Stuck On Misty
Found a Game Boy at a flea market in Munich—gray, beat to hell, Pokémon Blue still in the cartridge. I paid almost nothing for it. Carried it around for three weeks before the drive back to Berlin, just holding it, remembering. Somewhere around Saxony it clicked back into my hands the way it used to, and I was ten years old again. Not nostalgia, just the game.
I picked Charmander immediately. Gary got Squirtle, which meant I got to watch him lose on the first real battle, and there’s something genuinely satisfying about humiliating someone—even a NPC—early and often. Professor Oak threw me out of the lab and into the grass, and I felt invincible.
I ground out Pidgey and Rattata until they were worth something, smashing everything in sight before Brock. The first gym barely registered. I was running six Pokémon of nothing in particular, just whatever had leveled up enough to matter, and Rocko went down like he wasn’t even there. By Viridian Forest I’d figured it out. Every trainer that wandered into my path got dismantled.
Azuria City’s where it fell apart. Misty has this Staryu, and she uses it like she understands the game, and I walked in with a disaster team of six underleveled Pokémon I’d been too stubborn to actually build. I lost seventeen times before I stopped counting. Each loss felt stupider than the last. I went back and ground out another ten levels, came back, lost again. My Charmeleon is carrying the team. Everything else is deadweight.
I’m stuck. Current team: Pidgey (L13), Geodude (L14), Clefable (L10), Charmeleon (L28), Paras (L8), Zubat (L10). Two and a half hours in, one badge, ten Pokédex entries. Misty’s still laughing at me.
I’ll go back and beat her eventually. I always do. But right now I’m frustrated enough to put it down for a bit, and frustrated enough that I know I’ll pick it back up.