The 20th anniversary of "Pokemon" is coming soon. You might remember those 721 creatures (that originally numbered 151) from when most of us were kids. To commemorate the event, Nintendo is launching these Pokemon 2DS consoles and making Red, Blue, and Yellow available for download on the Nintendo virtual console.
Since there are six Pokemon generations, here are six things that I've learned.
1) This is the only circumstance where forcibly having "animals" fight is okay.
Of course don't tell PETA that.
wikipedia.org
2) MATH!
I shit you not, there is actually quite a lot of math involved in Pokemon in terms of Effort Values (EV's) and Individual Values (IV's) which if you're wicked competitive and obsessive about Pokemon, matters quite a bit.
forums.penny-arcade.com
3) Those unreasonable trades.
Unless that Pikachu can crap lightening don't trade a legendary for it. The GT's is full of people making insane requests like that, it's almost just better to trade there.
gas-fails.tumblr.com
4) It taught me that something completely useless can be useful.
Image says it all. Poor Geodude. 
lone clone.deviantart.com
5) Pokemon can be really dark.
Cubone wears the skull of its dead mother, Driffloon kidnaps wandering children and Yamask carries the face it wore when it was alive and human. There's even a theory that Blue's Rattata dies because of the player in Red, Blue and Yellow.
deviantart.com
6) Everyone once a "Shiny" but not only that they want it to have perfect IV's
So if you aren't a cheater you'll spends hours upon hours breeding one pokemon with a ditto to get one.
seraphinae.com
But all jokes aside i've been playing these games since "Gold & Silver" were released. I remember buying my copy of gold in a Toy's R Us that no longer exists. I remember squinting at a tiny dim screen trying to make out the text in the boxes. My starter Pokemon was a Totodile and i loved that 8 bit monster.
This is my all time favorite game series, through it i made friends at school trading little monsters or Pokemon cards. It gave me a shard hobby with my little brother. So as Pokemon turns 20 very soon I would like to say thank you for being a part of my childhood.
