18 - Pokémon (Gen. 1)
These days, thanks to Pokémon GO, Pokémon craze is big again. I don’t know how big is Pokémon among kids, but back in the nineties it was really big: everybody played Pokémon, watched the anime, collected the cards and had Pokémon-themed scholar items. I had Pokémon Blue and later Pokémon Yellow (that included some changes in the story to follow the anime) and my friends had different versions. We never got to complete our Pokédex, but had a good time fighting and changing Pokémon.
One of the things that I remember is the sense of wonder that everything related with Pokémon caused on us collectively, how we discussed about our teams, about the secrets we had discovered and about the rumors we had read about (that truck had to hide something) In one of my more special gaming moments, I even got Mew! A friend of mine had met a guy in his holidays that somehow had got him (my friend described this guy as “Chinese” so maybe he was playing with a Japanese copy, or he had got it from someone else). This guy cloned Mew to my friend (by disconnecting the link cable while transferring the Pokémon – it was supposed to potentially damage your save, but the risk was worth it) and he cloned to me. It was incredible to have the best and hideous Pokémon ever, something that almost nobody was supposed to have in my country. Some years later a friend of my sister deleted my save file accidentally (He’s a nice guy and I get along well with him nowadays, but I hated him at the moment, and didn’t speak to him for many years…). Good bye Ew (for some reason this was his name) I’ll always remember you!
