My Husband plays Pokemon for the first time

Watching my husband play Pokemon Shield for the first time reminded me why I love us being able to game together.

When Pokemon first came out way back in the 90s, my husband was already nearly a legal adult. These games just never interested him at all. 

Unlike me where I was obsessed to the point I once had a full sleeve tattoo planned out for every Eevee evolution and made sure to leave room for new ones too...

Anyway, we got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas 2019. It was something I had been eyeballing for a long time and I decided it would be a good gift for the family. I debated for days on what games to get. I know my daughter loves Minecraft and my son had been going on about Lets Go! Eevee and the new Spyro trilogy. Spirit, my husband, wanted Mario Party and games we could all play together. 

So how did we end up buying Shield? Well, we saw Many a True Nerd on YouTube doing a play-through. We had watched so many of his Fallout let's plays that, when it came down to it, we trusted him and his play style when it came to Pokemon Shield. Queue us binge-watching the eight episodes he had up. 

Let me tell you how nerve-wracking that was. I had been wanting Sword or Shield for awhile since I kept seeing screenshots of people playing with their Pokemon in a mechanic called Pokemon Camping. I had seen so many of my precious Eeveelution babies all over the place that I needed one of these games eventually. 

See, Pokemon had been such an integrated part of my childhood. Getting Red on the original GameBoy started off my love of gaming. I spent so much time just having fun and learning the mechanics of the original games. Then as I got older, the games evolved. I lost track of playing my beloved childhood game when Black and White came out. I kind of wish I had stuck with the newer games but there was just something about them that didn't feel right. Maybe it was all the EV and Natures and things I didn't understand but it just didn't feel like Pokemon anymore to me.

Back to just a few days ago, we are watching MATN play Pokemon Shield when Spirit looks over at me and says "Yeah, I think I'd play this." 

I thought my entire being as a whole was going to explode from excitement. I was going to not only get a Pokemon game that had me excited about the world again but I was going to get to experience watching him play my beloved childhood game for the first time in his life! It was a win-win!

I bought the Switch and Pokemon Shield. I got home, set everything up, and we didn't touch it that night. I was dying. I just wanted to boot up Shield and go on my first Pokemon adventure in years that wasn't Emerald on a sped up emulator. Spirit wanted to play.

He boots it up and we get started. He chooses to be called Spir (as per our Mixer username Spirfox) and he starts out his journey with Scorbunny. Now I'm sitting back, watching him play, and I'm trying so hard not to backseat game. Again, I grew up with these games. Other than the new Fairy typing, I knew my type advantages and disadvantages. Yet, the more he played, the more I shut up unless I knew it was something he didn't fully understand. 

Spir doesn't retain Pokemon the way I do. Scorbunny to him was "fire bunny" and Raboot became "fire rabbit". He called the creatures of Galar not by their scientific name but by what they looked like or reminded him of. Pancham became "kung fu panda" and Growlithe was "fire tiger dog" but I didn't mind. I loved it. It was fantastic. We got a good laugh out of it and I was tweeting as we went along playing.

We were up until 4AM. Now, I can't tell you the last time we both stayed up until 4AM just enjoying playing a game or talking or just being together. I'm not going to lie, we both suffered a hell of a lot the next day but it was worth it. Staying up so late without even realizing it and watching him get lost in a franchise I adored was honestly one of the best experiences for me. I rarely get to see someone enjoy something I enjoy as well. I might get to see it again when I introduce our kids to the Bioshock franchise but other than that, watching him play was riveting. It was exciting. It was hilarious and it made me realize that I love that we can game together. 

On that topic, I find it odd that going into 2020 there is still a mindset that couples can't enjoy gaming together. I still posts about how "my man loves his games more than me" or things of that nature. I guess since I've been a gamer my entire life, its never something I experienced because I've always been with other gamers? Or maybe its just because I'm okay with gaming that every guy I've ever dated has been okay with playing games around me? I'm unsure but I digress. 

Gaming has brought Spirit and I closer together as weird as that might sound. We started our Twitch channel about a year ago and just recently moved to Mixer but we noticed that the more we played games for stream, the closer we got. It gave us a whole new venue of topics to talk about and ideas and games in general. It started a whole new chapter in our book together that neither of us really thought about trying to write. 

I started enjoying watching him play turn-based strategy games and I even got into them myself. Hell, we've talked about me grabbing Civilization V when its on sale just so we can play together. Gaming is something that can bring people closer. I really do hope that coming into this next year that we see more couples streaming/gaming/etc. together. It really is a wonderful thing.

I can't wait to see what other games we can get for the Switch that will bring us closer as a family. 

P.S. Spirit says he doesn't retain any knowledge of types and such but as I silently watched him play, I saw him remember that electric types are good against flying types. So Pikachu wrecked a Corvisquire and I was internally grinning like the Cheshire Cat.