The thing is, LeafGreen / FireRed is lame, a shoved-out-the-door remake that runs a far distant second to Ruby / Sapphire. Once I realized that, the game lost much of its spark. The Sevii Islands mini-quest that follows the main game wasn't doing much for me, a meandering jaunt chiefly ventured to activate R/S and LG/FR trading... a reward that's more trouble than it's worth if you're not planning on playing LeafGreen much.

So when I picked up a Pokemon game again, it wasn't LeafGreen, it was good ol' Sapphire. I had never evolved one of those awful Feebi into a Milotic, so I planted some berries and nursed that for a while. Turns out, I didn't need the extra berries, since I had already maxed out the Feebas' beauty stat before I stopped playing. That's the thing with Pokemon games. They're so deep that it's tough to remember what you did if you step away for a while.

So, in short order, lv 20 Milotic. Pokedex +1, back in the box. Then I remembered that I had traded my Sealeo over to Ruby so it would evolve up to a Walrein faster, so I pulled him back over. Pokedex +1. Then I sent my Snorunt over to Ruby for a quick run up to a Glalie. Pokedex +1. Then, still in Ruby, I polished off the Abandoned Ship Scanner sidemission for the deepseascale that you use to evolve a Clamperl into a Gorebyss. Pokedex +1.

That left me with a handful of missing monsters, but with the wily Kingdra leading the pack. My frustration with netting a dragon scale has already been well documented... and lest you doubt how much time I wasted hunting Horseas and Bagons, here's a shot from my Pokemon Box storage facility where I dumped all the useless pokemon overflow.

So I googled for "dragon scale leafgreen" in a final act of desparation. A LeafGreen walkthrough popped up. Yes, there is an easily found dragon scale in LeafGreen... and it was mere yards from where I had given up on the Sevii Islands quest! Unbefrickinlievable.

I clicked through a little further into the LeafGreen guide and saw that, once you finish the Sevii Islands mess, you can enter Cerulean Cave and take on a Mewtwo. Now we're talking. Armed with a Master Ball, I confronted the renegade Mewtwo and made him my own... just as I did in Pokemon Yellow five years ago. Then I made Mewtwo hold the damn dragon scale and sent him over to Sapphire.

One trade later and I finally have a Kingdra in my Sapphire Pokedex. What a pain.

Now that I've mined all the required types from Ruby - Groudon, Gorebyss, Armaldo, etc etc - it's time to reboot Ruby so I can generate the final monsters I need for Sapphire: Torchic and Mudkip. Of course, I had severe misgivings about restarting my Ruby cart, because the game is loaded with items and monsters that I would like to keep... so I travelled back into Nintendo's lost land of GBA/GameCube connectivity and stashed everything in my Pokemon Box. This was quite a ordeal. First I made each Ruby pokemon hold something I wanted to keep... some cool TMs, Ultra Balls, rare items... then I put them all in the Box. Then I sent them all into Sapphire and took the items. Since Ruby had more items than pokemon, I had to do this a couple times to get everything I wanted. Took a bit of time, I can tell you.

But now I'm ready to reboot Ruby and start a fresh game with a Mudkip so I can trade it over to Sapphire. Of course, I'm a little exhausted by the whole affair, so it might be a while.

So back to Sapphire stats (the heck with LeafGreen):
Time: 157:45
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 201 (Seen: 202)
Party: Razorbeak (Swellow) lv64, Groudon lv47, Mewtwo lv70, Golduck lv58, Egg (which better be a Torchic), Egg (another old gift from Pokemon Box)

A final note. You can't just empty out a Pokemon cartridge, you have to leave at least one pokemon in your party. So please join me in saying farewell to a lv 16 Machop, the unlucky soul who drew the short straw in the big raffle of who gets to stay on the game before it gets rebooted. Sorry kid.