my favourite unremarkable location in Pokemon
On YouTube, there's a channel I really like that centers around what I can only call "mundane gaming content." Instead of focusing on things like expert gameplay or humorous commentary, the guy running the channel posts videos where he goes around the world of Skyrim doing "unemployment censuses" or tries to map out where all the rivers in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom come from and flow to.
My favourite videos on the channel belong to the "unremarkable and odd places in X" series. In this series, the guy showcases spots in video games that he considers to be ... well, unremarkable, but also odd in some way. Usually these spots are the equivalent to so-called "liminal spaces" in the real world: Spots that feel weirdly empty, devoid of purpose, deserted, or like "filler" that only exists to link other places where things are actually happening. I find these videos interesting because they make me think about the concept of a "place's purpose" (both in video games and the real world), and how we perceive the world in general.
Now I don't really play video games anymore myself (aside from a few rounds of browser-based Tetris every now and then when I'm very bored). But watching these videos, I remembered one location in the Pokemon games that probably holds a top spot in my own "unremarkable, but odd places" list. It's this one:
This spot is a grassy outcrop on the northern end of Route 21, the one connecting Pallet Town and Cinnabar Island in the original Pokemon games. This place is clearly unremarkable, since it's just a random patch of grass. However, it's also odd (or interesting) to me for a few reasons.
First, it's the only spot of actual land on Route 21. The rest of it is either water, or these floats that the trainers you can fight on this route stand on (at least in Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow ... in the remakes, they added some sandbars). This makes the route as a whole tick the "weirldy empty" box.
Second, it feels strange that this area is randomly fenced off despite being directly connected to Pallet Town. Why not just make it part of the city? Of course, I know the answer from a game design perspective: It's because this area is the designated catching spot for a Pokemon you're not supposed to catch until later on (more on that in a second). But ignoring that for a moment, this one random patch of grass being "off limits" from the Pallet Town side for no apparent reason makes it feel mundanely mysterious.
Third, this route connects the starting area of the game to one of the lategame areas. At least to me when I played these games back in elementary school, exploring this route and then looping back to Pallet Town felt subtly amazing. Wow, it's all connected! This was back here all the time, I just never knew until now!
Fourth, this is the only place in Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow where you can find the Pokemon Tangela. You can go through the whole game, asking yourself where to find this elusive 1-stage grass type, only for this one random patch of grass to be teeming with them, right next to your hometown. It's like discovering a nest of a new species of insect in your backyard.
Together, all these four points make this my favourite unremarkable location in Pokemon. From an in-universe perspective, this spot is probably something like a privately-owned piece of land or some mini nature sanctuary / wildlife conservation area of sorts (or a cross of these two). That's why it's fenced off from the land side, and why it's filled with Pokemon that can't be found anywhere else. For some reason, thinking about places in video games like this (or watching others do it) tickles something in me.
By the way, if you're interested in the channel that I mentioned, you can find it here. I recommend it!