I love Hoenn and gen 3 so much

I've been feeling nostalgic for gen 3 Pokemon lately, because I absolutely LOVED gen 3 and Hoenn as a young child. The Ruby/Sapphire arc of the anime was my favorite one, and it's the only one besides Indigo League I remember going out of my way to watch multiple times over as a kid (that "Woaaah, I'm unbeatable!" in the Advanced Battle 4kids opening is like, the most nostalgic noise in existence to me). I played the ever-loving FUCK out of FireRed and LeafGreen, I put hundreds upon hundreds of hours into both games, exploring around the Sevii Islands trying to "catch 'em all"... I've done so many replays of LeafGreen that I have most of the dialogue just memorized. I loved Emerald and Alpha Sapphire as well. Ever since I was like 7 years old Hoenn has been my favorite Pokémon region, I decided at that age that Blaziken was my favorite Pokémon, the Hoenn starters and legendaries were my favorites in the series, gen 3 was my favorite generation, Hoenn Pokémon in general were my favorite out of any other region, gen 3 had my favorite music in the series, and all of this has remained so to this day, both because I still think gen 3 has the best Pokemon designs and because of the extreme amount of nostalgia I've developed for generation 3.

Last year, I played Pokémon Sapphire for the first time, as while I've done billions of playthroughs of FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald, and Alpha Sapphire, I had never actually played the original Ruby and Sapphire. And now, earlier today September 14th, 2026 as of writing, I just completed Pokémon Ruby for the first time, having now officially beaten every gen 3 Pokémon game, something I've always wanted to do since I counted all of the gen 3 games to be five at the age of like 6, that being the specific generation I counted the games in since it was (and still is) my favorite.

Listening to the OR/AS Littleroot Town theme while writing this... with the big nostalgia trip I've been having these past few days, hearing Littleroot or Verdanturf Town's music tears me the hell up. There's nothing I have as much personal bias and history towards than gen 3 Pokémon.