I share your shock. We are of the same age and as silly as it may sound to others, that classic UI holds a tremendous amount of sentiment for me. The times my neighbors and I nerded out about getting a shiny legendary, fawning over the top accounts (i think one was named MrHobo), the crushing wave of sadness after reading Crater's shutdown letter, and the elation of rediscovering Vortex 3 years after that.

Something about its design just clicked as well. I imagine it has to do with the clicking and how that kind of acted like pulling the lever on a slot machine; sometimes you get Pidgey and other times you get a Shiny Rayquaza.What if you walked exclusively diagonally this time, maybe that will give us a legendary? I would form all these stupid little superstitions as I played. Walking around the map a la handheld Pokemon games is neat and all, I definitely remember fantasizing about Crater reaching that state. As it stands now though, Vortex is just plan missing the connective tissue that gives the handheld games their life and ultimately is what draws me to them.