Paternity Leave and Pokémon Gen3
Is it 2004 or 2026?
Picture this: It's 6:30 am on a Wednesday. I'm sitting on the couch, freshly showered, trapped under my sleeping 3 month old son, watching Stargate SG1 and playing Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green. Besides my newborn, this is almost exactly what life was like at age 12, which makes it so neat that it's able to be the "norm" for a while while I'm 33.
I'm currently on paternity leave until mid-May, so while my son takes his 5th nap of the day, I needed SOMETHING to occupy my time while being nap trapped, at least until he is able to sleep in his crib without throwing a fit. Thankfully Nintendo and Gamefreak decided to pull their heads out of their butts and put one of the OG Pokémon games on the Switch, without locking it behind the Switch Online subscription service. To be fair though none of the OG games are available on the subscription service, so the bar was set REALLY low.
Playing Leaf Green for the first time (I was a Fire Red boy personally), I set out to use the knowledge I've gained in the last 20 years of playing Pokémon to do something different than my normal playthrough style, as well as playing through a second file on Fire Red alongside Lizzie, my lovely wife, as a Soullocke Nuzlocke.
The Leaf Green playthrough is currently on 4/8 badges, and I think I've hit a good stride with this team. The naming team was Korean BBQ, because I was absolutely craving KBBQ when I started the game. Fearow MIGHT be switched out at some point as I don't necessarily need someone to have Fly in my party at all times, but it's a really solid physical attacker on a team of, essentially, all special attack users.
The Soullocke playthrough with Lizzie is... absolutely bonkers. The theme for nicknames was "things you would find in a corporate office", if you couldn't tell... Obviously Alakazam is great, and it's fun to actually be able to use one for the first time ever, but then you've got Pidgeotto which is just objectively mid-tier, and Parasect which has great physical attack stats but no real physical moves to use to its benefit other than like... Slash. In terms of team members that fell along the way, we had three that were... not great overall so they won't really be missed.
We're just starting week three of the twelve total weeks I get off, but it has already been such a rewarding experience, spending time playing with the boy and watch him learn and grow! Now I just need to get him past the shove everything into my mouth stage while he's teething.
