Yeah? I wouldn't know haha. But I have tinkered around with Fire Red, and it seemed pretty manageable. I think you will do fine with any of them!
I felt the same way. I was pretty out of the loop with some of the current happenings of the pokeverse (I.e. I was stuck in gen 2 lol), but I caught up pretty fast. I even ventured into competitive battling and was knocking the snot out of 14 year olds. O yeeaah. Haha