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Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition was the first video game I ever desperately wanted. It’s now 25 years old. The passage of time sucks.
Game Freak’s third Kanto game was designed specifically for the PokéFever phenomenon, shoving aspects of the anime into the brilliant Pokemon Red (which I eventually got instead of Yellow because it was significantly cheaper) and kicking off the once-expected third entry of a given generation.
Backstory time: when I grew up, my mother was a hypochondriac, and that led to her taking me to the local children’s hospital constantly because her illness also made her think something was wrong with me. At that time, there was a girl my own age that was always there with a Pikachu-branded Game Boy Colour and a copy of Pokemon Yellow and I would just watch them play. Many claim playing games is a pure form of escapism but, if you’re young enough, just watching them can be as well.
25 years on, that’s two and a half decades to age you further, Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition isn’t my favourite game in the series. That’s actually Platinum, because I’m a man of taste, with Emerald a close second. However, it’s a game that holds a special place in my heart, and it’s a game that should be celebrated.
Unfortunately, for some reason, The Pokemon Company is pretty terrible at celebrating the series properly. For the Kanto games’ 20th birthday in 2016, Pokemon Red, Blue, Yellow, Silver, Gold and Crystal were all re-released on Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual Console. The 3DS eShop is now dead.
In 2021, we hit the 25th anniversary of the series which didn’t see the classic games come back for Nintendo Switch, but did see some trading cards, an art exhibit and the maligned remakes of Diamond and Pearl. Unfortunately, the classic games were left in the dust.
Pokemon is one of the most beloved, and profitable, franchises of all time. Gamers are constantly downloading ROMs of all games, hacks of them, and even brand-new fan games because the series is just so special. There’s nothing like Pokemon, even the close-enough-to-be-sued Palworld doesn’t actually fit the bill. Neither does TemTem, or any other clone game. Pokemon is Pokemon, and it’ll likely always be popular.
But why is The Pokemon Company and Game Freak so bad at just letting us play old games? I want to have Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Fire Red, Leaf Green, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and any one of the games I love playable on Nintendo Switch, or even Nintendo Switch 2. Maybe some of these will actually be released next year for the franchise’s 30th anniversary, but will all of them? Haha. No. Of course not.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, this is a time for celebration. Pokemon, from Kanto to Unova to Paldea, is a series that has touched not just millions, but billions, of people around the world in a way that few other games or even pieces of media can claim to do. It’s Japanese Star Wars, it’s a core memory, and it’s weirdly an ingrained part of human culture. In a thousand years, right alongside a toy lightsaber, the remnants of the 21st century will be populated by cheap, knock off Pikachu toys and someone’s PSA-graded Ancient Mew card, and they’ll be heralded as relics from another age. Now just let me legally play Pokemon Yellow before I go and pirate it again. Sorry, I mean, legally back it up.
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