Project 151: The Game and the Starter Poll

Last week I made a very wordy announcement concerning Pokémon and my first ever venture into that territory. This week, I’m excited to announce my game choice! But I must first extend loads of gratitude to everyone who commented on that post and had previously given me advice about where to start with the series. I really appreciate that you all made a tough decision into a VERY tough decision. (Haha. Love you all!) I’m not going to beat around the proverbial pokébush, which is a poisonous and horrible thing wholly unrelated to Pokémon, because the rambling has begun. Instead, the game I’m going to play is…

Pokémon LeafGreen!

Pokemon LeafGreen Version cover art © Nintendo

At the risk of verging once again into long-winded, gethtefuckoveryourself territory, I’ll try to be brief about discussing my reasoning. When the thought first crossed my mind to start playing Pokémon, I figured I’d just start at the beginning. I had just begun paying attention to TwitchPlaysPokémon‘s “playthrough” of Pokémon Red – it was mostly foreign but just the tiniest bit familiar in that I knew some of the characters names. And I liked that. So I started watching snippets of actual gameplay of the original Red, Blue, and Green games. As with all things on YouTube, this led me down the Let’s Play rabbit hole to all the other games. Keeping in mind the games people said were good, as well as the ones to avoid, I started focusing on a handful of the games, namely the original games, LeafGreen/FireRed, Ruby/Sapphire, Gold/Silver, and X/Y.

While intermittently studying the occasional pokébattle, I thought about my two options in terms of actually playing: get a DS/3DS or go the emulator route. The latter turned out to be the way for me to go (for now anyway), especially with a tablet in hand, though I really did look into getting another handheld. (And, I hate to say it, but what is my Wii U doing now besides gathering dust…? Coulda had a 3DS, maybe? \sad trombone\). After downloading an emulator, it was back to choosing a game.

Honestly, the choice from there was pretty anti-climactic. No matter how many videos of different games I watched, I couldn’t shake that familiarity thing with the original games and LeafGreen/FireRed. And it’s not like I’m the kind of person that has to start at the beginning with all things, but I just kept coming back to “the beginning makes sense” when it came to Pokémon. Why LeafGreen over the original? No mincing words here: it looked better. Why LeafGreen over FireRed? I obtained both, but something was amiss with the FireRed file and the game simply didn’t play. LeafGreen worked, so that was that.

And this is that.

Someday, I’m going to learn how to explain life and things in less than 200 words. Unfortunately, that day is not today. Fortunately, it’s onto polling time! As I mentioned last week, I’d like your help in choosing a starter, which are in LeafGreen, the ubiquitous Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. Which one would you start with? Which one might be the best for a beginner? Submit your choice below (and feel free to offer up comments), and the starter with the most votes after two weeks will be my starter! (If there happens to be a two-way tie. I’m simply going to flip a coin. If it’s a three-way, ::snickers:: then it’s onto eeny-meeny-miny-moe. No lie.) I’ll announce the final choice on May 26^th, and then all the gaming shall commence, forthwith!