after playing and loving Rescue Team, i was super excited to find out there was going to be another Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game. i forcibly dragged my mum into the local game store to show it to her, insisting "this is the game i want. if you get me anything for Christmas, get me this." i spent the lead-up to Christmas eyeing the presents under the tree, hoping that one of them was the size and shape of a DS game -- and on Christmas day i unwrapped my very own copy of PMD: Explorers of Time.

i immediately fired it up, much to my parents' chagrin -- Nana had gotten us kids a minibike for Christmas, and they were setting it up in the driveway and wanted me to join in. instead i sat in the front doorway, DS in hand as i completed the personality quiz, insisting that i needed to find out what Pokémon i was. the personality quiz told me i was 'naive', which meant that a Pokémon like me... would be a Skitty! and so began the adventures of Exploration Team Chirika.

the entirety of my summer holidays that year were spent playing Explorers, and i spent so much time inside that any time i went outside my eyes would hurt (our flat did not get a lot of natural sunlight). unfortunately, in my excitement to play Explorers, i'd spent many months reading a plot-heavy GameFAQs walkthrough, and so knew the entire story before i ever began playing. i have never regretted anything so much in my life; Explorers has some stunning plot twists that i will never ever know how i would have reacted to, and i wish i could erase my memory of the game to replay it blind.

the following year, Explorers of Sky came out while i was on a family holiday to Australia. my parents had given me some spending money, which i wisely invested in a copy of Explorers of Sky, and any moment of free time we had was spent embarking on an adventure with my all-new exploration team (Vulpix and Turtwig). 11-year-old me knew her priorities. i still vividly remember sitting on a train to Brisbane getting my ass absolutely kicked by the first special episode :')

Explorers of Sky is absolutely the definitive edition of the Explorers game, and it's also the best game in the whole entire world. there's a reason why fans speak so highly of it -- it takes the already-incredible story of the baseline Explorers games and expands on it further through the addition of five 'Special Episodes'; self-contained stories starring the side characters of the game. Special Episode 5: In The Future of Darkness alone is worth playing Sky for; it's such a deep and poignant story that still sticks with me all these years later.

though... i never actually played Special Episode 5 for myself. at least, not for many, many years. my first, and for a long time only, interaction with it was on my 12th birthday; my best friend and i squashed onto the couch and i watched her play through it while we ate toast and mused about the fact that in only two short weeks i would have a new baby sibling. it wasn't until many years later, in my first year of uni, when i decided that it was about time that i play through it for myself. i stayed up way later than i should have and bawled my fucking eyes out; even as an adult PMD will never fail to make me cry :'')