Three days after Scarlet and Violet come out is the 20th anniversary of the original Ruby and Sapphire and... Well, that was the last generation of games that really captured me - they came out right before I hit high school, and while I still played and beat Gen 4-6, I didn't have nearly the Spark, the love that I did for the games.
Obviously, it's just me getting older and jaded, but like, I still don't have the Diamond/Pearl nostalgia that people even a little younger than me have.
I started coming back around on Pokemon games when I got a Switch in the early days of the pandemic. Started casually going through Let's Go, but it didn't really start grabbing me until I Speedrun it.
And then I played through Sword and it was okay but I had fun. I basically swept up the playthrough with an adorable little Ribombee and
That was that. I was hooked. I started speedrunning Sword (and routing an Trade Alt Main run for Espeon). I got really excited for Legends Arceus (and fell off quickly but that's another story) and when Scarlet and Violet were announced I was hooked. I've followed every scrap of official information (and occasionally run face-first into leaks) because I'm just genuinely excited for a new Pokemon game.
Are they going to be that perfect game the Gamers™️ have been calling for? God no. But also long as the multiplayer's interesting and the open world exploration is fun to do, I'm going to enjoy myself.
(I'm still really really hoping there's interesting things that can be done with the multiplayer for Speedrunning purposes)
