Pokémon Gold and Silver turns 25 years old this month. The Game Boy Color RPGs brought fans to the Johto region, introduced 100 new monsters, and are widely considered some of the best games in the franchise’s long history. To commemorate the anniversary, The Pokémon Company is releasing a new line of merchandise featuring Pokémon and art from the games, and there’s some real tempting stuff in the collection.
Some of the merch is game-neutral, whereas a few items have been made to spotlight characters and color schemes for either Gold or Silver. The highlights include plushes of game mascots Ho-Oh and Lugia, jackets with a reversible interior design of the Johto region map, and a trash can with the Japanese in-game message you receive when examining trash cans that roughly translates to “Nope, there’s only trash here” printed on it.
Right now, the line is only going on sale through the Japanese Pokémon Center website, which always seems to get the best stuff. However, they will no doubt end up on reseller or import sites shortly after the line goes live on November 21. For now, you can click through to see all the merchandise set to go up next week.
These days, the easiest way to play Gold and Silver is through the 3DS ports released in 2017. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that Nintendo will one day put the old Pokémon games on Switch and then make a concerted effort to keep these games accessible moving forward, but the company’s lack of care on that front is well-documented.
Since it’s the 25th anniversary of Gold and Silver, that means it’s also the 15th anniversary of the Nintendo DS remakes Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, which launched during the original games’ 10th anniversary in 2009. Those remakes are still probably the game I’d put at the top of a ranking of the mainline Pokémon games…oh, wait. I did that!