User:Kidburla

Hi, I'm Adam. My rival is Bryn (whose real-life namesake hates Pokémon, but that's as good a reason as any to name my rival after him. I'm 25 at time of writing, I live in London and I work in the financial services industry. My favourite Pokémon is Breloom. My favourite region is Hoenn (controversial?) My favourite episode so far is The Song of Jigglypuff. My least favourite is Pikachu's Goodbye.

Pokémon status

(last updated 29/03/2016)

This covers all the main games I have played, except for Blue (because I don't know where the cartridge is and may have even been sold at some point) and FireRed (because my progress through the game was so little that it's not even worth putting here).

Pokémon LeafGreen Version

• Hours played: 75 approx
• Completion: Pretty much everything
• Previously trained (no longer in party): Omastar, Dratini

Master Adam Seven Island LeafGreen Version Professor and Professor Master Adam Oak Seven Island LeafGreen Version Reward: $ 4815

Types: Fire Flying Ability: Blaze Held item: Amulet Coin Charizard♂ Lv.84 Fire Spin Fire   --       Flamethrower Fire   --       Ember Fire   --       Metal Claw Steel   --       Types: Electric Unknown Ability: Static Held item: Quick Claw Raichu♀ Lv.73 Thunderbolt Electric   --       Quick Attack Normal   --       Rock Smash Fighting   --       Flash Normal   --       Types: Normal Flying Ability: Keen Eye Held item: None Fearow♂ Lv.60 Drill Peck Flying   --       Aerial Ace Flying   --       Fly Flying   --       Mirror Move Flying   --       Types: Water Flying Ability: Intimidate Held item: BlackGlasses Gyarados♂ Lv.57 Hyper Beam Normal   --       Surf Water   --       Bite Dark   --       Waterfall Water   --       Types: Rock Ground Ability: Sturdy Held item: None Golem♂ Lv.54 Dig Ground   --       Strength Normal   --       Earthquake Ground   --       Rock Blast Rock   --       Types: Grass Poison Ability: Chlorophyll Held item: NeverMeltIce Victreebel♂ Lv.53 Razor Leaf Grass   --       Sleep Powder Grass   --       Cut Normal   --       Bullet Seed Grass   --

Pokémon Emerald Version

• Hours played: 150 approx
• Completion: Pretty much everything except Battle Frontier
• Previously trained (no longer in party): Blaziken (evolved starter), Breloom, Walrein, Mightyena, Azumarill, Pelipper

Master Adam Seafloor Cavern Emerald Version Professor and Professor Master Adam Oak Seafloor Cavern Emerald Version Reward: $ 4815

Types: Grass Dark Ability: Sand Veil Held item: Miracle Seed Cacturne♀ Lv.65 Absorb Grass   --       Needle Arm Grass   --       Leech Seed Grass   --       Faint Attack Dark   --       Types: Dragon Flying Ability: Intimidate Held item: Amulet Coin Salamence♂ Lv.65 DragonBreath Dragon   --       Dragon Claw Dragon   --       Crunch Dark   --       Fly Flying   --       Types: Ice Unknown Ability: Clear Body Held item: NeverMeltIce Regice Lv.65 Icy Wind Ice   --       Rollout Rock   --       Lock-On Normal   --       Zap Cannon Electric   --       Types: Water Unknown Ability: Swift Swim Held item: Mystic Water Gorebyss♀ Lv.65 Psychic Psychic   --       Hydro Pump Water   --       Dive Water   --       Surf Water   --       Types: Fighting Unknown Ability: Guts Held item: Shell Bell Machamp♀ Lv.65 Revenge Fighting   --       Seismic Toss Fighting   --       Cross Chop Fighting   --       DynamicPunch Fighting   --       Types: Ground Dragon Ability: Levitate Held item: Soft Sand Flygon♂ Lv.65 Dragon Claw Dragon   --       Crunch Dark   --       Dig Ground   --       Sand Tomb Ground   --

Pokémon Platinum Version

• Hours played: 190 approx
• Completion: Pretty much everything except Battle Frontier
• Previously trained (no longer in party): Infernape (evolved starter), Graveler, Staraptor

Master Adam Lily of the Valley Island Platinum Version Professor and Professor Master Adam Oak Lily of the Valley Island Platinum Version Reward: $ 4815

Types: Water Unknown Ability: Water Absorb Held item: Splash Plate Vaporeon♂ Lv.87 Bite Dark Physical   --       Brine Water Special   --       Hydro Pump Water Special   --       Surf Water Special   --       Types: Normal Flying Ability: Natural Cure Held item: Dragon Fang Altaria♀ Lv.91 Sky Attack Flying Physical   --       Dragon Pulse Dragon Special   --       Sing Normal Status   --       Fly Flying Physical   --       Types: Ground Rock Ability: Lightningrod Held item: Soft Sand Rhyperior♂ Lv.77 Earthquake Ground Physical   --       Dig Ground Physical   --       Stone Edge Rock Physical   --       Rock Wrecker Rock Physical   --       Types: Fighting Unknown Ability: Guts Held item: Fist Plate Machamp♂ Lv.89 Low Kick Fighting Physical   --       Revenge Fighting Physical   --       Submission Fighting Physical   --       Cross Chop Fighting Physical   --       Types: Grass Ice Ability: Snow Warning Held item: Miracle Seed Abomasnow♀ Lv.84 Giga Drain Grass Special   --       Wood Hammer Grass Physical   --       Avalanche Ice Physical   --       Blizzard Ice Special   --       Types: Dark Ice Ability: Pressure Held item: Icicle Plate Weavile♀ Lv.86 Faint Attack Dark Physical   --       Dark Pulse Dark Special   --       Blizzard Ice Special   --       Ice Beam Ice Special   --

Pokémon SoulSilver Version

• Hours played: 150 approx
• Completion: Pretty much everything except Lance Rematch, Red, and Battle Frontier
• Previously trained (no longer in party): Typhlosion (evolved starter), Togetic, Quagsire, Ampharos, Sudowoodo

Gentleman Adam Indigo Plateau SoulSilver Version Professor and Professor Gentleman Adam Oak Indigo Plateau SoulSilver Version Reward: $ 4815

Types: Dragon Flying Ability: Inner Focus Held item: Sky Plate Dragonite♂ Lv.64 Fly Flying Physical   --       Outrage Dragon Physical   --       ExtremeSpeed Normal Physical   --       Aerial Ace Flying Physical   --       Types: Bug Fighting Ability: Guts Held item: Fist Plate Heracross♀ Lv.64 Focus Punch Fighting Physical   --       Close Combat Fighting Physical   --       Brick Break Fighting Physical   --       Reversal Fighting Physical   --       Types: Grass Psychic Ability: Chlorophyll Held item: Meadow Plate Exeggutor♂ Lv.64 Psychic Psychic Special   --       Leaf Storm Grass Special   --       Dream Eater Psychic Special   --       Hypnosis Psychic Status   --       Types: Water Dragon Ability: Sniper Held item: Splash Plate Kingdra♂ Lv.64 Hydro Pump Water Special   --       Surf Water Special   --       Brine Water Special   --       Draco Meteor Dragon Special   --       Types: Rock Dark Ability: Sand Stream Held item: BlackGlasses Tyranitar♀ Lv.65 Stone Edge Rock Physical   --       Crunch Dark Physical   --       Rock Climb Normal Physical   --       Payback Dark Physical   --       Types: Ice Ground Ability: Snow Cloak Held item: Icicle Plate Mamoswine♂ Lv.77 Blizzard Ice Special   --       Ice Fang Ice Physical   --       Earthquake Ground Physical   --       Dig Ground Physical   --

I still want to get rid of Focus Punch because it's rubbish! But I'm saving up BP for Low Kick.

Anime

• Episodes watched (in order from the beginning): 125 approx, plus specials/movies in between

My history with Pokémon: falling in and out of love

Phase 1: 2000-2001

I first got into Pokémon in early 2000, in between the release of Red/Blue and Yellow in Europe. At the time I owned a Game Boy and bought a copy of Blue as all my friends had Red. Since that time, I've been always much more drawn to the "second version" (Silver, Sapphire, LeafGreen, Pearl and SoulSilver) though obviously I'll go for the third version when possible. Anyway at the time I was in my early teens and I bought some books about Pokémon which I still own now. I never really "got" Pokémon Yellow and didn't realise until years later that it was supposed to be based on the anime. No one I knew actually bought Yellow Version. I think the main thing I remember about Kanto (although we didn't call it that then, it was just "the world") was exploring. There was one guy in my school class who knew absolutely everything and where all the underground tunnels came out. I still to this day get mixed up in Kanto between Diglett's Cave and Rock Tunnel.

Phase 2: 2003 approx

By the time Gold/Silver had come out, I had kind of given up on Pokémon. I'd got to the Elite Four on my copy of Blue but never had managed to beat them. I remember loading up a downloaded ROM of Silver, getting the Pokégear and thinking just how complicated they had made it. I found it pretty confusing and no one had ever properly explained it to me so I kind of left it once more.

Phase 3: 2004-2005

Around the time FireRed/LeafGreen were released, I became interested in the franchise again as they were remaking the games I had loved so much as a teenager. This was in mid-2004 and there was a lot of hype around the games. This was the first time that I even heard about Crystal, Ruby or Sapphire as I had been out of touch with the franchise for so long. I was most excited by the wireless capability, the VS Seeker, the help feature and the Sevii Islands. After LeafGreen came out, I bought a Game Boy Advance and a copy of the game. However this was a fairly short fad, and within 6 months I had sold my Game Boy Advance as I was short on cash. I had only reached Cinnabar Island on LeafGreen at the time, and so had not even got close to the heights of before.

Phase 4: 2008-2009

Finally I got back into Pokémon in early 2008. I was doing a very boring job to fill in time before I had a big contract piece starting up later in the year. In my lunch breaks I was often bored. However I discovered that my mobile phone (the Nokia N95) had the facility to run a Game Boy Advance emulator. I proceeded to buy one (namely vBagX) and I started to play LeafGreen again in my lunchbreaks, starting from scratch obviously. This time, I did get to the Sevii islands and really enjoyed it. It was only here that I discovered some features of these games such as abilities and held items that I hadn't really cottoned onto in 2004. Afterwards I played FireRed, with the aim to have at least seen all 151 creatures in the dex, but got bored and quit this game around the Pokémon Mansion point.

Itching for a challenge, and not wanting to return to Generation II graphics, I decided that my next game would be Emerald Version. If you've been following the above then you'll know that all 4 of the instances I'd played before were set in Kanto, so I knew Kanto pretty well, but looked forward to the whole new region of Hoenn to explore. Emerald was a big part of my life until well into 2009. I learnt a lot about the franchise in this time, including generation mechanics, stats and all sorts. In playing Emerald I planned my strategy a lot more carefully than in the earlier games I'd played, in terms of evolution levels and so on. In June 2009 I bought a Nintendo DS and a copy of Pokémon Platinum Version. However only a couple of weeks afterwards, my attention drifted to other things.

Phase 5: 2009-2011

In October 2009 I got back into the franchise for the 5th time, playing Platinum Version as my main game. I started off trying to write a blog covering my experiences in Sinnoh, but soon gave that up. You can find the blog here. Soon afterwards, I became interested in the anime. I'd never watched the anime before because I couldn't get past how childish it was, but I think I've got over that now and enjoy seeing it and the references to the games. I'm currently still playing Platinum. I bought SoulSilver on the day it came out (March 26th in the UK) but didn't properly started playing it yet for a long time...but was really looking forward to that as I'd never properly played a game set in Johto, and hardly knew anything about that region. I did, however, create my character during the Mew event, just so I could download Mew (grr at Nintendo for not making it available to players of Platinum). I continued playing through 2010, and in particular I kept up with all the hype around Generation V. I don't quite know when this phase ended, although I do know that I attended an event in London in February 2011, where I obtained the Winter 2011 Celebi. I imagine it was around that time that I lost interest again.

Phase 6: 2011-2012

I don't know whether it was towards the end of the previous phase or towards the start of this one that I switched to SoulSilver Version as my main game. Having done almost everything possible in Platinum (except for obtaining all those Battle Frontier Prints, which I never felt motivated to do), I moved to finally start my adventure in Johto. I don't really keep records but I did keep records of all my Elite Four matches and I can see that there were no matches between 13/06/2012 and 21/10/2012 so I imagine I took a bit of a break then.

Phase 7: 2012

Well I know I started playing the Elite Four again on 21/10/2012 as noted above, and finally beat them on 30/10/2012. Beyond that, I don't have many other details about this phase of my journey.

Phase 8: 2013

Second half of 2013 - I had a scheme with three friends to all start FRLG from the beginning and battle each other as we went along. This time, I was playing FireRed version, but on a real cartridge this time of course! I forgot how annoying it was to not have Dark type Pokémon (before the Elite Four anyway). There is no type super-effective against Ghost types except Ghost itself. Of course, some non-Ghost Pokémon can learn Ghost moves, but this still did not make it all better for me. Sorry to all you Gen1ers out there! Of which I was also one once, but this just annoyed me. This project was also somewhat ruined by the fact that three of the four of us had full-time jobs whereas the fourth member of our group was a teacher on his school holidays, and was able to make progress a lot faster than the rest of us. This kind of ruined the race, and the whole project petered out after only a few months. This phase of my journey was largely independent, and I don't remember learning that much about X&Y versions or spending any more time on SoulSilver Version during this time.

Phase 9: 2016-Present

I don't know how my love of Pokémon just suddenly awakens without warning, but it did again fairly recently, around the middle of February 2016 - I even have the approximate date as 15th or 16th! In the second half of 2015, I spent a lot of time playing and finally 100% completing a game of Banjo-Kazooie, one of my favourite platforming games. After that, I felt a bit lost as to what to play next, trying a few different games but not finding anything which really captured my attention. It wasn't until mid-February that I realised that Pokémon was the perfect solution to my problem and I suddenly felt a desire to engage with the franchise again!

My first goal was to get SoulSilver Version out again and figure out where I was up to. This took some doing - even though I had a lot of old notes scribbled down, I couldn't make sense of a lot of them! I'm still playing SoulSilver Version, having now beaten all the gym leader rematches and am trying to defeat the Elite Four in a rematch!

This phase has also been characterized by following some Pokétubers. I never really saw YouTube as a means to engage with the Pokémon community in earlier phases, but in the last few weeks I have watched a lot of theory, speculation, Let's Play and other videos. I'm excited by Pokémon GO and Sun/Moon, so the hype around those will surely keep me hooked until at least the time they come out! Of course I've had a lot of catching up to do in terms of knowledge as well. Things like Mega-Evolution, I had never even heard of!! And I still don't really know any of the Gen6 Pokémon, even more so than Gen5, even though I haven't played either generation yet. But right now, I'm quite hooked on Pokémon again, and who knows how long this phase will last or where it will lead!!

Miscellaneous

• Guide to transferring Pokémon from an emulator to a genuine Nintendo game