in a baby rocking chair thing while I played Pokémon. Babies mostly wake up kind of gradually, so I remember him slowly sputtering awake and me being like, "c'mon, baby, this egg's about to hatch, gimme 3 more minutes!". I've developed a deep-seated association between the anxious feeling of having a stirring baby and crossing the Skyarrow Bridge.

I biked a lot of locations in Black 2, and the Sleepbaby Skyarrow Bridge is one of them!
Young Stik is born.

I also had a bit of routine when it came to Pokémon Dream World. I would regularly do the thing where I'd make a Pokémon go to sleep, and then daily at work on my lunch break I'd do whatever there was to do in the dream world, then go home at the end of the day and claim any rewards. It was mostly a good system for the relatively short lifespan of Pokémon Dream World.

While my wife was still on maternity leave and my son was a couple of months old, she invited a mom friend and their son, who was about 2 years old, over. She would later describe the scene to me: He walked into the empty room, completely homed in on my DS Lite on a table, picked it up, and slammed it down onto the floor. The screen didn't come apart completely, but it broke on the non-cable side. Not ideal!

Can you tell that the top screen is quite a bit less clear than the bottom screen?

While I wasn't extremely keen on the 3DS when it was new (in part because I loved the original DS' GBA slot), buying a new DS Lite in 2012 wasn't easy, so my wife bought me a 3DS. I think it may have actually been for Father's Day in 2012; literally my first Father's Day present.

Well, now I could use my partly-broken-but-still-mostly-functional DS Lite and my 3DS to transfer Pokémon between Generation IV and V. So that's... nice?

When Black 2 and White 2 released, I switched colours and went with Black 2. I was somewhat grateful to have access to the 3DS after all because I legitimately found Pokémon Dream Radar pretty fun. I still play and enjoy it every so often, I just wish there was a bit more variety in the catchable Pokémon. As sequel games, I thought Black 2 and White 2 were really clever in their redesign of the Unova region.

After my foundational time with Gen IV and Gen III, although my life was busier at this point, the Gen V games were probably when I took the metagame most seriously. I knew enough to make good teams and train them effectively. My wife's maternity leaves may have contributed to me still having some time for hobbies. I tried to accumulate some shinies and ensure I had certain Pokémon with hidden abilities, and then I'd strategically breed and carefully manage EVs as if I were building a competitive team. I never actually played in a competition, but it's fun stomping the regular postgame.

These are just a couple of my fairly well-managed, almost-competitive Pokémon from White.

My favourite themed team was in Black 2 where I decided to make a team themed around Warrior Cats: of course, there weren't really very many cat-like Pokémon at this time, so a few vague equivalences had to be used as stand-ins, such as Bluestar being an Espeon. Given the suboptimal species in play, this team was by no means optimized for competitive battle, but I put some serious work in and, again, they were quite powerful (and fun!) for any in-game battle. Luxray kind of sucks, but Bram(ble)claw was my favourite anyway.

I'm not a hardcore completionist with everything, but I had been enjoying the living dexes I had cultivated in so many games to this point. It was somewhat harder to find the time to do this with my growing family, so while I was still finishing Black 2 and eventually Pokémon Y when it came out, I was mostly on a break from modern console games during this period. I almost skipped the 8th console generation, and never ended up getting a PlayStation 3 or 4 despite being a Final Fantasy nut.

My living dex from Pokémon Black 2,
followed by Thor's Blastoise, Emeralts, Imbruglia, and the other friends we've been transferring through the ages

I did play Pokémon Y when it came out - and bought that same nephew a copy of Pokémon X, although we never really played together - but I honestly have very little memory of the game. Besides the road by the daycare and the big chateau where I biked back and forth getting eggs, I can barely navigate that region at all now. I think with the balance of time going to my family I might've played that entire game in a half-asleep state. I don't particularly remember my early use of Pokémon Transporter and Pokémon Bank, but I've got a living dex in Pokémon Y too, so it must have worked adequately for me. At this point I was still moving Pokémon like Emeralts, Thor's Mewtwo and the MATTLE Ho-oh from Generation III into Generation IV with Pal Park, into Generation V with one broken DS Lite and one 3DS, and then into Generation VI via Transporter.

I found a good method to take screenshots for Gen IV and Gen V but not Gen VI, so these happen to be from Black 2.
Of course, they were able to be carried forward.

My Pokédecline and Pokébreak

When Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire came out in late 2014, I was given Pokémon Omega Ruby as a Christmas present. I had two kids now! I didn't play much of the game, sort of petering out after 4 gyms or so.

When Pokémon Sun and Moon came out in late 2016, I was given Pokémon Sun as a Christmas present. I had three kids now! I played this one even less. I do have an early, special memory related to this one though in that I was connecting with my own students about the game for the first time, especially in a course I was running in early 2017. I was still on Alola Route 1 and one student offered me their first shiny: a beautiful, golden Magikarp, which I've still got!

The shiny Magikarp I received as a gift in 2017.
I recently shared with that student, who graduated ~8 years ago, that I still had it!

By this point, I accepted I pretty much could not manage the time for Pokémon anymore, at least not the way I actually wanted to play it. I still liked the games... but my career was taking shape and I had the kind of sleep schedule a person with babies and toddlers has. I guess I started playing challenge/variant games with intent around 2015, too, but the actual occasions that I played these were sparse.

I was a late adopter to the Wii U, and part of what drew me into that was definitely Super Mario Maker, of course. Not only is that game generally great and appealing to my interest in user-generated content, but it was a great thing to play with my kids as they started to play games. The things I found time to play just weren't Pokémon.

We got a Nintendo Switch much sooner after its release, in late 2017. When Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! came out in late 2018, my kids seemed interested, so we got that pretty soon after release, too. I only played up to Cerulean City, and my kids only got about that far, too. I don't know if it's a matter of attention, or the fact that they weren't strong readers yet, or just having other games available, but despite Nintendo's best efforts at making a very accessible game, it didn't stick.

I had also very briefly dabbled in Pokémon GO. Apparently I first played in early 2019, but at the time I had a pretty limited mobile data plan so I barely got into it at all.

Some arbitrary pictures taken with my kids in Pokémon GO from early 2019.

Overall, while there were little bits of experimentation... I didn't really play Pokémon for 9 years, from early 2017 to December 2025.

My Pokérenaissance

So, how have I ended up playing nothing but Pokémon games for at least the last four months? And with a fair level of dedication? That was also somewhat of a gradual thing. It started with getting two of my sons a Miyoo Mini in Summer 2024. My middle child loves cute little guys in general, and somehow eventually started playing Pokémon Sapphire in Summer 2025. He was playing among a group of friends at the time and kept catching Pokémon and naming them after his friends, which was fun.

My kids may be gamers.

On somewhat of a whim, when we were visiting Montreal in mid-November 2025, we popped into the world's largest EB Games and my son decided to buy Pokémon Violet. At the time I actually thought this would be a colossal waste of money since he didn't really play Let's Go, Pikachu!. It wasn't; he enjoyed it.

Then, over the Christmas holiday break in 2025, my family all got sick with various minor maladies. Nobody in my immediate family had bought each other any video games and we were stuck inside. The grandparents had got games as presents for my kids but because of our illness we couldn't see them for several days, so we couldn't receive those presents. What did the kids decide to play with their extra time? Pokémon Violet.

All of the kids were playing it, and occasionally watching Pokémon videos on YouTube, and really enjoying that intense discussion about how to play the game and different approaches they were taking just like my friend and I did in Summer 2007. That's what made me say it:

"I'm pretty sure I can clone legendaries in Emerald and transfer them into the modern games, if you were interested..."

Yeah, they were into that. Upon researching a little bit, I found the following:

• I hadn't played Pokémon Sun since support for Pokémon Bank was added - but now Pokémon Bank can be used with Generation VI and Generation VII games.
• Pokémon Bank (and Pokémon Transporter) are still functioning, and in fact while it used to have a subscription cost, it's free now.
• Pokémon Bank has an easy export to the new storage and transfer system, Pokémon Home.
• My original DS Lite with the broken screen hinge still partly works, with a very fuzzy top screen.
• Pokémon GO also allows exports to Pokémon Home.
• My 3DS - which is hacked because of my friend's insistence that I play Fire Emblem Awakening - allows me to enable Mystery Gifts for event Pokémon in Generations IV through VII fairly freely.

So, it is still possible to clone and export Pokémon from Generation III into modern games like Pokémon Violet in 2026. Possible - but not simple.

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