I made a spreadsheet of my 20 year old Pokemon Sapphire team

This is from the same cart whose battery I replaced. I bought this game when it came out in 2003 but quickly bounced off before even beating the final two gyms. I was well into high school and the Pokemania that dominated my middle school years had ebbed. Now I’ve dumped the ROM and save data and will try to finish the game.

Even though I have my original GBA in working order, my vision always made portable gaming ergonomically difficult, and I was always looking for ways to play games on the big screen, first with a super game boy and then a game boy player for the gamecube.

To that end, I want to compare my 'mons stats and see what I need to improve. Back in the day my rationale for team composition was “who looks cool?” without much thought to strategy other than the occasional type advantage for gym battles.

The problem is I have ADHD, and can’t easily compare more than two or three numbers at a time without purdy graphics to help me along. Ruby/Sapphire introduced a radar diagram for displaying stats, but there’s no in-game way to overlay one mon’s stats onto another to compare, let alone all 6.

Now that I’ve dumped the ROM, I can quickly tab between the emulator and a spreadsheet to jot things down, and that’s what I did.

Some observations:

I was an occasional nicknamer. I was taking Latin in HS at the time, so naturally I drank from that well when naming my pokemon. My character name is Nemo (nobody).

I’m aware now that hyenas (upon which Mightyena is presumably based) are feliforms, but I didn’t back in 2003.

Ferra should probably be “Ferrea” (iron-bearing), as that’s an actual Latin word. I just changed neuter ferrum (iron) to feminine because the Aron I caught was a female.

I lieked Mudkipz before it was cool. I know it’s more of an axolotl and not a fish, but eh.

I didn’t know anything about EVs or IVs and so on. I believe your starter is always given some extra oomph, so unless you abandon it in a PC or keep it benched it’s likely going to remain your strongest pokemon. Similarly, Canis was at the head of my team when I first booted the cart after 20 years, and if memory serves he was my go-to front runner back then, but since he’s a common mon that I probably caught outside the starting town he’s probably less performant.

And that’s one criticism I have of Pokemon, there’s a lot of poorly explained or outright hidden mechanics that are critical for strategic play. But Pokemon has become my latest ADHD hyperfixation, so play I shall.