I enjoyed HG more than i did the original silver or gold. Sapphire is one of my all time favorites. With that said, idk if any of them have as many hours as LG. I love gen 1, and the extra stuff in the end was pretty good.(some minor gripes but w/e)
I am not sure what i played more of when it comes to red, blue or yellow. i am guessing blue or yellow though i tended to play them somewhat evenly.
I have a few old gameboys and a regular old DS. I haven't bothered with any of the newer ones.
I feel you. My copy of Fire Red straight up broke due to the amount of hours I put in (~450). I still have no idea why, dead battery maybe. Fire Red / Leaf Green were the games we got when we wanted to compete with all the Ruby/Sapphire nerds back in the day. It was also the introduction to hacking/tweaking for many of us with the rampant use of the GameShark. Anybody who had a Game Genie for the NES would have thought it was old news but to us newgens it was insane to see unlimited rare candies and so on
It is possible that the battery died. replacing them is not too hard.(easy google search)
I remember the gameshark. i know some people who had one.
tho you didn't need one to exploit some of the games. the first gen's very own guide book shows some of them off. One of which can be used to get unlimited amounts rare candy's or other items. i found one last year on how to get mew in blue.
idk if i ever got all 150 pokemon in the first gen on the same game. for a long time i never had a trading cable or wireless connectors.
