Saturday, February 27, 1999 - 79 Pokemon Die in Horrible Accident

My son Sam faced a horrible tragedy when my younger son Thomas accidentally erased his red-cartridge Pokemon game.

Sam (age seven) had spent 160 hours finishing the game and collecting 79 unique Pokemon. Sam had moved on the blue cartridge and we - well, I - thought it was pretty hard to accidentally save over a new game. So I said that it was okay for my son Thomas, who is three, to fool with the red cartridge in his own Gameboy. (The Pokemon game only has one saved game slot because the game stores information about all 150 Pokemon, which is a lot of information, so there isn't room for multiple saves and/or backups. Sadly.  There is a flaw in the game where pressing A repeatedly without thinking about it will overwrite the one and only save game in the cartridge.)

But tragedy struck and all 79 Pokemon were sent to the great beyond, including Sam's prized level 70 Venusaur, who had been instrumental in allowing Sam to defeat Gary in the final battle.

You can imagine how distressing this would be to you if you'd spent 160 hours investing in a game.

Well, from the ashes of tragedy new Pokemon are being reborn and captured and turned into lean, mean fighting machines.

I'm rather proud of my son Sam, who was able to let his feelings out without actually injuring Thomas (who is somewhat unaware of the damage he caused). Sam has moved on to replaying the entire thing (and the blue cartridge too as he alternates between them). As you might guess, Thomas is no longer allowed to fool with Pokemon cartridges - in fact, is only allowed to play games without a save game feature. Because if Thomas were to accidentally erase my Zelda game I don't think I would be as understanding as Sam was ...

Sam has since finished the red-cartridge again - this time beating Gary in only about 44 hours.

Practice makes perfect!