I remember it vaguely, from an article in a magazine or on the web somewhere: “Pokémon Crystal will let you play as a girl.”
Pokémon Crystal
Courtesy of NintendoThose mundane words opened up a new world for me. At the time, I was but a tiny child. And as far as anyone was concerned, I was a boy. Not that I would have argued with them. I didn’t really have any self-awareness as a girl at the time. But despite lacking the awareness, reading the article about Pokémon Crystal gave me a huge sense of elation that I couldn’t understand. At the time I didn’t know why, but I was excited and swept with emotion. A tidal wave so powerful that even though most of my memories of the past were suppressed (sometimes intentionally), that one brief moment stuck out to me my entire life.
The wave immediately crashed down into sadness. At the time, I lived in Thailand. I was a huge Pokémon fan, and I already heard of many amazing Pokémon things that were only available in other countries, like the Ancient Mew trading card that people only got by watching the Pokémon movie, The Power of One, in theaters. Back then, I thought that I might never be able to get a copy of Pokémon Crystal and was disappointed. I told myself not to get my hopes up and to try to forget about it.
One day, I randomly stumbled across a copy at a local department store. I was ecstatic and immediately begged my grandmother to buy it for me, then played it the moment we got home. It asked me for a name, but I didn’t have any ideas, so I just went with the default player name for the girl character.
Kris. That name was everything to me. I could choose to be a girl.
I became Kris, and it changed my world. I was obsessed, and I immersed myself in the game. Even though I could only see it through the small, pixelated screen of a Gameboy Color, it felt more real and vibrant than my actual existence.
