An old player is here to chat, from the time when I secretly played GBA under the covers to now being able to take out my phone and play "Pocket Meow", it feels really amazing.

To be honest, which one of us in this group hasn't used an emulator to grind through Pokémon Emerald back in the Sabin era? Back then, the screens were so small, and the pixels so blurry they looked like mosaics, yet we still spent three days and nights catching shiny Pikachu. Later, when we saved up a bit of pocket money to buy the official cartridge and plugged it into our NDSL, it felt like life was complete. Now, when we see new games advertising “3D high-definition realism” and “seamless maps,” our first reaction is actually a bit of a laugh—no exaggeration, if the encounter scenes we imagined while crouching in the grass back then could be made like that, we'd probably wake up laughing in our dreams. 😄

But jokes aside, has this time incorporated giant Pokémon and mythical creature fusion into the gameplay, which really excites us old players. Before, we could only go through gyms step by step and grind the Elite Four, but now time-limited hunts sound thrilling, not to mention running around a 360-degree map, finally freeing us from being “blocked by walls and can't see the path.” No exaggeration, if it can truly bring back that sense of exploration and collection obsession the “Pokémon world” gave us, even if they slip in a few ads in the free mode, I'd be a laid-back player just wandering around a couple of rounds every day.

After all, what we really miss isn't the mosaic graphics, but that first serious feeling when we took a Poké Ball from the professor. I hope this game can help me find that feeling again. Also, feel free, bros, to chat downstairs—what was your first Pokémon game? 🤔