Uuuuuuuuugh…Pokemon. I kind of hate myself, but I went and got myself Pokemon LeafGreen, Emerald, Diamond, and My Pokemon Ranch. Take a moment to point and laugh at me — get it out of your systems.

My main goal in playing all of these soul-draining games is to fill up my ranch. I can’t deny my (platonic) love of watching chibi Pokemon run around acting cute and blasting themselves out of the Poke Rocket (not a euphemism). Of course my ranch would not be complete without a Bulbasaur or twenty, which is why I had to get LeafGreen. I have not yet achieved my goal of getting Bulbasaur on my ranch — I have a fuckbillion hours of tedious level building before that dream is realized. Woe.

I share Sam’s discomfort with capturing redundant Pokemon, but it’s kind of unavoidable when trying to fill up the ranch to its limit of 999 Pokemon, or trying to get some of the ranch special events. At least I have an Edgeworth Mii to help wrangle the fifty thousand phallic Pokemon and fuchsia ballsack Pokemon I’ve got inhabiting the place.

But the best part of all? After reading about how rare it is to run into a shiny Pokemon in the wild, I managed to catch one in the first fifteen minutes of playing LeafGreen. Yeah, that’s right — a shiny Rattata. Awesome. I might as well catch a piece of crap with glitter sprinkled on it. I commented to John that I need a a shiny Metapod, a shiny Magikarp, or a shiny Zubat to add to my shiny collection of win.

And then I caught a shiny Zubat in Diamond. Ha ha, Pokemon gods, very funny.

So do any of you have fantastic Pokemon ranches? Does Hayley insist on bringing you nothing but trash Pokemon? Do you have any amusingly pathetic stories of shiny Pokemon you’ve captured? Anyone have a shiny Metapod?