Like this:

The other day I realized that my younger sister had never played Pokemon before. This was absolutely baffling to me, because for my generation, pretty much the entirety of Pokemon Red/Blue is universal knowledge. Everybody knows their favorite starter, all the Eevee-lutions, and how to do the rare candy cheat (except for my friend Liz, and when I showed her a YouTube clip of what that was, anger happened). So on a whim, I decided it would be fun to get my younger sister to start her own game of Pokemon Red. Minutes in, I realized I made a huge mistake in not recording her reactions, because they were hilarious. I know this won’t convey it anywhere near as well, which is so very unfortunate, but here’s a vague sense of what was all going on:

Day 1

0:00 My sister names her character after herself, and her rival after me. Adorable.

0:01 I explain to her that she can only pick one of the three starter Pokemon. Trauma ensues.

0:21 She finally picks Charmander. Her rival (named after me) challenges her to a battle. Apparently before this point, she didn’t know the game was about battling Pokemon against each other. Horrified, she defeats her rival’s Squirtle.

0:23 Now battling Pokemon she doesn’t think are cute, she’s all over the whole fighting Pokemon thing.

0:24 She complains constantly as she goes through Route 1, because she doesn’t want her Charmander to get hurt, and does everything she can to go through as little tall grass as possible.

0:28 Pretty much all of these times are made up.

0:30 I explain that you need Pokeballs to catch Pokemon. She was previously unaware of this too. I explain that the game is about catching and training a variety of different Pokemon. She decides that she doesn’t want a Pidgey or a Rattata because they were mean to her. I explain that every single Pokemon in the game is going to attack her.

0:32 She catches a Pidgey.

0:33 She’s convinced that the man in front of the Viridian City Gym is Voldemort.

0:35 She catches a Rattata after a valuable lesson about learning the importance of lowering a Pokemon’s HP before trying to catch them.

0:37 She expresses thankfulness that Pokemon Centers are free to use.

0:47 She levels up her Pidgey and Rattata against other Pidgey and Rattata. She can’t quite remember their names, though, referring to them as “Ratatat” and “Bird”.

0:50 She goes into the Viridian Forest. Becomes frustrated with how long it takes to defeat Kakuna. Until her Charmander learns Ember. She laughs with maniacal glee as she burns up bug-type Pokemon.

0:52 She catches a Weedle. Then she catches a Pikachu. Seriously, when I played Pokemon Red, years ago, it took an hour and a half to finally run into my first Pikachu. She catches one in four minutes. And she’s still working on the whole “B button goes back” thing.

Day 2

She seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the game by now, so I didn’t sit around and watch her play. Instead I only offered some advice for her upcoming battle against Brock (whom she kept referring to as Barack) and popped in every 20 minutes or so to see how she was doing. A couple hours later, she took a break from the game, in a daze, wondering where the time had gone. Ah, the memories.

Day 3

She reported a failure in her first attempt against Brock. She defeated his Geodude, but it took all of her Pokemon to get barely a quarter of Onix’s health bar. Undeterred, she goes back to training. That’s about all I’ve got so far. I’ll be sure to report with her future successes, assuming she keeps playing the game, although she admits it is almost scarily addicting.

In short, giving Pokemon to a younger sibling is probably as responsible as giving them meth.