Revisiting Kanto: Mt. Moon, Not Celadon City, Is Team Rocket's Real Lair

thegamer.com:

With a single gym badge in my pocket (or whatever that weird felt case is they store badges in in the anime), I feel my Pokemon adventure has begun in earnest. When I set out to explore Kanto as a tourist, to visit each place in turn and explore it fully, Pokemon battles were not on my mind. The idea of this column was to soak up each setting as a place rather than an area for Pokemon greatness, to figure out why Kanto as a region holds such nostalgia for me, above even Johto, whose games I find superior, and above all other places in all other games I played as a kid. I have beaten the game multiple times and Brock is an early pushover. But here, his badge feels like the key to unlocking the next step of the journey, the doors to Mt. Moon.

I have no particularly strong feelings towards Mt. Moon, or at least I did not before this playthrough. I love the complexity and the challenging mazes of the early Pokemon caves, but Kanto's classic caverns all blur into one. Aside from the plethora of Zubat, a nuisance not even unique to Mt. Moon, I had difficulty recalling what the cave even was.

Related: Revisiting Kanto: Giovanni's Secret Gym Makes Viridian City Great

Before I reached the cave, there were a few more battles to wind my way through, and as much as it breaks the illusion slightly when these trainers all stand around waiting for me to cross their line of sight, I appreciate that there is a real sense of weaving through the world. They aren't all lined up neatly, and I can always scan for a way around the battle to reach the cave faster, although a pathway does not always exist. It feels, as best as it could back in those technologically limited days, as if I am wandering around and bumping into people who are either