I was eight years old when Pokemon reached American shores, with two years of steadily expanding tie-ins in Japan getting exported all at once to an eager audience of millennial kids worldwide. I loved it all. The trading cards. The cartoon – which would soon introduce me to the broader world of something called "anime." And most of all, the games.
My steady Nintendo obsession built from a used NES, which grew as further Christmas begging brought me a Super NES and Nintendo 64. But despite my love of video games, I'd never touched an RPG. Maybe I'd been a little young for a genre so dedicated to reading and number-crunching, or maybe my choice of the N64 meant I resented all those fancy-looking Final Fantasy games on the distant PS1.
But that's part of why Pokemon Red felt so fresh and engaging when I finally played it. I didn't know it was a simplified take on the JRPGs older gamers had been enjoying for years. All I knew was that I loved my Venusaur and my Flareon and I'd fight the Elite Four as many times as it took to get them to level 100.
Now, revisiting Pokemon's first generation decades later through the lightly expanded Yellow version, I'm finding much more than millennial nostalgia over a primitive RPG. In fact, as the Gen 1 games celebrate their 30th anniversary, I think my kid self was missing out – these games might be even better as an adult in 2026.
It's super effective
I still get a little jumpscare every time I hear the 'wrong' music at the title screen, or when my starting Pikachu's crunchy voice samples come crackling out, but there's no mistake – this is Pokemon as I remember it. It's like coming home, in a way, as I still remember all the town layouts like I'd last played yesterday. The save battery in my original copy of Pokemon Red is long-since dead, wiping out my original team, but I know I had hundreds of hours logged.
I wasn't spending all that time leveling up or catching the pokemon with the best stats. Instead, I was enjoying the fantasy of being in the Pokemon world. I was browsing the shelves at the Celadon department store over and over, or revisiting the exhibits at the Pewter City museum. The fact that I could spend hours just talking to the same NPCs over and over again might show how games took up so much more space in our childhood imaginations, but it's an illustration of something else, too: the way I hated grinding.
I spent so much time wandering around those little cities partly because I enjoyed it, yes, but also because I couldn't bring myself to do the thing Pokemon is ostensibly about. I had no patience for wandering back and forth at the edge of late-game dungeons, hunting for rare creatures with infinitesimal encounter rates or slowly leveling to evolve the last few Pokemon I needed to complete the Pokedex.
You'd think I'd have even less patience for that grind as an adult with, ostensibly, adult responsibilities, but I've found it's exactly the opposite. I'm now drawn to the gentle repetition of random encounters and incremental XP gains. In the evening, when I often struggle to concentrate on much of anything, there's a meditative joy in letting your brain relax with a light focus on something deeply repetitive.
Like no one ever was
I wasn't listening to a lot of podcasts (they didn't exist) or watching a lot of sports (I was even nerdier then) when I was eight, but now – oh boy – Pokemon Yellow has turned into a perfect companion for both. Pokemon's low-impact, turn-based battles are perfect for half-paying-attention to in the downtime that dominates American sports broadcasts, but the steady sense of progress is engaging enough to offer a welcome distraction when I find one of my favorite teams in the middle of another crushing loss. (Listen, it's been a bad year to be a Missouri sports fan.)
It's an odd thing to return to a game you loved so much as a kid and find it fits your life even better as an adult, but that's the experience I'm having with Pokemon Yellow – and, I should add, Pokemon Red and Blue as well. Another important factor is that I've actually got some disposable income these days, and, like any properly nostalgic millennial, I'm spending it on restored Game Boy cartridges and expensive retro accessories.
Multiple consoles, an appropriate link cable, and access to all three versions of the game means I finally have a hope of completing the Pokedex, and having access to on-demand trades feels like a revelation. I've finally got an Alakazam in my party – a Kadabra evolution you can only obtain via trade – and let me tell you, this guy is absolutely carrying me in the back half of the game.
As I try to complete Pokemon Yellow's story – I'm currently at five gym badges, and about to confront Team Rocket in Saffron City – I'm playing on the Super Game Boy accessory I dreamed of owning as a kid. When it's time to simply grind and collect, I'm playing on the Analogue Pocket, a device I couldn't have even imagined existing back then. Maybe we truly are slaves to the things we wanted as kids, but in this particular instance I'm having too much fun to care.
Returning to a game you loved in your childhood can be disappointing. Maybe you're so familiar with it that coming back feels rote and boring. Or maybe adult eyes will more easily recognize its flaws. It's rare that revisiting a game decades later finds you more receptive to what it has to offer, but that's exactly what I'm finding with my experience returning to Pokemon Yellow. It's still a special game and now, as the series celebrates its 30th anniversary, it's easy to see how the simple concept of training creatures for battle managed to become a worldwide phenomenon.
The Game Boy era still dominates the rankings of the best Pokemon games.
