I'm not really surprised. There's so many papercuts in those games. I've not played a Pokémon games since Black/White but even then, ugh, such a slog. They're really good at sucking all the momentum out of things, sadly.

I played Blue when I was about 12 and the appeal was mostly that there wasn't anything on a handheld that had anywhere near as much content. Link's Awakening is a better game but it's not that long, etc..