Episode Description
What a pleasant surprise! Leaving the Party, everybody's favorite transgender podcast blog website, has returned... Today, Tess and Kerry are joined by their lovely friend Yvonne to talk about Pokémon Lazarus, a romhack of Pokémon Emerald by Nemo622 with many contributions from the romhacking community. But not before they talk extensively about Pokémon as a franchise, a business, and a series of games while they seek to answer: why are they like that?
Find Tess Scilipoti on her website and Instagram
Find Kerry Lloyd on the Leaving the Party Blog
And finally, find a short blog post about this episode here.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:35 "Pokémart" by Tom Sanborn
00:02:14 Special guest Yvonne!
00:03:26 Next episode is still CHAINED ECHOES
00:06:01 Kerry's Skateboarding Video Game Corner
00:29:38 Kirby Air Riders
00:33:48 Introducing Pokémon, Lazarus, romhacks
00:40:35 Emulator handhelds
00:43:40 Tess's wires boy-servant sabotages the internet
00:44:45 What is Pokémon Lazarus? + Other thoughts
00:49:11 Our relationship to Pokémon
01:01:55 The economic necessity of a Pokémon game: do these games lowkey suck?
01:06:04 Wikipedia Corner #1: The Complicated Corporate Structure of Pokémon and How They Make Their Damn Money
01:14:04 Why the new gimmick every game?
01:18:05 The Legends games
01:27:50 Leaving the Party solves Pokémon
01:32:22 Tess's minigame: Who's That Category of Pokémon?
01:41:22 "Team Chimera Battle" by Tom Sanborn
01:41:58 Wikipedia Corner #2: Lazarus Taxa
01:47:54 Romhacks and our experience with them
01:53:58 Emerald Seaglass
01:58:04 Do you guys wanna share our teams?
02:03:49 Stupid and gay
02:04:17 "Acrisia City" by Tom Sanborn
02:04:49 More teams + Being attached to Pokémon
02:08:26 Themes and simplicity in Lazarus
02:25:52 Difficulty and hard mode
02:35:18 Gym and route design
02:40:23 Piraeus + World map
02:46:56 Our favorite locations
02:50:36 We all live in a Pokémon World
02:52:11 Isn't Rotom funny? Isn't it weird how Pokémon don't fuck? Things of this nature
02:55:24 Quality of life stuff
03:00:58 Kerry's new favorite Pokémon
03:04:33 Shoutout wildlife conservation
03:07:05 Our shiny Pokémon :)
03:08:17 Music thoughts
03:09:13 Closing Lazarus thoughts
03:13:22 "Ilios Gym Leader" by Tom Sanborn
03:13:49 Back from break
03:15:48 Annual Leaving the Party Awards Ceremony Awards 2025: Huge Panic at the Heart Throbbing School Trip! ("It's TV Time!" by Toby Fox)
03:16:30 Yvonne's ALPACAs
03:20:05 Kerry's ALPACAs
03:26:04 Tess's ALPACAs
03:36:31 Final recommendations
03:37:38 Outros and plugs. Thanks for listening! Next episode is CHAINED ECHOES :)
Show notes:
Tess's review of Pokemon Emerald
This crazy diagram of the largest known coelacanth next to a human for scale Lmao
The New York Times is a games company with a newspaper side hustle
Tama Hiroka's Ruby and Sapphire retrospective
Cecilily's interview with Nemo
Wikipedia Corner: