@unrepentantAuthor
Heck yeah, I have... especially when that task involves computers (ugh). You know what the best part of it all is, though? The deep breath you can take when it's finally over. Good luck with your writing, and may your woes be over soon.
...Yeah, we really are on the thousandth page, aren't we? Although I haven't been around here long enough to truly appreciate just how long that is, just the thought of seeing one thousand pages for one thread really is incredible! But you know what's even more amazing? Almost 20,000 posts! To put that in perspective: assuming a steady stream of replies, that's approximately 2791 posts a year, 233 posts a month, 58 posts a week, and 8 posts a day between the start of this thread and now! But if there are even longer-running threads than this one... then I wonder what the actual longest thread on this site is?
Tradition and money, I suspect. I like to imagine that the different versions way back in the day were meant to encourage socialization among fans, and were never really intended as a means of milking more money out of the fans. After all, the fans were kids back then, and outside of the spoiled brats, who really had the money to buy two game boys, two games and a link cable? Nowadays, though, some of those same fans are adults who... maybe aren't the best with money, and buy both versions on day one. Game Freak obviously sees the money in this and I think that may be their main motivation to continue the tradition at this point. Picking up the version exclusives off of other players is almost anti-social at this point; post in a chat what you're looking for, someone emerges from the faceless masses, you do a couple trades and probably never speak to them again.
Nothing like the wonders of the modern internet, huh? Although really, today's internet as a whole has changed almost everything when it comes to both Pokémon and video games in general. Nowadays, you can barely go a few minutes online without hearing about leaks, spoilers, and the like... it's almost impossible for anyone to keep anything secret anymore. If the internet in 1996 had anything like the popularity, culture, and technical sophistication that it has today, then something like the whole "let's hide Mew in the game code and see if anyone can find it!" thing probably would've gone quite differently... you'd be more likely to hear about it first on your favorite online messaging board or social media feed than from one of your friends at school. And that's all assuming that the entire game itself wasn't already being shared and picked apart online weeks before release, of course!
Oh, and the reason for two versions? As far as I'm concerned, it's
always about the money. Yeah, I'm sure that tradition makes the decision easier, but I don't think that anyone at Nintendo or Game Freak is really going to say: "You know what? Let's do just one version in the future just because, even when we
know that we'll make more money with two!" We all know how a conversation like that would end... and really, who can even blame them for still doing it at this point? Although that's not to say that I disagree that the original creators' intentions weren't pure... I'm sure they had no idea just how lucrative the whole two-versons idea would have become anyway, and that they were most likely interested in simply creating a good game that was worth the six years they spent in development hell more than anything else. The intentions of the people running the franchise
now, on the other hand? Yeah, probably leaning more towards the money there...
