This past weekend was exceptionally exciting and it had nothing to do with the Super Bowl and its lackluster half-time show.  For one Saturday afternoon, my beloved Pokemon craze returned back into my heart.

The Pokemon Black and White Mall Tour launched this past Saturday and one of its two first stops was at the Westfield SouthPark Shopping Center in Strongsville, Ohio. The tour is a hype event to excite little kiddies about Pokemon Black and White, the fifth generation installments for the money milking handheld role-playing game franchise, which are slanted for a March 6 release. It’s for little kids, but in no way does that stop a 20-year-old like myself and three friends—who are all older than me—from spending four hours reuniting ourselves with cute, cuddly creatures.

What possibly could four college students be doing for four hours at a Pokemon Convention? A lot more than I expected. I initially agreed to tag along with my three friends to obtain a Celebi for my Pokemon HeartGold and be one of the first to touch Pokemon Black and White in America. I didn’t expect to spend more than an hour and a half there. But like everything that involves the video game icons that highlighted my childhood, the environment absorbed me.  After downloading my Celebi and playing through the underwhelming Pokemon Black and White demo, my friends and I hit the Pokemon scavanger hunt, watched Pokemon the thirteenth movie, “Zoroark: Master of Illusion,” got my picture taken behind a green-screen photo booth and spied on people dressed as Pokemon characters in the mall.

I think I speak for most college students my age when I say Pokemon brings back the glory days of childhood. It reminds us of a time when one focused simply on training his or her Blastoise to level 100 or catching all 151 Pokemon. (For those who lost count, there are 649 when fifth generation pokemon are included.)

Stuff like this brings me back to the years when I was a bona fide geek.  Every day in high school I invested a half dozen hours playing video games like Pokemon or arguing on message boards about which video games are better and which are worse.

Since college, I’ve drowned my passion for video games with work.  But come this spring break, I will be crusading around the Unova region to become a Pokemon master…once again.

Is there a hobby or passion that bursts back into your life during academic breaks?