A Little Spark

I was a serious Pokémon kid. Blue Version—I memorized everything. Every monster, every move, every secret and glitch. I must have beaten it a hundred times trying to build the perfect team, and by the end I had this absurd roster: Charizard, Mewtwo, Articuno, Dragonite, Zapdos, and another Mewtwo. Untouchable. Then I saw a Pokémon that looked like a keychain and thought, okay, I’m done. I was done after Crystal Edition anyway.

For the next decade I kept trying to get back in. Sun and Moon, X and Y, Pokémon Go—nothing stuck. Everything got sweeter and brighter and softer, and I was just trying to remember why I ever cared. I wanted the old games back: the gyms, the rivals, Team Rocket being an actual threat. That tight competitive feeling. But you can’t go backward, so I stopped trying. Pokémon wasn’t for me anymore.

Then Nintendo announced Sword and Shield for Switch. The setting is Galar—a region with countryside, cities, fields, and mountains mixed together. It sounds less aggressively cute than the last few entries, less like a theme park and more like an actual place. You’re supposed to challenge gyms and become champion, which is the structure I actually cared about.

You pick a starter from three new ones: Grookey, a cheeky grass-type monkey; Scorbunny, a hyperactive fire-type rabbit; and Sobble, a timid water-type lizard. Nothing earth-shattering about the designs, but looking at them, I felt something shift. Not a full return to form, just maybe this one. Maybe it’s worth trying again.

It’s on Switch so it doesn’t feel like I’m going backward. I don’t know if I actually will—I’ve been burned before—but the idea doesn’t feel ridiculous anymore. That’s something. That little spark is there.