Pokemon Red. I was playing on my matching red gameboy pocket. The year was 1998 or so. This was the first game I'd ever had the attention span to get anywhere close to beating.

I had the official Prima's guide, but I'd ignored its advice to create a balanced team of Pokemon. Instead I'd exclusively leveled up my Charizard because I liked the idea of being in command of a single massive dragon. I'd literally made my little sister cry by utterly destroying her Pokemon team when we borrowed the neighbor's link cable and dueled one day, so I was convinced my Charizard was invincible.

But now here I was trying to beat the elite 4, and it seemed my bad strategy had finally come back to bite me, because their balanced team of pokemon were proving to be a nightmare as they gradually whittled down my Charizard's health. Sometimes I would come kind of close to beating them due to pure RNG, but I would always end up losing.

I don't know how long it went on like this. Weeks? Then one day I was at my grandpa's house. I still remember sitting on the floor while everyone else was watching TV. Somehow I'd hit a streak of good luck. I suddenly realized that I could beat them. I was finally going to beat the elite 4. Finally, I could move on--

BLINK

Everything disappeared except for that little horizontal line after you've run out of batteries. I'd lost track of time and forgotten to switch in new batteries. Something in me snapped that day, and I've never touched another Pokemon game for the last 19 years.