So I found out about a month ago that my Crystal version that I spent 120+ hours on and had all 252 Pokemon in it got corrupted, so all of that work is nil and void. *sniff* AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!1!!!!!!!!! *sigh* ... Anywho, this got me back to playing that addictive game of Pokemon in hopes to accomplish this feat. Again. Well, this brought me in transition back to playing Red version again. After playing for a while and reading Jim Sterling's recent blogs on Pokemon, I got to thinking though there are some strange elements of the game that can be bothersome, there are also some small, sometimes unnoticed elements of Pokemon great.

1. Trainers in themselves were a great part of the Pokemon games. You always would associate certain trainers with certain Pokemon. Bikers had Poison type, Guitarists had Electric type, Bird Trainers had, er... what did they have again? Nevermind. But another great part about those Trainers was the way the prize money accociated with them. Gentlemen were filthy rich, so when you defeated thier Pikachus and Growlithes you got some great pot, er, Pokeball money. However, those fucking annoying swimmers never had any good cash, even though they consisted of 99% of the Trainers. Though it's cool in a way because how would swimmers hold money anyway?

2. Pokemon was a twisted RPG, one of the many genres given to the game. The greatest part was the updated dungeon crawling scenario given to caves, forests, etc in the world of Pokemon. You traveled through these long, winding, dead-end places, facing wild Pokemon every step and dumbass Trainers that spend their days just hanging in the darkest part of the cave. Sometimes you were lucky, and found items or even Legendary Pokemon. Most of the time you just got annoyed.

3. You ever notice how gyms are never real gyms? It's weird how you think of Pokemon gyms and never really see the basic elements of a real-life gym. No weights, no machines, no buff guy who distracts the hot girl from you. There's just a bunch of Trainers with one type of Pokemon, sometimes elaborate traps and puzzles to the gym leader. None of these people are really gymmin' in the real sense of the word. How do they keep so fit in the Pokemon world if gyms aren't what they're supposed to be?

4. Pokemon tried very hard to make the world of these games seem as real as possible. And it worked. You walk in the forest, you encounter bugs and birds. In the cave you see living rocks and bats. In the water you find fish, squids and such. The different creatures just seem to fit in the places you find them. However, you also get the surreal part of Pokemon through their world also. You would never go out and through colored balls at purple rats or snakes. That just might get you maimed. You also don't want to set those kind of creatures on other people (at least without avoiding a lawsuit). This connection really makes Pokemon a great game. Its like real world on acid, and that's just the kind of world I want to live in.