Starters - Fireside Pokemon 1

Thanks for watching! Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode one of Fireside Pokemon.

I am one of your hosts, Anthony, joined by my good friend Darren in the Midwest.

Darren,

what's going on? Hello.

This is a fascinating new endeavor that we have tried.

Yes.

And I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Agreed.

So we've talked for a little while about this.

I mean, if you listen to our other show, Fireside Magic, we've plugged for a long time that big things are coming.

And so are we.

This is one of those big things.

It's something you and I have talked about for a little bit.

It's also a bit of a fever dream project in its own way.

But both of those things culminating in what should be a pretty fun endeavor.

So Fireside Pokemon, if you're familiar with Fireside Magic, Fireside Magic is a show about the card game Magic the Gathering.

This is a show about Pokemon, but not a trading card game.

explicitly we might talk about it here and there

sometimes it'll be about the

sometimes i mean i'm a pretty avid card collector darren actually plays the game like there will be stuff to talk about when it comes to the cards for sure but for the most part almost entirely this is going to focus on the video games that we all know and love and for even pigeonholing it a little bit more It's going to focus on what I'm deeming the DS, the first DS era and before.

Kind of going to keep the focus on Gen 5 and before.

I would say it's both of our strong suits, but it's really, I guess, just mine.

Darren, your strong suit's what, Gens

1 to 3? Yeah, staggeringly, we're both two men in our 30s, so we have not had nearly as much experience with the newer generations.

I... never had a nintendo ds growing up so i exclusively know generations one through three from like first-hand experience sure and then i've gained like i guess secondary experience from the combination of just like rom hacks and info picked up from the trading card game so like i've never played any generation four forward except for sword and shield

I have played all of them multiple times, every single game.

Brag.

Yeah.

I own most...

I own...

I have access to every generation through official means.

So there's games I'm missing here and there, but I have access to every single generation.

So I've played them all.

I have my things I like, things I dislike about all the games.

I actually love Gen 9 a lot.

And you mentioned, like, maybe we don't have...

Amazing knowledge of the new gens.

Gen 9 is a blast.

Scarlet and Violet is really good, especially on the Switch 2 where the graphics look fine.

Honestly, night and day, man.

Night and day.

It's just baffling to go from Switch 1 to Switch 2 with Violet and be like, oh my god, look at this.

This game renders.

Imagine looking at things.

I would say that most of my favorite games are hidden within the first five gens, but special shouts to actually like all the three newest ones, Legends, RCS, and ZA, and Scarlet and Violet are very, very, very, very, very good games.

So, but again, the focus is going to be gens one to five.

I think it's, you know, they're a Pokemon I know the best.

And also they are, I like the most.

There's also just like a lot there in that region.

For sure.

that both you didn't get on your first pass, like just playing the games naturally and that people don't really know or think about today.

Yeah, I was I was finding new things in crystal as of like a year ago.

I didn't know.

That's a pretty wonderful thing to experience with this game that you've played since you were five.

You can still find some hidden gems that you didn't know about.

I think the plan for right now is for this to be a monthly venture to have some fun talking about Pokemon, something very close to Darren and I were almost always going through a playthrough, going through a run.

This should be pretty fun.

It's going to be pretty different from Magic 2 in that we're not going to really be like... current events-y kind of stuff.

Although I guess half of Fireside Magic is a lot of history stuff.

It's going to be more of like the history aspect talking about things in like a broader term as opposed to like a micro term trying to figure out what cards go in what deck

or

whatever.

You know, this is more broad.

It's also going to be significantly less complaining than

you might be used to from us two specifically.

That is so accurate.

That is so accurate.

Because we only have good things to say about the Pokemon franchise, because what could you possibly say poorly towards them?

By the way, as I'm looking at Darren's screen, he has a giant Torchic behind him.

Yes, I do.

I have a Torchic Stuffy as well as all of the cast forms on a shelf behind me.

Oh, that's so cool.

I have a

Bulbasaur, Venusaur, and Chikorita on a shelf over there.

The Chikorita was the pre-order exclusive for Legends EA if you bought it through the Pokemon company and they sent you a random plush of one of the starters.

Oh.

And I said, whatever starter, whatever plush I get is going to be mine.

That's going to be what I choose.

And I got Chikorita.

And I was like, okay, let's use Chikorita.