Dear God, a giant wall of text! Run!!
Actually, it was pretty good. I definitely remember pokemon... God the hours I've wasted on those games... I also just got Crash Bandicoot off the PSN, and I've been having fun with that.
EDIT: Okay, I have to go into a bit more detail. So, my first pokemon game was also the Blue version. I, however, chose Charmander. I remember having a hard time getting past Misty; I used to stay up way later than my bedtime trying to train... until I got caught and had my GameBoy taken away.
Anyway, I found out very early on that I could save right before any major battle, and if I lost, I could turn it off and on and it would be like I never lost at all! Then I could keep trying until I owned that noob (who by the time I won had probably defeated me well over 15 times). Unfortunately, I didn't think to use it for the legendaries, so I only got Articuno... God, I want to go play this game again. =D
I believe I spent over 300 hours on that game alone, not to mention the countless save files and versions since. I've probably wasted a couple thousand hours of my life playing pokemon. How sad. ^_^
