25 Years of Pokémon: Celebrating with the Pokémon Tag!

It’s hard to believe that Pokémon has been around for 25 years now – 25 years of loveable creatures, memorable battles, and a ton of fun. Also, on a completely unrelated note, I feel very old. But anyway, McKenna over at zeldaisthegirl.com is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pokémon by doing a Pokémon tag – and y’all know I can’t resist some Pokémon content. Check out her original post here, if you want to participate yourself! Let’s get into it!

What is your favourite Pokémon?

I have no idea how to answer this because I have so many favourites across the many games and regions. A couple standouts for me are Clefairy, Rowlet, Slowpoke, Mimikyu, Floette, Drifblim, Totodile, and Appletun.

What’s your favourite Pokémon game?

Definitely Pokémon X. I know a lot of people didn’t like this iteration in the series, but I loved everything about it – the setting, the new Pokémon, and the story. Not gonna lie, I teared up a little bit at the end when the King is reunited with his Floette after 3,000 years. They introduced Pokémon Amie (a new way to befriend/grow closer to your Pokémon), character customization, and Mega Evolution, and in my opinion, these were all fantastic additions. I didn’t vibe with Pokémon Black/White at all, so for me, Pokémon X was a great return to form.

What’s your favourite Pokémon generation?

Hmm this is another hard one – especially because I’m not sure I can separate nostalgia from my actual enjoyment of certain generations. I would have to say my top 3 are probably Generation 1, Generation 6, and Generation 4.

What’s your favourite Pokémon type?

Toss up between Ghost, Water, and Fairy for me. I love these typings for their strength (they only have a few weaknesses apiece) and their general Pokémon designs are some of my favourite throughout the games. I also kind of love the fridge logic of Ghost types – like wait a second… Pokémon can die…? and come back? Or possess objects? Spooky…

Are you looking forward to potential Diamond/Pearl remakes?

I am! I loved Pearl when I first played through it – I really like the 4th Generation of Pokémon as well. It was the second Pokémon game that I played in its entirety – Pokémon Sapphire was the first where I was able to beat the Elite Four and finish the game. As much as I don’t necessarily like Nintendo being lazy and re-doing older titles, I would absolutely love to play Diamond/Pearl again.

What’s your favourite villainous team?

Team Skull from Sun/Moon, 100%. All of the villainous teams are jokes, let’s be honest – they pretty much exist to give you some free EXP. Their plans always fail, and even if their goals are genuinely sinister, they usually come across as cartoony, and silly. Team Skull leaned into this idea and didn’t make any qualms about the fact that they were clowns. Guzma and Plumeria were also just cool characters by themselves. Some of the grunts are actually funny (or memeworthy at least) and overall, I just enjoyed their overt clownery and ridiculousness.

What’s something you’d like to return to Pokémon?

I feel like Pokémon has really been slacking in the post-game content department – they used to have entire regions become available to visit, and usually a new chunk of story to unravel. It felt like a genuine reward for being able to complete the game. Now, they usually include some kind of Battle Tower area, but little beyond that. It’s disappointing to finish the game and have nothing waiting for you on the other side.

The only other thing I kind of miss is having a challenging Victory Road before facing the Elite Four – anyone who played the older Pokémon titles will remember that the cave routes were no joke. It was common (for me, anyway) to just barely scrape through one of these areas – your Pokémon are all on the verge of fainting, and maybe there’s a single potion left in your bag. The slog of getting through half a million random encounters, a confusing cave system, and some challenging NPC battles along the way made Victory Road especially difficult. They’ve more or less done away with this final, rite-of-passage hurdle, but I wouldn’t mind if they brought it back. It was the ultimate test of your team before the Elite Four, and it was one of the few genuine challenges in the game. Kids these days have no idea how easy they have it.

What’s your dream Pokémon crossover game?

I’ve never thought about this before, mostly just because I prefer the mainline game formula. I think a Pokémon/Professor Layton crossover would be fun – mostly because Detective Pikachu is already a thing, so seeing Professor Layton and Pikachu solving puzzles together would be pretty cute.

What should the next Pokémon region be based on?

I’d really like to see a South American setting. I think that would allow for some really interesting areas, and new Pokémon designs. Weirdly enough, I think a Canadian setting would also be super cool, because Canada is such a beautiful place with a huge variety of landscapes – forests, snowy mountains, lakes, plains – but I’m biased I guess. Also, North American architecture is pretty dull.

That’s it for this tag! Go check out McKenna’s blog (she’s doing a month of Pokémon content) and I’ll catch you guys later!