Happy New Year!
Not quite as much, but I've always loved Lugia. In my first playthrough of Silver, I spent ages looking for it, because I had no idea where it was located, and it wasn't quite as obvious as it was with Ho-oh. When I eventually caught it, I proceeded to dominate with it against my friends in link battles, so that was pretty cool :D But other than that, there aren't really any that come close to Pidgey haha.