Gotta Catch’em All
So in middle school, I really liked Pokémon. I mean I really liked Pokémon. I first had the Gameboy video game. You know on the original grey bricks. Then I watched the show every morning before school. I actually only watched the first 20 minutes of each episode because my mom always had to take us early but I still watched most of it. Then me and my friends started to get into the card game. We would actually go around town collecting cans to sell for more money.
When Pokémon Snap came out, I decided that instead of taking a picture of every Pokémon, I would draw all of them. My nerdy motto was “Gotta Draw’em All.” After drawing so many, I pretty much memorized all 151 Pokémon by heart. My mom even bought me the player’s guide so that I could memorize their stats and abilities.
The worst part about the complete nerdiness of my Pokémon obsession was that it may be the one thing I remembered most out of my junior high. It wasn’t Algebra, US History, or Geology. It was Pokémon. I memorized that Kakuna evolved to Beedrill at level 10, that Magmar could only be found in Cinnibar Island, and that Poliwhirl could only evolve into Poliwrath with a trade.
It became so ridiculous that my girlfriend has made it into a game. She still has her brother’s players guide and so when she feels like it, she’ll just state some random fact about a Pokémon to see how fast I can guess which one she’s talking about. I can almost always guess with two questions.
Today, I had this face in my head. A cyclops with metal teeth. When I fleshed the face out more in my head, I thought it would be an awesome Pokémon. It would be a giant Metal type (Yeah, I played up to Saphire version) that would love to mash opponents up in its giant teeth. I call him Irog. I tried to paint in the awesome Ken Sugimori style but I know I didn’t give Igor justice of that.
P.S. I always dreamt of having a Pokémon team. It would totally be Arcanine (the coolest), Bayleef (sweet horn), Sandslash (the bad ass), Ampharos (the super cool), Empoleon, and Rayquaza.