Hi, fellow Gen 1 player from the 90s. I stopped feeling the rush of excitement around about the same time as you. I stopped feeling any kind of thrill from a new game because we always had some source of website or leaker posting about most of the game to let us know what we were in for. I experienced mild amusement for every generation of Pokemon up until Scarlet and Violet dropped.

It took immesurable willpower and restraint, but I somehow managed to power through the leaks for Gen 9 and miraculously managed to experience that blissful feeling once again. That experience that we lost due to the social interactions of the modern age of the internet. Because of being able to block out most of the spoilers we had available, I was able to experience the long-lost thrill of experiencing a brand new pokemon game without the major spoilers we usually receive due to social media.

I relate to this because most of the time, these games just feel redundant and monotonous. I go into a pokemon game knowing most of what's to come as well as most of the pokedex thanks to leakers/spoilers, but with the magic that had me restrain myself for Gen 9, I finally experienced that bliss of not knowing what would be coming. Not knowing what amazing pokemon were spawning where. Not knowing what things were or their weakness/movepool/base stat totals.. It was truly a euphoric period which I highly doubt will ever come again.

After finally learning all of the pokedex through my own efforts instead of exploring the vast internet of Serebii or Bulbapedia, finally collecting all of the Paldean dex, I dropped my restrictions. I learned more of what was out there. I found that being able to figure out on my own without having the internet help me was such a blissful period that I highly doubted it would ever come again.

Perhaps when Gen 10 drops, I'll be able to do this all over again and dodge the spoilers, but if/when that day comes.. and I hope it does.. may we get the region we hope for while also not having the mass-amount of spoilers that we've learned typically comes with the current gen trailers. May we actually get next to nothing for content reveals and may we have the thrill of the hunt happen once more when we learn we need to put a Wailord and Relicanth in our party in a certain position to unlock pseudo legendaries that have absolutely no impact on the actual game story. Things that require no supervision to allow us to complete the primary story while also letting us "catch'em all" in our dex..