Platinum Team

My Platinum team! One of my most favorite teams I've ever put together, both functionally and aesthetically. Also name-wise! Naming 'mons is serious business. Notice they all start with different letters and end on different sounds, as well as having a deeper meaning (Hershey like a Hershey's Kiss, since she's a togekiss, Voltaire being an electric type, Melusine being a beautiful sea cryptid, and Emiliano... I dunno. Sounding sort of like oregano, I guess? I ran out of steam on that one).

This was actually the first time that I played through Pokemon Platinum, and I had such a blast! The fourth generation is my favorite (definitely not because it was the first generation I started playing, no sirree) -- I think the aesthetic is so wonderful, and I love the region, the mythos, the pokedex, and the sprites of all the pokemon. 3D models may be better from a technical perspective... But there's something so charming and wonderful about the original sprites. I actually find myself replaying the older games more often than the new ones because of that. But anyway -- my first game was Pokemon Diamond, which I played and loved. However, I got it just a little before Pokemon Platinum was announced. This new version always looked so awesome and interesting from the trailers, but since games are expensive and I was young, I never actually bought it, which I always regretted. So, years later, I felt a wash of nostalgia and went looking for a Platinum cart up for sale... And I found one! Plaything through Platinum was worth the almost decade-long wait.