Growing up playing gen 3 means absolutely no critical opinions I might or might not have are completely invalid. I pretty much grew up in Hoenn. I used to pretend the houses in Rustboro were my house and the trainer school was.. a school. But that wasn't this game,it was Emerald instead. Later my mom got me a copy of Sapphire second-hand and words could not describe my fascination about how these games were actually pretty much the same, but this one had some stranger's savefile with a freshly caught Kyogre and a Blaziken instead of Swampert.
Eventually,early Youtube rolled around and by this point, I must have known Ruby was the same as Sapphire, but that's not what those early videos showed at all. Apparently Ruby was used as a base for every romhack made at that point so in my mind Ruby occupied every space inbetween hyperrealistic blood to a cutscene with Latias roaring in a puddle atop a white mountain tileset. You could catch Agumon, Weegee, Yoshi and other trainer's Pokémon in Ruby. There's probably a tech reason why Ruby was used over other games but in my head, Groudon was both cooler and all these fucked up and silly events happened ingame concurrently.
I did realize at some point that obviously, this was all made up. In fact, the exact same rumours were also made about the gen 1,2 and 4. And I beat the Elite 4 50 times and NO JIRACHI SPAWNED? Even if there's video evidence, everything online has to be bullshit. And why would anyone care about Ruby when Emerald was right there? It has all these amazing features like, uh.. your character wears green, a vastly superior colour to red. And the Battle Frontier, even if nobody actually beat it or really cared about anything other than its presence. I even picked up Alpha Sapphire instead of Omega Ruby; Primal Kyogre is just bound to be way stronger; remember how overpowered Drizzle Politoed was in Gen 5? Groudon might look cool,but it'll suck in comparison...
Years went by and wander was lost. Between all the fucked up shit,Covid and memory loss, I frankly don't know if I ever played Ruby version itself; I remember playing either it or Sapphire and being mesmerized at all the small changes Emerald had made me grow accustomed to. This playthrough was no different; it's death by a thousand papercuts to think about what they eventually improved,like how the contest halls are not in order so even if you'd like to invest time into this one feature they clearly wanted to be a big thing moving forward,it'd be frustrating to do so early game. There really is less of a point to play these games over the improved versions comparatively to all generations both moving forward and back... but in my mind and anyone who's grown up in a pre-Battle Frontier, early internet world, they're pretty special. After all, you can catch Agumon in this one.
Eventually,early Youtube rolled around and by this point, I must have known Ruby was the same as Sapphire, but that's not what those early videos showed at all. Apparently Ruby was used as a base for every romhack made at that point so in my mind Ruby occupied every space inbetween hyperrealistic blood to a cutscene with Latias roaring in a puddle atop a white mountain tileset. You could catch Agumon, Weegee, Yoshi and other trainer's Pokémon in Ruby. There's probably a tech reason why Ruby was used over other games but in my head, Groudon was both cooler and all these fucked up and silly events happened ingame concurrently.
I did realize at some point that obviously, this was all made up. In fact, the exact same rumours were also made about the gen 1,2 and 4. And I beat the Elite 4 50 times and NO JIRACHI SPAWNED? Even if there's video evidence, everything online has to be bullshit. And why would anyone care about Ruby when Emerald was right there? It has all these amazing features like, uh.. your character wears green, a vastly superior colour to red. And the Battle Frontier, even if nobody actually beat it or really cared about anything other than its presence. I even picked up Alpha Sapphire instead of Omega Ruby; Primal Kyogre is just bound to be way stronger; remember how overpowered Drizzle Politoed was in Gen 5? Groudon might look cool,but it'll suck in comparison...
Years went by and wander was lost. Between all the fucked up shit,Covid and memory loss, I frankly don't know if I ever played Ruby version itself; I remember playing either it or Sapphire and being mesmerized at all the small changes Emerald had made me grow accustomed to. This playthrough was no different; it's death by a thousand papercuts to think about what they eventually improved,like how the contest halls are not in order so even if you'd like to invest time into this one feature they clearly wanted to be a big thing moving forward,it'd be frustrating to do so early game. There really is less of a point to play these games over the improved versions comparatively to all generations both moving forward and back... but in my mind and anyone who's grown up in a pre-Battle Frontier, early internet world, they're pretty special. After all, you can catch Agumon in this one.