I never got into the more technical aspects of playing, such as tracking specific Pokemon move stats and CP levels, but I always found the game fun. There's probably a layer of nostalgia that helps with this - the games aren't all that groundbreaking technically or graphically, and the anime is cringy to try and watch as an adult - but I will always buy the latest Pokemon game and give it a shot.

Recently I bought a Joey Jr rom dumper [1] and I was able to dump my original Pokemon Blue save file and rom so now I can play my og game on an emulator.

One aspect the article didn't touch on was the hacking/glitching community. In general I avoid the random global trades because most 'mon coming out are these hacked shiny legendaries who are nicknamed after pokemon hacking websites. While I don't want them now, I do look back and remember on my old Blue version doing item glitching techniques, missingno item duplication, glitches to get mew. While the game is cooperative, there has also always been a subset of the players who love hacking their way to better pokemon and exploring beyond the bounds of the game.

[1] https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/usb-gb-c-cart-dumper...