Pokemon Yellow on the GameBoy Classic was my first game.
Sure, I’d played games before. I’d borrowed consoles and cartridges, disks and controllers. My family had a PC set up just outside of my childhood bedroom and there were games installed, ephemerally existing there in that shared space, some arts-based or learning-based, others cartoony platformers, my favorite was King’s Quest VI, which I was too scared to play but enjoyed watching it like a movie while my mom handled the controls.
My cousins let me play their N64 when I visited them over the holidays, although I only wanted to play MarioKart and only against my sisters, feeling too socially awkward to engage meaningfully in fun competition even with extended family. My aunt lent me her boys’—now grown-up and moved out—NES; my friend down the street and on the right side of the cul-de-sac has a SNES that we played side-by-side.
My best friend, who lived across the field of the nearby park, seemed to have an impossible wealth of toys. Barbies, plastic animals, collectible cards, stuffies, books. My favorites, though, were her and her younger brother’s Pokemon stash: trading cards, plastic figurines of Pikachu, Charmelion, Pidgeoto, Blastoise… That, and the bright cartridge of Pokemon Yellow and the grey brick of a Game Boy Classic, circa 1998, packed with 4 AA batteries held in place with tape.
My best friend’s brother gave me his old Game Boy Classic as well as a Pokemon Yellow cartridge. I was so over-the-moon, I named Red after him for my first and favorite playthrough of any Pokemon game. (Hi, Jesse!)
I typically wasn’t allowed to have Pokemon merchandise in the house and I wasn’t supposed to be watching the show. I have an obsessive personality and when the Pokemon craze got its hooks in me, there was no reasoning with me. I had to catch ’em all, figuratively. It was my destiny. It filled me with a strange, alien sadness in thinking that this might not be possible and I would shirk socialization, chores, homework, in the endeavor to consume as much Pokemon-related content as possible.
That, and my Christianity-infused household saw Pokemon—and most Japanese cartoons like Sailor Moon and Digimon—as something demonic somehow. I understand now that it’s mostly xenophobia that associates the spectrum of spirits in Spirited Away to the Western, Christian Devil. At the time, it just seemed confusing and unfair.
This is part of what propelled me towards the nihilistic atheism that defines most of my understanding of the world now. It seemed like from a Christian perspective, everything was evil and bad and wrong, there was so little focus on what was good. Being “good” was an unattainable goal that we should strive towards until literal death. To me, Pokemon was good. It taught valuable lessons about friendship and showing kindness to others; about chasing your dreams, setting goals, and coming to terms with failure in a healthy, positive way.
The games taught me even more, though I didn’t know it at the time.
You may or may not know that Pokemon Sun and Moon did away with “Hidden Machines” (HMs). It was a relief to not have to navigate the complicated landscape of resource management that is storing abilities like Flash, Cut, Rock Smash, and Strength in valuable and limited attack slots—not to mention struggling to find a flying type Pokemon that I could keep with me throughout the whole game for the sake of the Fly fast-travel system.
I have particularly mixed feelings about Flash. Flash is a HM that you teach to a Pokemon in order to light up a pitch-black cave, usually early on in the game and typically only once or twice. Of all the cumbersome HMs, it’s the best of the worst because you can teach it to a throw-away Pokemon at the start of the game, use it once, and then forget about it. It’s not like Cut or Rock Smash that you tend to have to keep with you long-term, whether you like it or not.
In Pokemon Yellow, you needed the Flash HM to get through Rock Tunnel, which is too dark to traverse otherwise. When I first played the game, I had no idea that this was the case. I didn’t find Flash organically and saw nothing wrong with walking through a completely dark underground landscape. I was young and relatively new to games, meaning that I hadn’t caught on to the fact that even remotely intelligent game design would not allow this to happen.
I didn’t realize that it wasn’t “normal” to walk through the darkness blindly.
It took me a long time navigating through that cave in pitch blackness. It was difficult and discouraging, but a pain I felt was worthwhile. I listened for cues in the environment to indicate whether I was hitting a wall or going up or down ladders. Trainer battle encounters usually meant I was progressing linearly—and therefore on the right track. My Pokemon team was ravaged in battle, as will happen when you start with an Electric-type and have to make your way through a maze filled with Ground- and Rock-types. I “blacked out” (in-game) time and time again.
I changed the screen brightness with the slider on the side of the handheld to make parts of the pathway semi-legible. I played with headphones in so that I could hear the baritone ring of my character hitting walls and could map out the area by touch. I stocked up on Potions so that I could heal my team of Pokemon along the way, which was crucial to ensuring that they didn’t all faint in battle and send me back to the start of the cave—which happened quite a few times anyways. I ran from random encounters when I could, knowing that I had to preserve my strength. It took a long time and although I didn’t handle every setback with infinite patience and grace, I was steadfastly determined to get through.
Maybe there was something familiar to me about stumbling through darkness, because when I was around twelve I started exhibiting symptoms of manic depression. Like fumbling through a dark cave, it was hard. And by engaging without the right skill sets, I failed a lot. Naive, I thought my struggles were normal. I thought everybody felt the same darkness—and I thought everybody had to crawl their way through.
Imagine my surprise when I realized that there was a literal light for the darkness. My potion was Prozac, but I’ve heard other cocktails from friends and family work just as well. Talk therapy, the right prescriptions, staying active, talking through it to a trusted friend. My bag now overflows with salves of all sorts. Things don’t seem so bleak—not anymore.
In many video games, you are provided with a set of tools and you use those tools to progress. Without those tools, you become stuck, the game becomes—in many cases—impossible. Or, at the very least, unfun.
It’s an important lesson to learn because in life you’ll sometimes hit a wall, or a dark spot, and have to take a look at what tools you’ve been given in order to progress. Sometimes you have what you need and sometimes you need to ask for help. There is no shame in either.
Next time I entered Rock Tunnel, I had a light.