(no subject)

Had my doctor's appointment yesterday. While waiting in the lobby, Mom and I saw on the news that Dowling College is closing.

Not sure if I should bother visiting that place one last time. Not exactly three of the best years of my life back when I was going there, even though those did have some fond memories along the way. If I have any real reason to go back, it would be to see Vincent one more time and talk about everything that's happened since my dropout of the Dowling Project.

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No matter how I look at it, I still can't get over how everything had fallen apart regarding my track record of Pokemon, and certain events I'll be missing out on in Black. I mean, true, I never meant for those games to become a long-running campaign, but that doesn't change the fact that they did so.

So, skipping everything that could have unfolded differently from beforehand and resulted in those lists never being made, let's look at said record until the end:

Red: Played only as a way to justify starting a new game in Crystal, after having already reached Mt. Mortar in that game two years earlier (the furthest I had ever gotten in any of the Gen II games). Little did I know about the death of that copy, whenever it had happened, until I eventually sold all my games.

Crystal: The only other game besides Silver that I happened to own before buying my first of two Game Boy Advances. Played most of the way through early in 2006, but lost interest when it came time to capturing Entei (I had already captured Raikou beforehand). Only came back to it after aborting my first copy of Sapphire (see below), as a way to pass time before getting Emerald for Christmas that year.

Sapphire: Only bothered playing late in '06 as a result of trying to read some fanfiction and not being able to tell what mons were what from Gen III. This was just the most obvious way to familiarize myself. Aborted mid-game due to the berry glitch, found out after obtaining Emerald that my data had deleted itself, and later still from a repair service (after something that happened for me to decide to abort my first playthrough of Emerald) that it was a bootleg before getting a real copy in exchange. Had I seen this through the first time, I would have instead gotten FireRed or LeafGreen for Christmas and might never have created those old lists or experienced the Battle Frontier in Emerald.

LeafGreen: Just another game... at least when I was playing it during '07.

Pearl: The game to re-introduce the concept of migrating Pokemon, and also the point at which I finally catch up with the games for a while. I used the Pal Park in this game to migrate some otherwise unobtainable mons that I hacked with a GameShark, which is something I sort of regretted doing, and those few things combined are why I went back to play the other three Gen III games before originally intending to play Platinum. (Let's also keep in mind that I had beaten this game only shortly after first conceiving Parasitic Trio, too early to actually get started with that.)

FireRed, Ruby, Emerald: The games in which I'd hack the event-only locations as a personal "reward" for having already played Sapphire and LeafGreen through. How quick I was to start playing Ruby, and then Emerald, after completing FireRed around Christmas of '08, ought to say something about how addicted I really was to these games at the time. Took a break from Emerald very late in the main game, and it was several months after Platinum came out that I finally got back to it, beat the Elite Four, and experienced the Battle Frontier for the very first time.

Diamond, first playthrough: Even though I already had gotten Platinum for my birthday, I decided to buy a copy of this from GameStop to play instead, as a way to make up for what I had done with the Pal Park in Pearl and use it right when it came time to using it. Too bad I'd go on to abort this playthrough following something that happened involving trading.

SoulSilver: Played right after receiving this for my birthday of 2010. It is after this game and Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs that I would start to fall behind with the games.

Diamond, starting over: Started off by making a damn point of playing the Deoxys mission in Guardian Signs, expecting to take care of that a lot sooner than I was able to. That whole fiasco is the reason I bought a second Nintendo DS.

This is also where things begin to fall apart, once I start to notice any number of things that I happened not to agree with and grow gradually frustrated. Learning that I missed out by one month on a Leafeon I won in Play to Befriend a Pokemon is what actually tips me off, although it wouldn't have if not for how I was already feeling at the time. Not a coincidence, though, that a three-day trip to Virginia late in September '11 was the time that I decided to establish the Global Link in White, since things were still early and simple enough in that game compared to where I was in Diamond. Can't remember if it was before or after that that I finished everything to do on Sinnoh's mainland in Diamond and decided to have a break from that, but it wasn't until summer the following year that I would eventually come back to finish it off.

And then... I read on TV Tropes that the facilities (supposedly) cheat, only to find out recently that this probably was never true. Had I not learned of that, I might have eventually bounced back and continued with HeartGold, instead of eventually selling all my games. From there, I would have bought secondary copies of all five gen III games from which to migrate Pokemon onto that and Platinum, before eventually playing just White and one of its two sequels and migrating six Pokemon each from my original gen IV games onto each of those.

Now, after all that buildup, unlike between gens III and IV, I have nothing to migrate onto Black and whichever of its sequels I might end up playing.

Considering how far away Christmas still is, though, it's possible that I might buy a new copy each of HeartGold and Platinum, from which to migrate Pokemon onto whichever sequel I buy after getting my 3DS. But then again, considering how long it took to complete some of my former games, that could result in me falling behind again, and really, would it actually be necessary to experience the Relocator in Black, or was the Pal Park something I just happened to have the resources with which to take advantage of (Pearl notwithstanding)?

There's also that issue of the Dream World no longer being accessible (even though it does occupy half the Gen V folder under TV Tropes: Scrappy Mechanic: Pokemon).

So, I'll need to decide once I complete Link's Awakening, and also based on my actual agenda, where to go from there. Part of coming back to this in the first place also has to do with Parasitic Trio, something I've already started and have considered coming back to mainly due to still getting nowhere fast with Starbound or the Cibus project.

I did bring this up with Jake last night, and he did say that I could just as easily try something new, before suggesting this game called Rabi-Ribi.

It's also possible that I might just forget about all this should I actually do immerse myself in Black, and just enjoy what I'm still able to.

Stuff I missed beforehand:

Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2: An intended continuation of everything I had done in Red. Bought Stadium 1 and two transfer paks, and still couldn't transfer any of my mons onto the game. In hindsight, I suppose I could have bought a second copy of the game, even if it was later on, but after having paid for that many things already, I decided not to make any bigger a deal out of it.

The Battle Tower in Crystal: Tried out during my '03 playthrough (prior to my startover in Red), and found it way too hard. (Also tried out the one in Sapphire after completing its main game, but it initially didn't interest me that much either, and it wasn't until I got serious about the Battle Frontier in Emerald that I would come back to it.)

And, in lieu of Bill's time machine, if migrating had been introduced during gen II instead of IV, I might have made use of it then (not so much before '06, though). But then again, maybe not, considering how I sought other people at school to help me fix up Sapphire before sending that game to get repaired instead of buying a second Game Boy Advance (which Mom did, and then returned). Didn't know at the time, either, that the Game Boy Advance was compatible with GBC games. (Not that that would've helped with the berry glitch even if that copy of Sapphire was legitimate.)

And finally, if I decide not to play any further games since Diamond, this whole mess might be all the more reason to come back to Parasitic Trio. Someone in Emerald even mentions the Battle Frontier as a place where people come from around the world, and the one in PT (combining those from both Emerald and Platinum/HGSS, with the Battle Subway to boot) would be a better place than any to showcase such a vast variety of mons from gen V and beyond. (May, beforehand, will probably visit the Battle Resort, complete with the Battle Maison, before heading to Sinnoh.)