Celebrating 30 Years of Pokémon and the best I can give you is a Meh with a shrug

It's a little unfortunate that my friends aren't keeping up with Pokémon or even deep into the ROM hack/fangame scene with me these days because we could have been chatting (even a little bit) about the announcement trailer for the Generation 10 titles Pokémon Winds/Waves. I say "even a little bit" because after watching that short video I don't have a lot to say about it, and you know damn well that there'll probably be several YouTubers out there who'll bust out those "analysis" videos in an effort to dissect the trailer and mine for as many clues, hints, references, call-backs, Easter Eggs and so on as they can. It happens. But I wanted to share my thoughts about the trailer and take some time to think about the many years I've spent as a fan of this giant franchise now that it has turned 30 years old. Hopefully those of you who'll read this post are Pokémon fans too and perhaps you've taken time to reflect on your years as a fan as well. 

The original anime series is what made me a fan. It would be a few more years before I got the chance to play one of the mainline games. The anime was airing on a South African channel called e.tv in the early 2000's and if you were lucky enough to have a special decoder you were able to catch channels like that from outside South Africa. Those were some good times. I had not seen anything like Pokémon before so it got my attention in no time and it came at a time when many children around my age here were discovering the anime too and getting into it. What helped to build up the hype was a clever marketing gimmick that had been going on at the time, it involved selected brands of potato chips/crisps and these poker chip-sized, flat plastic discs that were known as Tazos. There would be packets of these potato chips that had a promotional strip on them and most of the time you would find a Tazo as a prize inside. So we enjoyed the anime, following Ash and friends travelling from place to place, meeting interesting characters, battling, finding Pokémon and we also collected as many Tazos as we could. I even had the 2 B A Master CD and Pokémon 2000 on VHS (which I got together with the Digimon movie). Many of the other cartoons that were there at the time were typical shows with episodes that were self-contained and just fun to watch, but Pokémon stood out because there was a story being told that we followed from episode to episode (little did I know back then that most of those episodes were filler haha). So you didn't want to miss an episode and fortunately the channel would have an omnibus of episodes repeated on the weekends. During the week they were aired Monday to Thursday or Friday, I can't remember clearly now, at 4pm. Why I thought of Friday is because that was the day when the show Cybernet was aired at 5pm. Any of you remember Cybernet? It's thanks to Cybernet that I found out about the Generation 2 Pokémon games. How I found out about the Generation 1 games was thanks to the leftovers of a book that ended up in my possession while I was in primary school. I don't remember now if I found it or I borrowed it from a classmate and didn't return it. This book turned out to be the Nintendo Strategy Guide for Red, Blue and Yellow. These leftovers covered Lavender Town up to the Championship battle, I have no idea where the previous pages went to, but it was still worth keeping because that was the closest I got to the games until we had internet access at home and I played that old browser game which was created to promote Pokémon 2000. I also found out about Pokémon Crater around that time too and that was fun.

But eventually I wasn't following the anime anymore, I don't remember if it was because we lost access to e.tv or what but the last episode that I watched was the one when Ash and company left Olivine City for Cianwood to get medicine for Jasmine's Ampharos. So I missed out on the Whirl Islands arc, the rest of the Johto series and all the other adventures that Ash went on until he finally became a Pokémon Master some years ago (finally) and as I understand it, the anime has continued with new characters and new stories to tell for the next generations of fans who got into Pokémon several years deep into Ash's journey (or weren't even around yet in the early days). There were points in time when I did wonder what was going on in the anime and I wondered how Ash was doing but I didn't jump back in and pick up where I had left off because I had moved on to the next chapter of my fandom - the Pokémon games.

After the Pokémon 2000 browser game and Pokémon Crater I would get the chance to play Silver Version. This is was in high school, second year, and a classmate of mine was cool enough to let me borrow the game for a couple of days. Having watched the Johto series up until that departure from Olivine episode, it was great seeing familiar places in game form and recognising the Johto Pokémon as I encountered them. I didn't get too far though, I got up to the Sudowoodo roadblock and was stuck there before the game had to be returned. Didn't know about the Squirt Bottle. Although the experience was so brief, I enjoyed playing Silver and would go on to play Crystal then SoulSilver years later. Fun fact: when I had the chance to name the Rival I called him Gino, after another classmate, because I thought it was a cool name. Many years later I found out that the Rival's official name is Silver...and what's the Japanese word for silver? Gin. Who would've thought?

I didn't get to complete Silver but I did complete the game which I received as a birthday gift during my third year in high school - Ruby Version. It was quite the jump for me after only having experienced the first 2 generations in anime form and there I was with a game in the next generation. It wasn't just the box with Groudon on the front which contained the cartridge that got me interested and excited to play Ruby but the little instruction manual too. I can't tell you how many times I read it and gazed at the artwork of new characters and Pokémon as well as the screenshots too. These days I'm more likely to get that level of excitement and intrigue from a ROM hack or fangame that I've just found out about or have the chance to dive into after keeping track on it for some time, but back then it was Ruby and me, my younger brother and our friend Michael would spend a lot of time with it. That's why Generation 3 still means a lot to me even now, for Ruby and Fire Red which allowed me to experience Generation 1 in game form that I had missed out on. 

By the time I played Pearl Version I was in my late teens and wasn't as attached to Pokémon as I was just a few years before. So I didn't enjoy Generation 4 in the same way as I did with Generation 3 because from Generation 4 up until Generation 7's Ultra Sun I played those games on emulators. No boxes or instruction manuals to dive into, no anime to hook me in and no shared experiences playing those games with my brother and Michael. Instead I played these games on my own and because I was curious enough to check them out. This was in the 2010's and this was also the time when I found out about ROM hacks. The official games were not being released annually or frequently enough so what filled the gap between those games? ROM hacks. Outside of Generation 5's White Version which I enjoyed, ROM hacks did the fine job reviving my passion for Pokémon games. They offered new adventures, new stories, new characters, new regions or familiar ones, multiple generations of Pokémon in a single game instead of 2 versions and no more worrying about thigs like trading in order to evolve certain Pokémon. Flora Sky, Liquid Crystal, Light Platinum, Diamond (which turned out to be a cringy-but-hilariously translated version of another monster training game called Keitai Denju Telefang haha), (Old) White, Azure Horizons, Ruby Destiny, CAWPS, Korosu, Brown, Prism, Maize, Glazed, Victory Fire, Saiph, Francium, Advanced Adventure, Dark Violet, Master Quest, GS Chronicles, Gaia, Kanlara Ultimate, AshGray, Dark Rising, Cloud White, Grape, Clover, Unbound, Sirius, Crystal Clear, Adventure Red Chapter and so on are just a number of the well known games that came out over the years, many of which were there before the community got obsessed with Nuzlocke challenges, Shiny hunting, enhancement and difficulty hacks. By the time I played Generation 6's X and Generation 7's Sun (another game that I enjoyed), I had spent more time in the ROM hack world than I had with the official games and the switch from 2D to 3D did not excite me at all or give me motivation to pick up one of the newer handheld consoles and fully dive back into the official games world. These newer games went in the direction of pushing for more online activity and DLCs.

So fast forward to this week, 27 February 2026. After lots of waiting and speculating and leaking, Pokémon Day finally came and with it was the first trailer for Generation 10's main pair of titles. By the end of the trailer I felt almost nothing after watching that. No excitement, no intrigue, just flat and dry indifference and it was pretty much a confirmation that as far as the offical games are concerned I am truly detached. For Generations 8 and 9 I still had enough of a curiosity to try playing GBA ROM hack demakes of their games since I don't have a Switch and wasn't motivated enough to get an emulator. Sword/Shield has one major popular demake (I even asked the developer if he would consider making one for Scarlet/Violet but he had no interest and the demakes which I've found so far are in Spanish and may or may not be completed games). I don't understand what's there to be excited about for Winds/Waves when that trailer just showed a lot without telling much. Sure, a variety of locales within the new region were shown, we saw multiple generations of Pokémon and we saw the playable characters running around and the first Pokémon that they catch in this new region isn't even one of the native ones. But we saw the new Starters though and I guess that's enough for lots of fans then it's back to waiting for the next trailer. Basically the same as the first trailers for the previous 2 generations.

There's a short audio recording that I put out several months ago about Pokémon's 30 anniversary and shared an idea for a collection of ROM hacks or fangames that I thought the community could put together and do a better job of celebrating this milestone for the franchise than whatever Game Freak and company could do. These games would be a revisit of the Japan-based regions - Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh - showing how they look 30 years later. New stories, characters new and familiar, new and familiar places, new and familiar Pokémon. It would be a genuine community effort because you could have each game being developed by a different group or groups so that the work is lighter. 

So I celebrate 30 years of Pokémon with the memories I have of the early days of becoming a fan. Watching the anime, collecting tazos with other fans, getting to play the games and discovering the games that fans were making for others to try while the official games carried on in other directions. Ultra Sun was the last official game for me, despite how disappointed I was with the Ultra games for being the same as Sun/Moon but set in an alternate universe instead of being sequels. The writing was on the wall, that the official games would never again have the same appeal that they did several generations before and it's something that newer and younger fans will never truly grasp even if they go through the process of playing from Generation 1. I'm old enough to still have an appreciation for the older generations and am willing to play "retro hacks" that are based on Generation 1 or 2. No regrets about dropping off of the official wagon after 7 generations, it was a fine run and now I'm happy playing games made by other fans. That's the journey of a Pokémon fan come full circle as far as I'm concerned. Happy anniversary.