[Coda]

You're the second person I've heard of to get a shiny starter.

You know what's funny, Black is the last Pokemon game I finished, too.

I made some decent progress into Y but then I got STUPIDLY busy at work and had to set it aside and never got back to it.

Diamond I logged 140 hours on but never actually FINISHED because I got sidetracked by being completionist. ^^() I think I only have like four badges there?

I never played the GBA games. I tried playing Gold in gen 2, but I managed to get a defective copy of the game and never got around to doing anything about it. Before that, I pulled off a full-completionist play of Red -- even got a legit event Mew -- and did a fair amount of competition using Stadium's Poke Cup rules.

It occurs to me as I write this that, in retrospect, I'm uncertain about the legitimacy of that event. It was run by a sanctioned Pokemon League location, by a uniformed Pokemon League employee, but I discovered MANY years later that said employee was a compulsive yet talented liar. It is ENTIRELY possible that the distribution cartridge he had was in fact created using a Game Shark, a fake security seal, and a great deal of patience. But I have no way of verifying it either way.