Pokémon was the first video game that ever made me cry — and not for any reason the games were trying to. It was one screen in Crystal: are you a boy or a girl? And it was the first time in my small, very gendered childhood that anyone had ever asked me who I was instead of telling me. This one's personal. I talk about why Crystal has stayed one of the most important games I've ever played — not just that it let me choose, but that whatever I chose changed nothing; I'd still become champion, I'd still matter — and about the thing Pokémon does that almost no other world does: it trusts the kid in the room, hands a ten-year-old their own path, and makes the villains the adults, every time. Then, because I've reviewed and written guides for these games for money, I get into the messier modern stuff too: why Let's Go is underrated, why the Sword and Shield graphics discourse missed the point, why Scarlet and Violet is my favourite modern entry despite needing another year in the oven, why ZA lost its soul, and whether we've simply got too many legendaries now. But underneath all of it, this is about the first place that ever handed me my own life and said: it's yours, whoever you are.

Support the podcast: https://ko-fi.com/iamspecious

Catch me live: https://twitch.tv/iamspecious

More over on LoreBySpec: https://www.youtube.com/@lorebyspec