Welcome to Vol. 3, issue 38 of Johto Times! This week, we have another great interview for you with a classic Pokémon fansite whose history dates back to 1998. It went under many names, but it will likely be remembered as Cerulean Town, which focused on many elements of the Pokémon series until early 2005. I was fortunate enough to speak with Emily, the webmistress of the website. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about it!

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Pokémon Pokopia is a life simulation game, featuring Ditto, coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026

POKÉMON POKOPIA

• A new life simulator spinoff game, Pokopia, was revealed in the September 12th, 2025, Nintendo Direct. In Pokopia, the playable character is a Ditto who transforms into a young human boy or girl that can befriend nearby Pokémon and copy their abilities to craft, grow, and create a community. Pokopia will be released for the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.

Source: Pokémon

POKÉMON LEGENDS: Z-A

• Mega Chesnaught, Mega Delphox, and Mega Greninja were revealed during the latest Nintendo Direct on September 12th, 2025. The Mega Stones necessary to use these Mega Evolutions will be obtainable as rewards for battling other Trainers in Online Ranked Battles through the Z-A Battle Club. Ranked Battles Season 1 launches alongside Legends: Z-A on October 12th, 2025, with Greninjite available as a reward. Delphoxite will become available during Season 2, and Chesnaughtite during Season 3. The duration for each Season has not yet been revealed.

Source: Pokémon

• The Nintendo Direct also announced that Z-A will receive a paid DLC called Z-A Mega Dimensions. The exact release date has not been revealed, but the DLC will be available for purchase starting on October 16th, 2025. Additional storyline content, as well as distortions linked to the Mythical Pokémon, Hoopa, have been teased. Two new Mega Evolutions, Mega Raichu X and Mega Raichu Y, were also revealed with the Mega Dimensions announcement.

Source: Pokémon

POKÉMON HOME

• The official Pokémon Legends: Z-A site announced that connectivity between Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Pokémon Home will become available in 2026. The announcement emphasized that after a Pokémon is transferred from Home into Legends: Z-A, the player is unable to transfer it back to previous games in the series.

Source: Pokémon

POKÉMON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

• The Pokémon Company has announced a delay for registrations to both the Pokémon World Championships and the PokémonXP convention in 2026. It has not been announced when registration will begin for either event.

Source: Pokémon

POKÉMON SCARLET & VIOLET

• Between September 26th and October 15th, 2025, special code cards for Shiny Koraidon or Miraidon will be available, while supplies last, at GameStop stores in the United States or EB Games stores in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These codes can be redeemed using the Mystery Gift function under the in-game Poké Portal menu. This will be the first official release of Shiny Koraidon and Miraidon.

Source: Pokémon

• Players have surpassed the 1,000,000 Raid victories against Shiny Chi-Yu necessary to unlock the Pokémon's distribution. Players can claim Shiny Chi-Yu through Mystery Gift starting from September 19th until September 30th, 2025.

Source: Pokémon

POKÉMON TCG POCKET

• A new Wonder Pick Event launched on September 14th, 2025, adding new Miltank and Phanpy Promo-A cards, Wonder Pick missions, and Quagsire and Clodsire-based items in the Wonder Pick Event Shop. This event runs until September 24th, 2025.

Source: In-game news

POKÉMON MASTERS EX

• Chapter 6 of the Arceus arc has been added to the main story, along with the debut of 5★ Volo (Alt.) & Giratina and the Challenge Arc Suits: Show Me Thy Bonds Event.

Source: Pokémon Masters EX, Volo and Giratina debut, Challenge Arc Suits event

Feature: Interview with Cerulean Town

Cerulean Town was a fansite that first began around October 1998 on free hosting service Angelfire under the name Lapras's Pokémon Art Page. It would later move hosts to Xoom and Tripod and be renamed to Lapras's Place before becoming Cerulean Town, and it continued to be run as a Pokémon community until around early 2005. The website focused on many elements of the Pokémon series, such as the video games, Trading Card Game and anime, but diversified over the years to highlight the many different hobbies and interests of its webmistress, Emily. In this interview, Emily shares her memories of running her community and how it impacted her career years later.

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A selection of banners and logos from Cerulean Town and Lapras’s Place during its time online between 1998 and 2005

It’s great to speak with you, Emily! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

Emily:

Hi there, my name is Emily, and I used to run a Pokémon fan site which I started in 1998 called Lapras's Pokémon Art Page, which I later renamed to Lapras's Place and then Cerulean Town. I thought I was rather clever as a kid—I picked Cerulean Town because it sounded vaguely Pokémon-like, but also [had] the same abbreviation [as] the state that I lived in.

Lapras’s Place layout (November 1999)

When you started Lapras’s Pokémon Art Page, you used it as an opportunity to share your fanart and teach yourself how to build a website from scratch. What was it like to create a website and share your creations with the world?

Emily:

By the time I started working on the Pokémon page, I was already a bit familiar with HTML and making websites. I had started creating silly little sites about things I was interested in—Sailor Moon was the first—when I was in sixth grade. The Pokémon sites came along during my freshman year of high school. A lot of my friends had just picked up the Red or Blue versions of the game when they were first released in the U.S., and we spent our lunch periods battling each other or talking about the game.

Whenever I had a study hall, I’d try to sneak off to the computer lab to work on my sites or draw doodles. Eventually, my Girl Scout Gold Award project ended up being a website that taught people how to draw little cartoon doodles. Looking back, it’s a bit embarrassing; I've never been especially good at drawing, and I was definitely not great back then, but it’s important to remember the context. My first computer had a 486 DX2 80 processor, the best art program I had was MS Paint, and we were all using dial-up! It was a completely different time.

Lapras’s Place splash page (November 1999)

After that, your website was renamed “Lapras's Place” and was hosted by several different hosting services before picking up popularity. Eventually, you got your own domain and renamed the website to Cerulean Town. What inspired you to take your project from a gallery of fanart to a full-blown fansite?

Emily:

Haha, I think I realized that my art wasn't any good, but I still had a lot of fun making the website and wanted to continue that. It definitely morphed to encompass all my interests at the time, which largely were anime related. As you've noted in a few different places in this interview, my interests definitely bounced around a lot; it probably isn't surprising that as an adult I was diagnosed with ADHD. Running a fan website was definitely the string that tied all of my interests together, though.

Lapras’s Place layout (January 2000)

The website was initially dedicated to Pokémon but grew to include many other franchises such as Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and other anime and gaming interests you held at the time. What were some of your favourite pieces of content from Cerulean Town?

Emily:

I'm honestly not sure if I remember any of the content specifically. I mostly remember the people and other webmasters that I'd talk to. The whole Pokémon web scene was an important part of me growing up. A lot of us were just kids that didn't have credit cards, so getting our own web hosting for our domains was not really a thing (even getting a domain was super hard). So we'd try and get in with some of the bigger, more popular sites that were run by college students. At one point I managed to get hosted by Psypoke, which was at the time one of the most popular Pokémon sites in the world. Another site that was hosted by Psypoke was run by a Brazilian guy named Pablo. It was partially because of him that I ended up being an exchange student in Brazil. We don't talk frequently, but we are actually connected on LinkedIn and both have successful tech-type jobs.

Cerulean Town’s layout (June 2000)

Like most websites back then, Cerulean Town had its own forum. How would you describe the community you built up back then?

Emily:

The forums were always the fun part of my site, and as my interests changed and the site sort of morphed into other things, I always tried to keep a forum. I remember there were these two girls that kept getting kicked off other forums because they'd always go off topic, and I thought they were fun, so I invited them to hang out on my forums. It was pretty crazy, but I enjoyed it a lot. I was okay with things being somewhat off topic, as that's what I did to have fun.

Cerulean Town’s layout (January 2001)

During the late 90s and early 2000s, many Pokémon fansites popped up, allowing their owners to express their passion for the franchise. What were some of the other communities you enjoyed visiting back then?

Emily:

It's been a long time so it's hard to remember all the places I hung out. I do remember chatting a lot over AIM and ICQ with the folks that were hosted by the same sites I was, like Thunderwave and Psypoke. Early on there was a very rudimentary BBS run by a Japanese woman named Misako. She was a lot better of an artist than I was, and she drew the first Lapras drawing that I used on my website when I first changed the name to Lapras's Place. I'll always remember her name because I feel extremely bad. She had sent me some Pokémon stuff from Japan, and I tried to send her money, but apparently the money order couldn't be cashed in Japan. So if Misako is out there somewhere, I owe you money.

Cerulean Town’s layout (February 2001)

For around a year, you couldn’t update your website due to a long stay in Brazil and left Cerulean Town in the control of your team. How did you feel about leaving your website under someone else's control?

Emily:

There were never too many people that helped me with the site. I remember some help from a guy that went by the nickname of Kingler; he was actually the one that bought the domain for me (remember, no credit card, and my parents absolutely hated me being on the internet, so they never would have bought it for me!). I'm not sure how much was ever done by anyone else on the site when I was in Brazil, so that probably marked the real downturn of everything. Also, I recall while being away my host getting very mad at me because apparently the version I had of the forum was bootlegged, and he wanted to shut it down. When I came back home I got everything back in order and the forum was running properly, but it was largely about other interests beyond Pokémon.

Cerulean Town’s layout (April 2001)

As the years went on, the Pokémon content on your website disappeared entirely, but the site continued to highlight the work and hobbies you hold dear. How important was Cerulean Town in these later years to express your interests to the world?

Emily:

Cerulean Town still exists, but mostly as just a domain leading to my other sites. I never had the heart to give up the domain, and so I keep renewing it. So in some ways the site will always live on.

Cerulean Town’s forum (August 2001)

This year will mark twenty-seven years since you created your website. Looking back and reflecting on that, what are your fondest memories of running Cerulean Town?

Emily:

Well, you sure know how to make me feel old! Haha, I just turned 40 last year, so it’s kind of wild to think that I started doing this stuff when I was so young. But honestly, getting into web design early really shaped my life and career. I ended up going to art school and eventually became a professional photographer and graphic designer.

Back then, people were pretty impressed that I could hand-code HTML. These days, everything runs on content management systems, so maybe it’s not quite as impressive—but starting to build websites in sixth grade definitely landed my first real job after college!

Cerulean Town’s layout (June 2003)

A common question I love to ask our guests is what kinds of Pokémon-related items and merchandise they have and what they mean to them. What do you have to share?

Emily:

My husband bought me a plushie Pikachu that's dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. I keep him next to my plushie trains (I've been working in the railroad industry off and on for the past decade).

Cerulean Town’s splash page (March 2005)

Pokémon has come a very long way since you first created Cerulean Town. At the time of interview, there have been nine generations of Pokémon with over 1000 creatures and forms. The series has expanded greatly and continues to be a phenomenal success globally. What are your thoughts on the franchise today?

Emily:

Pokémon these days is a bit confusing! There's definitely a part of it that I will always be fond of. But I quit the handheld games after Silver/Gold, so I missed a lot of the stuff afterward. As an adult, I did pick up Pokémon Go for the nostalgia bit. I got to level 50, then quit that too. I did play some of the Switch games like Let’s Go, Eevee! and Legends: Arceus, which I definitely enjoyed. But I won't lie, the sheer amount of Pokémon that exist now is a bit overwhelming!!

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Thanks Emily for taking the time to answer our questions, and telling us all about your fansites. It’s great to know that you’re still fond of Pokémon, and we hope the series continues to hold a special place in your heart.

Interview conducted on: July 8th, 2025
Interview published on: September 18th, 2025