What in the Kanto Region is it like to go to a Pokémon rave? I found out this weekend.

Lattices of lasers blanketed the arena, columns of fog and flames puffed up along the edge of the stage, confetti blasts fluttered onto the crowd and decibel-pushing beats practically rattled your bones. Oh, and Pikachu was there too.

Pitched as a mash-up of dance music and Pokémon, the sold-out Pokémon Night Out brought both of those elements—though often separately—to Inglewood’s Intuit Dome on Saturday night. The L.A.-area venue is one of only two locations on the planet to host the EDM concert (it’s set to hit up London in November), which is tied to the video game series’ 30th anniversary.

So what does a Pokémon rave actually look like inside? Mostly what you’d expect from a big-name EDM show—but with more Jigglypuff and Charizard visuals. Headliner Marshmello stuck to his usual repertoire of songs, albeit sometimes surrounded by arena-sized animations of Pokémon. But opener Alison Wonderland ran with the assignment: She threw in remixes of the TV show’s “gotta catch ’em all” intro and the game’s melancholy Lavender Town theme; was persistently backed by a parade of character illustrations; and even welcomed a costumed Pikachu—trimmed with a light-up hat and glasses—onto the stage.

Before diving into the rest of the night in detail, my trainer bona fides: I’m certainly no present-day Pokémon Master, but I did complete my Pokédex (sans Mew) circa 1998. While I’m more of a Poké-dilettante in the years since Red/Blue, I have spent the past decade-plus covering music festivals, concerts and all sorts of other major events in L.A.

So initially, walking through the arena’s entryway as fans started to file in most reminded me of L.A.’s former video game convention E3 with a little bit of Anime Expo mixed in: It was clear that the love of a long-running game and anime franchise was the main uniting factor here, with folks dressed in Pokémon T-shirts and jerseys or cosplaying as Ash, Misty and members of Team Rocket. The line for a photo with a statue of Mewtwo and Mew? Long. The queue for merch outside of the arena? Even longer. And the number of phones with Pokémon Go booted up? Uncountable. (On the other hand, the line for the bar? Nonexistent.)

But the second the bass started booming inside, it was pretty clear this was a full-blown EDM concert and not some sort of convention sideshow. And, from my vantage point at least, the crowd sure seemed to think so too. While plenty of people were still filing in to the arena during Alison Wonderland’s opening set, things filled up for Marshmello, with people on the floor and standing in the aisles particularly into it. Social media has become saturated with memes about club kids just standing there with their phones out, but I spotted plenty of attendees at Pokémon Night Out who were actually—gasp—dancing.

Of course, there was still plenty to photograph, especially as folks would cheer and raise their phones whenever familiar characters made their digital entrances onto the screen. Marshmello’s epic-scale visuals seemed to incite the loudest reactions: The titanic duo of Kyogre and Groudon waged elemental warfare on either side of Marshmello’s platform, the ghostly Gengar commanded fireballs in front of him and psychic Mewtwo levitated a digital version of the DJ above the stage.

It all looked neat, but as someone whose algorithm was overtaken by adorably clumsy costumed characters after this year’s Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco, I was admittedly hoping for a tighter integration between Pokémon and an EDM show. Pikachu’s early-evening cameo marked the only non-digital character appearance, and Alison Wonderland’s two remixes were the only meaningful nods to the franchise’s three decades of earworms. Marshmello’s set included no musical homages, and while the visuals were often epic in scale, the Pokémon tie-ins were sporadic. Keeping some of those Pokémon aspects relatively restrained probably made for a better concert, but I certainly wouldn’t have minded more over-the-top novelty—fill that London stage with a kick line of Geodudes with transparent PNG legs all dancing to a dubstep remix of the “Pokérap,” and I’ll be there.