I played Pokemon Silver in May 2001 during school’s Summer session, I was taking Shakespeare at the time but I would take my Gameboy out during breaks completely without shame. Earlier that year on Easter my friend got me a big basket full of promotional Pokemon stuff from another friend who worked at a theater. Michael and Gene promised to play Pokemon with me but never did, but since Michael felt bad he let me have all of his legendary and rare Pokemon from Blue plus Morpheus, a Hypno, who quickly surpassed my Alakazam and became my main Psychic pokemon. Actually, Gene did play for a little while, but I’m not sure he finished the game, I think he got tired of me totally beating him every time we played. We did the little item transfer thing a few times, but after the second time it simply didn’t work anymore.

My team in Silver was not by any means carefully crafted, but it didn’t really matter because it was still the day of “hit hard enough and they’ll die” Pokemon strategy. Overall my Ampharos, Marina, was my absolute favorite Pokemon. She was one of the first Pokemon that I got and I let her evolve as she pleased. I loved my Espeon, Ecclasian, so much that I started not caring how many Psychic Pokemon I had on my team. Thanks to Michael and my own brilliant strategy I ended up getting all the Evees and I’m not sure why I didn’t have an Evee only team. Kingdra was a really butt kicking Water Pokemon which bumped out my aesthetic favorite, Lapras. After Kingdra was nameless for a long time I finally decided to name her Titan. It’s a reference to both Saturn’s moon of Titan and the Titanic, since I wanted her name to imply a watery death of some kind. My Dragonite, Mitsy, was the second to last Pokemon that I added to the team, I remember evolving her with the utmost of anticipation. The last Pokemon I added was Tyranitar, who was pretty much the Silver/Gold equivalent of Dragonite. The team I ended up with really was skills over prettiness, I had a lot of Pokemon I thought were ugly on my team. I didn’t keep my Chikorita turned Bayleef turned Meganium because the sprite was so hideous, but I might bring it back if I can use it in Fire/Leaf. Now that I think about it, none of the Pokemon on my team, with the notable exception of Kingdra, made it into Ruby/Sapphire. I badly wanted the three Legendary Cats from the game, so much that I only had five Pokemon on my team for the vast majority of the game in anticipation of catching one, which I never did.

Stupid things I did in the game include using my Master Ball to catch Lugia instead of Ho-oh (or better yet, one of the cats) and killing Sudowoodo. Since I played Silver, Lugia was much lower level than Ho-Oh, which made him easier to catch. I, however, got very angry that my too strong Pokemon kept killing him, and instead of making a set that could beat him, I used the Master Ball. I stupidly killed Sudowoodo not knowing it was the only one in the game, Michael told me about it later after I had saved a few times.

Game play aside (since I don’t remember it) the new Pokemon design in this game was some of the best and worst of the whole Pokemon franchise, at least in my humble opinion. The Unknown were “letters,” yet the 11 distinct ones I managed to catch were completely un-label-able. I downloaded the font to my computer from the website (dork) and remembered looking up the Unknown I had to see if I had labeled them correctly. I think I managed to get every single one wrong. Other bizarrely un-cute Pokemon from the Silver/Gold era include Aipom, Pineco/Forretress, the whole Totodile set, Magby, Tyrogue, and Smeargle just to name a few. Then there’s the flip side and there are great Pokemon like the Ampharos set, Sunkern, Blissey, Umberon, Espeon, Jumpluff, and the weirdly cute Dunsparce. Like the other Pokemon games there are three types of “legendary” Pokemon in the game: ones that are glued to a location, ones that roam, and secret special ones. The location specific ones are, of course, Lugia and Ho-oh neither of which thrill me aesthetically. The roaming Pokemon are Raikou, Entei, and Suicune, all of which are crazy cool. The secret special Pokemon in Silver/Gold was Celebi, the Grass/Psychic Pokemon which I had to have. Of course they were only available to players in Japan and even then it was difficult to get one, which embittered me more than was normal.

Gender concerns? Well you can only play as a male trainer, which really sucks, but happily that little misstep has been corrected in more recent games. People, especially Michael, wonder why I have girl only teams in Pokemon, and Silver/Gold is partially to blame. As you can see below, almost all of my Pokemon were Pokemen; what’s with that? Now for everyone’s favorite part of my game reviews, my stats!

General Stats

Name: Sparkle
ID Number: 55179
Pokemon Seen: 244
Pokemon Caught: 227
Time Played: 235:32
Badges: 16

My Pokemon Team

Marina the Ampheros (Female)
Stats: Lv 81, HP 295, Attack 176, Defense 171, SpAttack 256, SpDefense 216, Speed 160
Moves: Thunder, Thunderpunch, Thundershock, Thunder Wave

Titan the Kingdra (Female)
Stats: Lv 82, HP 277, Attack 213, Defense 230, SpAttack 212, SpDefense 212, Speed 185
Moves: Hydro Pump, Surf, Waterfall, Twister

Ecclasian the Espeon (Male)
Stats: Lv 82, Attack 174, Defense 170, SpAttack 275, SpDefense 218, Speed 237
Moves: Psychic, Psybeam, Bite, Morning Sun

Morpheus the Hypno (Male)
Stats: Lv 79, HP 274, Attack 177, Defense 160, SpAttack 171, SpDefense 238, Speed 167
Moves: Psychic, Headbutt, Hypnosis, Dream Eater

Mitsy the Dragonite (Male)
Stats: Lv 81, Attack 284, Defense 221, SpAttack 231, SpDefense 231, Speed 190
Moves: Outrage, Hyper Beam, Strength, Fly

Tyranitar (Male)
Stats: Lv 60, Attack 206, Defense 167, SpAttack 159, SpDefense 165, Speed 107
Moves: Earthquake, Hyper Beam, Thrash, Sandstorm