I wanted to give this game another go for old times’ sake, and man… while there’s a specific Feel Gen 1 has, I always find myself sorely missing the quality of life features from later games. This game is so limiting in terms of team composition, and I’m so glad that we as a society have moved past HMs requiring a move slot on not very many Pokémon. It’s still pretty flexible, but I had a very specific team in mind (it was Yellow’s team from the Pokemon Special manga) and it became a real pain when I realized none of those critters learned Cut.

I do like the kind of edge of your seat level advantage the E4 ended up having over me, and dang, Pikachu is a cute little critter. It’s still a lot easier to replay later games in the series.

Although I am glad the Virtual Console release included the Surfing Pikachu minigame! I didn’t get any of the eligible Pikachu back in the day so it was nice to finally experience it, even if it wasn’t that impressive.