Pokémon

Pokémon is one of the most important game franchises to me. I started playing Pokémon Blue on the original Game Boy as a kid, and as an adult I created Pokémon Type Calculator in 2013.

Pokémon Type Calculator

The Pokémon Type Calculator (pkmn.help) is easily my magnum opus. It receives over 250 thousand visits per month, and visitors usually spend around 4 minutes per session.

What began as a personal project in 2013 when I was frustrated loading the ad-riddled Bulbapedia on my budget Android smartphone is now considered a pillar of the Pokémon community. And I never spent a red cent on advertising it. It grew purely through search engine results and word of mouth.

Pokémon Blue

The first Pokémon game I ever played: Pokémon Blue. I played it on the original Game Boy (DMG-01) unit. It took 4 AA batteries and the screen was barely visible unless under direct sunlight, but I was enamored. I definitely spent hundreds of hours playing the game.

After beating the Elite Four countless times, catching most of the Pokédex, and getting my core party nearly to level 100, disaster struck. It had been so long since I had seen the beginning of the game, I decided to start a new game just to mess around. And in a brief moment of pure muscle memory, I saved my game, overwriting all of my hard earned progress. I was devastated. The whole ordeal left me bitter and uninterested in starting the next Pokémon game (Gold/Silver).

I didn't own and finish a new Pokémon game until Pokémon Platinum (2008) for the Nintendo DS. I have owned and played every main line Pokémon game since then. At some point I went back and played Pokémon Leaf Green, the Game Boy Advance remake of Pokémon Red/Blue.

Pokémon Blue Version for Game Boy

Pokémon Crystal

I ordered the Analogue Pocket in 2020, shortly after I had a surging interest in playing Game Boy games. I had just finished playing Dragon Quest I+II and Dragon Quest Monsters for the Game Boy Color, and I was thrilled to get my fancy new backlight USB-C GB/GBC/GBA compatible device. But it mostly sat in a drawer for a while.

At some point my partner unearthed their old Game Boy cartridges. The save batteries had died, but knowing how to solder, it's not a tough fix. I stepped in and soldered new save batteries into the cartridges. Then a couple years later I got the urge to play their copy of Crystal. Despite not playing Gold/Silver/Crystal in their era, I was a huge Game Boy kid, so I'm enamored with the graphics so far.

I haven't found many good sources of lossless screenshots of pixel art video games online, so I wanted to create a gallery of fun images from my playthrough.

Commissioned Art

I commissioned one of my favorite artists, sproutsnout, to draw two of my favorite Pokémon.

Sprite Recolors

Like a digital coloring book, I used to love recoloring sprites ripped from my favorite games. After playing Pokémon Crystal, I decided to recolor a few of the 16x16 menu sprites.