Way back when I first got Pokemon I got the red version. It had a big bad ass dragon on the cover instead of a menacing turtle so the choice was obvious. Naturally when I got to chose my first pokemon I went straight for the fire type. An adorable Charmander. I blew through the game with my Charmander lovingly named Fire Face and raised him to be a mighty Charizard. I leveled him up to 100, traded him to Pokemon Yellow and taught him to fly and moved him to Silver then Yellow using his beastly abilities to help me beat the games.

One day I fired up my Pokemon Gold to work on catching them all, breeding and evolving some pogeymans. But my save was gone. Fuck! Fire Face was a proud father of two. I was working on raising a level 100 Charmander and Charmeleon...they were Fire Face's beloved sons. Wiped out by a dead battery. I did some googling and found out Gold and Silver have battery issues and that I wasn't the only one. I'm not sure how my Silver's doing as after that I was pissed at the tragic loss of Fire Face and his entire family. Fire Face was 8 when he died.

I had always wanted to get a copy of Pokemon Stadium 2 to see Fire Face and his family in full 3D glory but alas their time in the Poke World was cut short by the ever ticking clock of Pokemon Gold and Silver.  I do own a copy of Pokemon Stadium 2 now and have copied all the pokemon from all my gameboy carts over to it for safe keeping..  I still miss Fire Face.