My Birthday just got better!

I had always found weird that in the anime Onix would never scream its name, even though every other Pokémon did. It wasn't until much later that I found its japanese name was Iwark, and that they just never bothered dubbing over the japanese guy that was screaming IWARK all the time.

(I was born in 91) back in first there was a Japanese girl in our class who has a pikachu doll. We had never seen anything like it. She brought it for show and tell and said it’s called a Pika and lots of kids have it in japan. She told us it was a “pocket monster” like our Tamagotchis/Digimons. By the time we were in second grade Pokemon has become a phenomenon 🤯

As someone with celiac disease, I am now committed to naming my rivals Gluten from this moment on

I was that Japanese kid with the green version. Everyone wanted to trade with me and the pokemon always end up fucked up.

Those "pippi" jokes were on point.

some fun facts for anyone who cares: "pippi" is basically a sort of "diminutive" (or "cute/baby-talk way") of saying "pixie" in japanese. japanese "cute language" often repeats the first syllable of a (usually foreign, but not always) word to make it sound "cuter" in the language. they also like to abbreviate to a single syllable for even more "cuteness:"

cleffa = pii
clefairy = pippi (or pipi in certain romanization standards)
clefable = pixie (or pixy, depending on how you want to spell it)

so the clefairy line is basically meant to represent a pixie becoming more "grown up" by way of the cutest-sounding (and therefore baby-sounding) names for the earliest forms up until the "adult" form, with an "adult" name.

you'll find that a lot of the japanese names for gen1 pkmn are basically just "what it is, but make it sound cuter or cooler, depending on what vibe we're going for."

another example: a lot of them have "don" in the name, too, like "lizardon" (charizard) or "saidon" (rhydon) since "don" is often used in japanese creature names to denote it being/looking like a dinosaur or dragon ("don" being a form of the greek word "donti," meaning "tooth," used in dinosaur names like "iguanodon," meaning... "iguana tooth/toothed" lol).

then there's the names that are basically like "just name it what it represents" like "thunders" for jolteon. though that lead to things like "thunder" for zapdos...

you'll find a lot of gen1 pkmn have kinda "lame" sounding names in english because a lot of them are in english. i remember as a kid being pretty perplexed that my favorite legendary bird (articuno) was just called "freezer" in japanese because that didn't sound very cool for a bird like that. but in the context of the language, i'm sure a japanese kid thought "furizaa" sounded pretty badass lol.

5:47 That Mew really looks like it was found under a truck...😂

The very quick explanation of how the Mew glitch works is that the game is being tricked into generating an encounter with the Pokemon ID of an unrelated block of memory.

It just so happens that the Special stat value of the Slowpoke of the trainer at 5:32 modifies that block of memory to a value that corresponds to Mew.  So basically, when we trigger the encounter at 5:41, the game asks itself "what Pokemon is this?", sees the 21 in the memory, goes "ah yes, 21, that's Mew", then voila, wild Mew appears.

It’s always fun seeing peoples’ reactions to the Japanese names of Pokémon for the first time 😂

The Pokédex entries for Japanese Red and Green were translated into English for the first time for FireRed.
LeafGreen reuses the Dex entries from international Red and Blue, which are the translated Pokédex entries from Japanese Blue.

I love that Pippi was supposed to be the mascot, but Pikachu was chosen instead.

6:00 you just casually changed my entire childhood by showing me the Mew thing oh my God I have to replay yellow from the beginning!!!

Y'kno, I don't think I've ever quite enjoyed so much another man playing with his Pippi!

I can't explain it, but Charizard's green version sprite has always reminded me of a broken umbrella

It's funny how many of the german Pokemon names are based on the japanese originals.
Pippi and Pixy are Piepi and Pixi in german. Galopp became Galoppa
We also kept Digda

The reason the Mew glitch works is the game assumes it's in a battle and all of the actions you do change where in the memory which thing you're fighting is. It's also how you can fight unused trainers like Professor Oak by altering the actions slightly

Yeah, going back to the original Gen 1 games is both incredibly rough but also charming with its simplicity and nostalgia.

While I appreciate the original sprites, I'm glad FRLG went with accurate representations of the og 151. That said, the og sprite for Golbat never fails to make me laugh. Like, he looks like he's vibing and on a lot of LSD at the same time.

The biggest takeaway from this experience is that Pippis come from the Moon.

17:06  Togekiss hiding behind a Doduo.