I've been a life-long fan of Pokemon, and even though I've been thoroughly disappointed with the state of the recent titles I still love the series as a whole. Here's a shrine to some of my favorite parts of it, along with various thoughts.

My love for Sneasel started in Colosseum. I didn't know at the time about how awful Sneasel had it before the physical/special split, I just loved the lil guy... He quickly became my favorite on the team!

(Interestingly enough I had a second ice type on that team, Piloswine, but for some reason I never got that attached. Sorry Piloswine.)

I have three Sneasels named Shiver (Johto), Prints (Johto shiny), and Ourple (Hisui). I caught Shiver and Ourple to be on my Legends: Arceus team, and by complete luck I came across a shiny Sneasel in a rift later!!

Honestly I don't remember how Banette became one of my favorites, but does that even matter? Just look at it: a vengeful ghost puppet with a sick mega on top of that. Of course I love this thing.

Maybe there was something about how you could only find Shuppet at Mt. Pyre in Ruby, making it feel extra special when compared to its counterpart Duskull. But I couldn't tell you if I even used one on my first playthrough, so who knows. And who give a crap!

Someday I'll come up with a good name for mine...

Obviously playing Ruby as a child instantly endeared me to the Mudkip line, with Mudkip itself being so wonderfully adorable and Swampert so wonderfully powerful (and although Marshtomp was never my favorite of the three, I'm learning to appreciate it more for its goofiness).

Swampert looks like it would walk kind of like a crocodile to me, with how its official art is posed. It's a little disappointing seeing it move on two legs in its 3d walk cycle, but I do enjoy how it sways back and forth. Sick creature all around.

My Swampert is named Skip!

Some more Colosseum favs: Furret, Mantine, and Sudowoodo. I don't nickname any of my Pokemon in that game (because I didn't as a child), but my Sudowoodo is otherwise named Throckmorton.

Also, my Furret was a beast on my most recent playthrough.

Hoenn sweep! Some of these are more favorite than others, but I love how cool or weird they all are.

I became endeared to Absol, Gardevoir, and Grovyle through the Mystery Dungeon games, so I guess part of my enjoyment of these Pokemon is just for those specific characters, but I also like them on their own.

And of course there are other Hoenn Pokemon I like quite a bit, but these ones are just the top favs!

Bat Pokemon! I love bats so I love these guys. I overlooked all of them for a while because I'd never used any, but after doing some thinking I've come to the conclusion that they're all great.

My favorite Guys Who Are Rocks. Who doesn't love a big ol rock?

(Not pictured are Rolycoly's evolutions because I don't care for them. lmao)

And here's a whole bunch more! I've almost certainly missed some, but I think this is a good enough assortment that you get the idea.

Man I love the Gameboy Advance SP; it's such a neat little handheld console. We had some of the earlier Gameboys in the house, but I don't think I ever really played on those, so it makes sense that my favorite Pokemon games would be from the SP era. I did also play Yellow and a bit of Silver and Gold (though the cartridge for one of the latter never remembered the saved game so I sort of gave up on them), but Ruby and FireRed were at the top.

I remember sitting with my sister, me on Ruby and her on Sapphire, pretending we were both in the Rustboro Trainers' School together.

On my first playthrough of Ruby (or at least close to it), I had the Jirachi from the Colosseum bonus disc, which I think I was convinced would give me an easy Elite Four victory. I never managed it, only beating them on a subsequent playthrough without Jirachi, so I had thought the Pokemon itself was at fault...

And on FireRed I was so excited when I found the Sevii Islands and got access to all of them. But my sister didn't believe me! As if I would make that up!

What about Omega Ruby? I think it's a fantastic remake. While I'll always be more charmed by the pixel graphics than the 3d ones, in any Pokemon game, I think these were a great translation of the original. Not to mention the new designs for various characters, most notably Teams Aqua and Magma. I remember genuinely laughing the first time I saw Maxie's defeat animation.

Honestly the only major issue I think I have with this game is what they did to Mauville City. Just dreadful!

As for the non-mainline games, my favorites are of course Colosseum and the Mystery Dungeon games—specifically Red Rescue Team and Explorers of Darkness. (And I know the latter is Gen 4, but does it really matter?)

The battle animations of Colosseum have, at this point, been referrenced exhaustively as a comparison to the current Switch titles, so I won't harp on that much. But I do have to at least say that my god they really are so good. The amount of personality each Pokemon has is just fantastic.

Beyond that of course I love everything about the story, the environments, and the characters. This is one of those games that, as a kid, I would spend so much time just wandering about the world, hanging out in Pyrite Town and Agate Village and the Under and the Pre Gym's basement (screw you, Justy)... Specifically I remember having fun walking slowly and dramatically through the steam coming out of the vents in Pyrite.

I loved this game so much that I named my Animal Crossing City Folk town Pyrite and my character Trudly! The former is a tradition I carried over to New Horizons.

Interestingly enough, I never really played XD that much; mostly I would just watch my sibling play it over and over.

The Mystery Dungeon games were another staple of mine. I always play as Mudkip with a Charmander partner (though my first playthrough of the first game was done as Pikachu, and other early ones as Charmander). Mudkip is obviously one of my favorite Pokemon, but it's also practical because you can easily pick up items that fall in the water... There's strategy here.

Once when I was restarting Rescue Team while away from home, I was struggling to get Charmander from the quiz. Nowadays I know that's partially because the questions are randomized in a way that sometimes you just can't get certain Pokemon, but at the time I was unaware of this and asked my dad for help. He got Charmander on the first try, and when I asked how he did it he said he answered like Charmander would. I was in awe.

The games themselves are just so wonderful in every way. The stories and characters are endearing, and the art and music are some of the best in the whole series. No matter how many times I play these games I can and will cry at the end of both them. They're everything to me.

And since this is a place for me to talk about my love of Pokemon, we'll just ignore the other games.

As for Rescue Team DX, I think it was just about as good of a remake as I could've asked for. Much like with Ruby I do prefer the pixel graphics, but the unique style of DX is charming in its own right. I also found myself a little disappointed at the removable of explorable friend areas, but it was honestly a good decision for quality of life, and they still had the backgrounds and music!

I thought I had a picture of this but I don't so you'll just have to trust me here: I replayed the original just before the remake came out, to compare, and the dialogue was pretty much one to one... save for a line near the end of the original in which you say it was a blessing to have known your partner, which was changed in the remake to be "I'm lucky to have met you," lol.

Explorers DX when?

I might spruce this section up more later but I just decided on a whim to talk about this stuff so for now it's fine.

Some other games I've enjoyed quite a bit include Stadium (never played the second one, though) and Hey You, Pikachu! for the N64. We have the special Pikachu N64 which was always fun to boot up :-)

Then there's Pokemon Channel for the GameCube. Did you know about that game? You're tasked by Professor Oak to watch TV. If you teach Pikachu how to change the channel it will sometimes do it while you're in the middle of a program. You could also go other places and meet other Pokemon but the main thing was TV.

And Pokemon Dash for the DS. The sound of Pikachu drowning is forever ingrained in my mind.

There might be some other stuff I talk about later but for now I think that's it; thanks for coming to my TED Talk.