How did you find Smogon?

I've always wondered how so many found out about competitive battling and ended up here. Here is my story!

How I first started playing pokemon:

I was in 7th grade and one of my friends just randomly told me about the game. I ended up buying pokemon blue a couple days later. I could NOT stop playing the game. I played it all the time. Everywhere I went, I was playing pokemon blue. I played it at least 4 hours a day for a week until I beat it and caught Mewtwo and stuff. It was the most fun game I had ever played. I remember trading for a Dragonite in class and the teacher took our Game Boys away. I ended up losing my Dragonair in the trade and ending up with nothing...

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

It was early/mid 2000 and I had signed up on the GameFAQs (fairly new at the time) Forums. I was still playing pokemon and checked out the forums. I asked to have my team rated because I saw a bunch of other "team rating" threads. At the time, I had a Hydro Pump, Surf, Blizzard, Skull Bash Blastoise...so that went pretty bad. I started battling on the PBS and learning more about the game. By the time Gold was released, I was a pretty good battler, so I knew what I was doing then. I became one of the premiere GS battlers for a long while on the GSBots. Lots of time passed, and lots of stories can be told. I will keep this short. chaos and Articuno64 have been great friends of mine since the gsbot days, so when we branched off of the Fanha/Celia group I definitely followed along. Here I am today...a million years later!


Now it is time to hear your story.

How I first stared playing pokemon:

I must have been 11 or 12 years old when I first got my Pokemon Red cart. Being merely a small boy, I had to wait until christmas to receive the game that changed my life. I have not stopped playing Pokemon games since, but thankfully, I got better. For example, I traded my Mewtwo away for a Porygon, since I thought it would be the best pokemon in the game (judging by its price...)

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

Before advance came out, I downloaded an early version of Netbattle just to play GSC. I went by the alias "devil dan" and didn't have the intention of talking to anyone... so I slipped under the radar unknown. However Vineon later uncovered a log of a devil dan battle, where he beat me 5-0 with a Victreebell. I got bored of it all and left after about two weeks.

A couple of years ago, when advance came out, I reappeared. Deciding I could do a bit better than last time, I decided upon a more suitable username. It was to be 'Steelicks' (that's me!!!!!!!) I joined a clan almost immediately (the legendary [ICU] clan), and, when I realized clans were stupid, I changed to [Steelicks], which would be my username for a whole year.

Things stared off slowly for me, to be honest, although I quickly befriended users like CanOfTuna, Curby, Crazy Starwolf, Astonish (omni) and Superman (Acura). I was fairly unknown at first, but I quickly gained attention through my bizarre mannerisms and gigantic netbattle record.

The main NB server, Blue Heaven, was going through some problems after a while, so Glalie set up Tafop for us all to use. Glalie very kindly made me a moderator so I could look after the server while the American's were asleep. This one act might very well be the secret to my success, as 'harder to win over' users (or vets) started to notice me! I befriended Jshadias, who gave me super mods on the Netbattle forums. But in the grand scheme of things, I was still a relative unknown.

Enter Smogay. The Netbattle forums blew up, and chaos had just set up the Smogon forums. Tentative about giving me mods at first (since he didn't know who I was), I eventually found my way to #smogon, where I impressed everyone with how great I am. I met Articuno64, geeK, Carl and Justin8649 there, and won over chaos and LS. Now we are the best of friends!!!!

Yes, indeed, I have come a long way from an unknown Netbattle user to the king of Smogon. Impressed? You could be.

How I first started playing pokemon:

My black friend Morris brought his Game Boy Color into class one day in 5th grade, I decided to take a look at what he was playing, it was Pokemon Blue, at first I was like ok whatever. But I started getting more and more interested in it but not having a Game Boy I couldn't own it but my cousin and Morris let me play alot. Finally Christmas came I got a Game Boy Pocket but no Pokemon game, I waited til my birthday to finally get Pokemon Red at the local Wal-Mart. I quickly became the best battler in 6th grade learning how to beat the teams of Mewtwo/3 Birds/Starter/Random, and completing the Dex was one of the best feelings I ever had. I've taken several breaks of Pokemon but I keep coming back to it, I've played YGO, Magic, all kinds of stuff but I always came back to Pokemon.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

I am a very competitive person and I attempt to make anything competitive, like I said I had a knack for learning what people used and how to counter it. At GSC I made an attempt to make "competitive" sets, though I had no clue about the metagame, I had things like Hypnosis Rapidash and some other things that were actually pretty creative (I recently unearthed my moveset guide). And while on a trip to Gamefaqs I came across NB but didn't really think much of it. I finally started using NB about 2 years ago though I don't remember back then because I took a break soon after. I came across Smogon about a year ago but didn't even lurk I looked said cool, bookmarked, and that was it. Finally about a month before I joined I started paying attention because of the JAA (I participated in the Emerald thing I got far but didn't get to Seattle), and WHAM! here I am postwhore extraordinaire.

How I started playing Pokemon:

I recall the first time I played Pokemon it was a Red version ROM on my parents computer when I was in grade 8/9 (7/8 years ago). I read about the game in an old issue of Nintendo Power I had. The first time I played, I played all night. Probably for about 7 or 8 straight hours, I even ignored my mom calling me for dinner and didn't eat that night, I was so enthralled.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

I had already had an account at GameFAQs for a while before that, and decided to hang around the Red/Blue board and get my team rated. Someone ripped apart my team much like what happened to Justin, only worse. Parasect w/out Spore? What was I thinking?!

After that happened I lurked for a while, and through some bit of fate I found the olde PBS website. The first time I used it I didn't see the "use max stats" button and started inputting the stats from my gameboy into PBS. I had no idea what the shit was going in. Started battling a lot with NeoKefka and Rei2 and some others, I remember battling qwert often before he disappeared. Then I guess I slowly started posting a lot more on GameFAQs and Azure Heights, and mostly stuck with RBY over the years. I had no use for GSC and ADV was fun but I left before getting into it too much.

I found out about Smogon after Kongler tracked me down a while ago and thought you guys had gotten your shit together pretty well, and made an account. So if anyone has a problem with me being here, blame Kongler. ;)

How I started playing Pokemon:

I first started playing Pokemon Blue version, my brother stole it from a friend and brought it home, I played it for a long time, recently, after that, the 2nd Generation, my brother bought Pokemon Gold, and Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel, of course, MGS was my first addiction but after clearing the game a few times, I started playing the Gold Version. I still have exactly 417 hours of game play. When the Ruby version came out, I had a stolen Ruby Version traded for a Beyblade I bought. I got addicted to it, and I still am, I recall seeing a shiny for the second time, an Illumise, I didn't touch it, and left it in hope of one day EV training it. (The first shiny I saw was an Oddish in Gold, near bumpy road South of Cerulean)

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

My brother, aka My Bloody Valentine actually found Netbattle, back in the days RuSa didn't exist, he then told me about it, I've been netbattling ever since. I recall joining Smogon quite after it, no one told me about it, I thought it would be fun to join a Pokemon Community. And so I did, like 3 years later.
I started in 2002. My first alias was "Salvador Limones", from the game, Grim Fandango, a great game I might add.

How I first started playing pokemon:

I actually started watching the anime, I was cool and stuff. I later heard about the game and tried to play it. We never forget our first time, they say...It was six years ago, I was at a friend's house, we were playing some non-videogame thing that I can't remember. When we got bored his little brother asked if I wanted him to show me "Pokemon Blue". I was like "hell yeah". He started a new game on his emulator and while I was walking through that boring beggining he taught me the very basics. I, could, not, stop, playing. To the point of saying something by the lines of "fuck you" when asked to do something else. Since then I am a RPG addict.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

Three years later another friend sent me the No$ emulator along with a Pokemon Cristal rom. Oh God, I had so much fun putting those little sprites to fight each other. One year later he told me about Netbattle and played it like whole weekends straight. Few months after the initial mess and amusement I decided to see what is this big server called "Smogon". I registered after lurking the forums for some days.

How I first stared playing pokemon:
I saw Pokemon as merely a fad in RBY and fear that I may have been one of the first people that attatched a stigma to it at my school. Anyway, GSC rolls around and my friends start talking about how good it is etc. I get Silver and I'm hooked, I then get Gold and borrowed someones Crystal so that I could get a feel for the battle tower. This is when I start going to GameFAQs and I eventually get Yellow version to finisih off my dex in Silver (A friend gave me a cloned Celebi from an event and I used RBY Mew glitch). When RS came out I couldn' afford it and never got them for my birthday or Christmas so I stopped playing for a while.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:
For whatever reason, I stumbled upon the RS boards on GameFAQs and saw Netbattle. I started playing but all the new Pokemon confused me and I thought they were retarded so I just used GSC pokes and didnt bother with EVs. I kept getting owned on Netbattle because I used Pokemon with shitty stats s I stopped. FRLG come out and I find out about Smogon on GameFAQs and signed up on some account whose pw I forgot. My brother gets a GBASP and FR for Christmas so I then buy Sapphire and LG and because I had been lurking Smogon I knew good movesets and shit so the playthroughs were easy (Actually I havn't yet finished Sapphire as I've been getting the Johto trio on LG). I got Emerald a couple of days after launch, the quickest I've ever got a Pokemon game and intend to get DP on release date or get it sooner by importing from the states ( I don't have a DS but the good folk at the JAO will give me one when I win).

How I first started playing pokémon:

When I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, in my computer lab, I noticed a couple of kids playing a neat looking game. It turned out this was an incredibly poorly translated ROM of Pokémon Gold, just after the game had been released in Japan. I asked them about it, and they sent me a copy of the ROM and the GBA. I put it on my school and home computer, and had a lot of fun with it, but about half way through the game the ROM started crashing, weird things started happening (for some reason I kept running into Entei, but whenever a pokémon would run away, the ROM would crash, so I'd see this weird, crazy-looking level 40 pokémon and then see the ROM crash). Since by this point it stopped being translated, I had no friggin' clue what was going on.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

Trying to figure out what the hell was going on with my game, I decided to look up some forums about this. I registered on a couple of forums as the user "Ian Lone," but I can't for the life of me recall which forum I spent the majority of my time on. There was one that "Ian Lone" became a fairly regular member of. Anyhow, I was introduced to two things there: PBS, and speculation on how the GSC metagame would turn out. I whiled away the hours on PBS while coming up with random thoughts on how the metagame would turn out, and eventually I ended up making a bunch of (now that I look at them) crazy guides with my opinion for movesets that were going to rock GSC once it was translated and so on. Some of these included some cool ideas, but some of them were just... odd.

Anyways, I also created a website and forums called "Dark Tactics," and I had a minor little following there of about 10 people, but that fizzled away because I got bored with it and wandered off somewhere. (You'll notice I tend to do that)

Fast forward a couple of years. Every now and then I'll return, for about a month, and even downloaded Netbattle and played a little bit of GSC on that (although not much). Anyways, Ruby/Sapphire had just been released in the USA, and I get a message from one of the people I'd known from the pokémon boards so long ago, one of the people who'd followed me to my Dark Tactics forums. He tells me about this new game, how weird and "colorful" it is, and sends me the ROM and VBA. I play it, enjoy it, and eventually go to GameFAQs to figure out what the hell it meant when it said that my Blaziken was "Hasty" while my Absol was "Jolly." While I'm there, I decide to head over to the forums, just for shits and giggles, and of course, I get hooked. I make a new username, LazarusLong, and enjoy myself.

I became competitive because of a silly mistake, actually. Celia was trolling GameFAQs when I was still relatively new, and for some reason I'd forgotten that rock resists poison, or something similar. She made fun of me for that (or he, at the time - I'm still not sure with the whole Celia gender thing) and, being a stalker, I decided to track down that user to other forums, etcetera. I stayed primarily on GameFAQs, though, and studied everything I could on competitive play.

Eventually I joined up with PUS, which was basically Ultima86, Synre, and someone else who is slipping my mind and whom I will probably offend horribly by forgetting (Primape? AJ, right?), who had decided that someone who actually knows what they're doing should give team rates on GameFAQs, since most of the rates were just awful. I'd been giving decent rates, so first they let me rate on their thread, and then after doing a lot there, they changed the name to include me, so it became PLUS.

Around this time I'd heard that the RSBots, whatever they were, were finally finished and bug-free. I tracked them down, started playing, got to catch the origins of the 200 metagame. It was quite fun, and I was completely hooked. I eventually emerged, along with a couple of others, as one of the only people from GameFAQs actually considered somewhat decent.

Then one day I disappeared, as I tend to do. I moved to Baltimore, where I didn't have the internet, and then travelled all over the place for over a year and a half or so. Then I had the internet again, came back on to the bots for about two months, only to find out that the FRLG tutors had changed everything, especially with the addition of Substitute. I got used to an entirely new metagame, enjoyed that for a while, got bored and left for a couple of months, came back to hear rumours of the changes the Emerald tutors would make.

Finally I got sick of it, swore off pokémon for a long time, moved all over the place. Eventually I broke up with my girlfriend of over 2 years and was spending a lot of time alone, and decided I'd check out how old RSBot was doing. I found out fairly quickly that it was more or less defunct, so I decided to see if anyone had gotten around to making Netbattle Mac-compatible yet. TVsian was down, but I was redirected to Smogon, and... that's all she wrote.

Pokemon Origins

When: Fall 1998

Why: It caught my imaginative side, satisfied my thirst for entertainment, and was something to do while having to stay at Day-Care.

How: At every Friday night football game, the "in-crowd" guys brought their Pokemon cards and Gameboys. I started learning about Pokemon from them, and I started buying Pokemon cards at K-mart.

The Discovery of Smogon

When: 1.3 years ago/ Summer of 2005

Why: I was bored and tired of waiting for an appointment

How: I got into an argument on gamefaqs about why Ubers were the best (that's when I was new to competitive battling). The dude asked me to battle is non-uber team while I battled with Ubers. The other dude wanted to proove that I was a newb and beat my ubers with his non-ubers. At the time he challenged me, I didn't know anything about NetBattle, and I didn't even have it downloaded to my computer. The other dude told me to meet him at 10:30 pm and at the Paradox Arena Server. He never showed up until 12:00 claiming that he fell asleep on the couch with his girlfriend. lol, guys that play Pokemon have girlfriends????? Between 10:10 and 11:40, I clicked on the server that had the highest number and decided to wait here for the challenger dude. I soon discovered that I was in the Smogon Server. When I was about to Sacred Fire his last Pokemon, Scizor, he disconnected and I posted the battle log on gamefaqs. Everyone has been LOLing at the other dude ever since.

How I started playing Pokemon:

Back when I was about, maybe, 15 or 16... maybe younger? I found an article in Nintendo Power about this new game called Pokemon (or Pocket Monsters). The pic that I remember was one of Cubone. I didn't really even read most of the article... but kept thinking to myself that the idea seemed pretty awesome. I don't remember much after that. I'm pretty sure that the way it went was like this... I think I saw the TCG explode into the states, remembered seeing the article for the game and I picked up a ton of cards right after 1st Edition was released. After that I was a junky for Pokes. I asked for a GBC and a copy of Y for either my birthday or Christmas from my Moms. I've been playing ever since.


How I found out about Smogon:

I was goofing of on NSider and met this dude Orangekow(s). He hooked me up w/ info on GameFAQ's and this place. I cam here, got banned... then came back again recently. w00t!

How I first started playing Pokemon:

I never got the chance to Pokemon when it first came out. I was one of those kids that never got what was 'cool' at the time. Even though I sported Playstation and Sega Genesis (I miss Sega TV!) I could never call a Gameboy mine nor did I really care at the time.

One day my cousin and my brother Oak stole a GBC and Pokemon Gold from some kid. However I didnt know this at the time and I decided to try it out. I was hooked at this moment. I played this for about three days straight and got far but it was taken away from me when I was told this was stolen. To my dismay I had to give it up for someone else.

When Christmas rolled around I eventually got my Pokemon game but it was a "hand-me-down" sort of thing as I was given the bulky Game Boy. This thing was ugly but it came with Pokemon Blue, which I played until I beat it. After that I stopped playing and it just became a past experience I enjoyed. Then I heard that a new game was coming out, R/S. I preordered it and got it the first day it came out, and played the hell out of it. Of course at this time, I was about 16 years old, maybe even younger I dont recall.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

How did I start battling online? It was because of a man named Green Yoda, who is now a forum member of this site. He doesn't remember but he is the one that mentioned I could play Pokemon over the internet on aplace called Netbattle. He told me all this on a forum of, gasp, gamefaqs. This is where I met a lot of battlers that are now seen here today. To name a few, giga punch, floppydisk, Amazing Ampharos.. I know there is more but atm I dont remember every detail.

Anyways after making my aquantices at gamefaqs Im still unknown. Over at the netbattle.net I didnt speak much, I was more of a lurker. Because of this I couldn't join the first Summer Freedom and other events. Although I do remember joining one Tournament where I made it to the finals but never got it done because Ak never wanted to finish it.

At this point I had no real friend on NB, just aquantices that I saw on gamefaqs and talked to seldomly. This was when I met CrazyStarwolf. She taught me how to play pokemon basicly, showed me the ropes and such. We bounced ideas off each other all the time and talk strat all the time. Other than becoming a mentor to me and to each other later on, I was still quite and behind the scene of things.

I now remember at this time I think, joined a GSC UU tourney. I had no idea how to play this at all but I was ready to learn. It ended up being my first real test, starting from scratch I somehow made it to the finals and won. I then win a RBY UU tourney shortly so it seems I found my knack.. Under Used!

However that was to be short lived because now I made a new buddy, someone that people seemed to hate at the time. It was Veteran in Love. I dont remember the specifics but one day I played him and he asked me to be apart of a tournament where four people on a team competed to try and make it through an ADV bracket. This is where we dominate, VIL and I. My other two team mates, Orgy and Piccalo were doing great but exited stage left mid tournament due to losses. This is where VIL and I won the tournament and we had to play each other in the finals, where I did lose but still a clear victory. This is the time Psych Up Regice was big and was apart of both VIL and my team.. it showed that you still could be innovative and win a tournament with it.

After that nothing much really happened. I became a mod on the smogon server for some reason, I dont really remember why. I then win another GSC UU tourney but after that I dont win much as I used to but I still do exceptionally well in tournaments. Now Smogon is my home and looking forward to the new generation of Pokemon and Ill be there to welcome the next spew of great players to come.

How I started playing Pokemon:

Let's see, I think I was at the beginning of 7th grade when I first heard of Pokemon. I had recently subscribed to the Nintendo Power magazine (still am!) and at that time they were including a Pokemon comic of the anime show. I ignored it at first, but by the time I got the third one I couldn't resist and read it. For some reason I loved it and I just had to get the game. In school I showed it to one of my friends and to my brother. My brother got Red, my friend and I got Blue. After that people on our class started watching us and also bought the game and Game Boy. A little after that everyone was playing link-battles, me and my best friend being the top ones (no one knew how good Starmie was heheh), with my brother coming 2nd (he showed me how good Exeggutor really was).

Before GSC was released the same people who played RBY had started playing Pokemon TCG (including me). It was funny how I actually got into the TCG. We had gone to a mall where there was supposed to be a Pokemon Tournament. We thought it was a RBY tournament, but it turned out to be a TCG tournament. There was a small tutoring area so I learned how to play (my friends didn't seem interested at first). I then joined the tournament, where they give you one of the starter decks and you play with it. I think I won the first round, and then lost to some girl. After that I started played the TCG a lot, and eventually joined the same tournament but in a closer town. I won that one, even though I had to beat my brother and one of my friends for that (I played my brother in the finals). I went to the tournament finals, where I remember I got the Jungle set deck with Vaporeon in it for the tournament. I saw the girl that defeated me in the first tournament, but she lost to the guy I faced in the finals. I won the tournament, I got a Fossil Box and $100, and I think something else.

When GSC was finally released everyone got it, but after a few months it just died out. At this time I started playing the Dragon Ball Z CCG with my friends and online. I joined my first internet community at this time, which was DragonBall Z Fanatics (which later evolved into Fanatics Gaming Network), a really awesome web site that was dedicated to the DBZ CCG only. Smogon reminds me a lot of this community, I guess that's one of the reasons I love Smogon so much! Oh, and I also spent some time playing in a DBZ RPG owned by LanderZ, which I just recently noticed by looking at the Sneak Archives that he took part in one of them! What a small world.


How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

After 9th grade I changed schools. There I met my new friends, who also happened to like Pokemon but hadn't played much since GSC, like me. When ADV came out, we agreed to buy it. We played for a little while but not that much, I only battled once with one of my friends using lv.40 or so. When LeafGreen and FireRed came out everything changed though. My friends and I got the game (my brother too), and we also got another friend to buy it since he used to play RBY. We battled a lot at this time, and the wireless capabilities was a god send. It was so easy to play during class now!

Now I was battling ok, but sometimes I just couldn't handle the legendaries my friends used which I refused to use. At this time I went to GameFAQS to look for some kind of strategies, and that's when I came to Blueshirt's moveset guide (I never went to the boards though). I got some good ideas from it, and also heard of the RS Bots and Netbattle there. I got curious and downloaded Netbattle. Like many first timers, I got beat bad at first, but I could actually beat newer people. At this point I found out about Smogon, which must have been around early 2005. I got some good strategies for my in-game team and I could finally own my friends. I told my friends about Netbattle, two of them actually tried it. One of them tries it once in a while and does well, the other you always see him aournd (Ghost_Chill!). After wandering in Smogon for almost a year, I finally joined on Dec 2005.

Started playing Pokemon:

My cousin introduced me to Blue in Christmas '98, got into the internet in early 1999, got Red and Blue for my birthday in April, started going to Pokemon websites... jumped around a bit on low sites, then joined TPM in 2001.

Competitive/Smogon:

Tried GSBot in June 2001, sucked, went on a long vacation and didn't recover interest. Got out of Pokemon during TPM's decline and the rise of Serebii, came back to TPM with RS, got into RSBot, helped move it to Your-IRC, ran it, fucked it up, and never really touched NB. X) But I like the community, so I've stuck with it, and hopefully I can regain some interest with DP and Competitor (at least for a while).

At first I played and traded and everything else with the TCG for kicks. That's how I got into Pokemon.

I started playing Pokemon on emulators - first Blue and Red. Then the TCG. Then Japanese Yellow. Then English Yellow. Then Gold and Silver. Then Crystal. Then Ruby and Sapphire. Etcetera. During RuSa, I was wondering what the fuck a Dusclops was, so I googled. I found weirdalto's Pokemon analyses - bad strategies, I later found out, but a great read. I joined IGN's Pokemon forums and immediatly started RS Botting- that's October 2003 right there. I obviously was a noob, people like _DragonMaster_ and Absolut-Kaos really had to rub me in my stupidity, but after a while I got the hang of it. Then IGN's Pokemon Board declined in awesomeness. To add to the injuries, the bots got less and less stable (see Misty's entry) and more and more laggy. NetBattle got more popular, but it didn't work for me at first so I was sad. NetBattlers came to the bots (when it was working correctly again) and introduced shit like Boah and Celebi which I hated simply because they were "Smogon" and "NetBattle". But in the end I ended up going for Smogon anyway. The rest of the story is pretty much here:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13699

EDIT: Who the fuck rated this thread low?

How I found out about Pokemon:

Pokemon has been non-existant in India until recently. So anyway, my cousin went to Japan and got a GB and got blue. I played that for a while and complettely forgot about it. Then a few years later, my friend got a GBC from somewhere and GS carts. He also had some TCGs. I wanted to beat this guy so I checked online. I found out about random stuff in gfaqs andI also found ROMs. I was hooked with the ROMs uptil RS. I have still not stopped playing Pokemon.

How I started battlnig online:

Well I stumbled upon 'netbattle' when going through the serebii forums (yes, I used to lurk serebii). So I decided to download it and found it pretty boring. No animations I mean wtf. So talked to some random people and a few users, namely 'vapicuno' and '[Steelicks]' seemed to be good at this game and helped me a bit in my newbi days. One of them was even a mod. So I just started battling people and soon figured out what's good and what's not and that's how I got into online battling. It has been an awesome 2.5 years since then.

Well i watch the cartoon a few times and borrowed a pokemon blue from my friend. I thought it was kinda cool so i decided to buy gold. I got better and didn't make too crappy movesets. Then rsfrlge came out so i downloaded it and played it and i liked it. I googled something and went across a forum called pojo. I signed up and learned about netbattle from a faq. I downloaded it and went to the smogon server and i decided to take a look on the site. And here i am ._.

How I first started playing pokemon:

Christmas 2000, my parents bought me a copy of Pokemon Yellow and I played it all day everyday for like two months before accidently deleting my save file. Poor lv. 89 Mewtwo, you will always be missed :[. Soon afterwards I aquired Silver and Gold and killed a lot of time on those as well.



How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

I lurked around NSider for a couple of months before finally deciding to join in the spring of 2005. Luckily for me, this was during a time in which a lot of skilled battlers from Smogon and other Netbattle servers were trying to 'convert' the rather unskilled at competitive battling community into one that wasnt unskilled. I met and befriended ctrainer during one of his trolling expeditions, and he agreeded to tutor me in battling until later that year, where it was getting to the point where I could hold my own against him.

I joined Smogon's forums in May of last year, my inexperience at Netbattle and forums in general showing greatly and I nearly got banned on several occasions for doing stupid shit such as posting in rmts when i was still learning more about the game myself and sassing the mighty chaos in one of my own. I've mellowed out a bit since then and gotten noticably more comftorble online, so I now realize some of my mistakes. But this community has been such a blast for me just for the little amount of time I've been here, and I'm looking forward to my future in Smogonland!!!

EDIT: kickass 550th post imo

How I first started playing pokemon:

Um... refer to the other section, because this actually happened second.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

My first serious forum community was for the comic Sluggy Freelance, which I had discovered as a freshman in college. I became very involved there, becoming a moderator and such. One fateful day, a post from someone named "Bonnett" had a link and said, "please come join these boards, they need new members." Through that random link, I came to the Uber forums. I got accustomed to that place slowly, treading carefully around the pornbot's, the Madd Hatter's and the seemingly ferocious starCaliber's. It was here that I met Dweedle, Bonnett/Saracen, Ham, kaliber, SAN DIEGO SUPER CHARGERS/mewtwosama, Fish, and a SHITton of other people who I know are around Smogon but I can't think of. Justin recently told me he was actually Martian Manhumper, which made me kinda chuckle.

Uber was an on and off thing, depending on the hosting. In it's most recent rendition (RIP), a lot of people were talking about Smogon, so I asked Dweedle about it and got linked. I joined right after Bonnett, so I came right in time to see him work the community into a frenzy with his incredible witty posting and hilarious stories of saggy Indian boobs and shitting goats. My early claim to fame was when Dweedle and I would spam threads to hell with Big Lebowski quotes. Carl would join in, and this is how he and I became good friends as well.

I don't know what led up to it, boredom I suppose, but over the summer I was finally talked into a battle on NB with Roy. It was legendary, there were tons of people watching, and I had lords on ventrilo walking me through the battle step by step. I lost 2-0, but I won a moral victory that day.

And that's that. The history of DM.

How I first started playing Pokemon:
My grandma got me a promotional video cassette the summer before the show/game came out in the US. It looked interesting, so I asked for the game for my birthday (which was convieniently a week or two after the release of the game). I took a break when the ADV gen came out, but a year or two later I was back, trying to play catchup with all the new things that came along. I've been playing ever since.

How I first started battling competitively online:
Back in 2000 (I think), I had joined a relatively new forum called GameWinners, which I had found while looking for Pokemon cheat codes. I was called "Cooltrainer PJ" (lol). I got banned from there, since I was young and more of an idiot than I am now (I got confused at some terminology and called a guy who was trying to help me an asshole). A couple of years later, I rejoined with a different name (Wood Elf Ranger), and got involved with the G/S/C forum there. I remember one thread in particular that's influenced my battling style, called the FUBAR thread. In it, we tried to come up with movesets that were "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition," sets that shouldn't have worked but did. In the stalltastic days of G/S/C, it worked great. I remember using a Barrier/Mirror Coat/Surf/Minty Rest Tentacruel and what I thought at the time was the ultimate annoyer, a T-Wave/Attract/Sweet Kiss/Headbutt Raichu (parattractaflinchafusion ftw).
I'm a little unsure of when I discovered NetBattle. Actually, I think I might have discovered Hubert (a webcomic written by TVs Ian) before I discovered NetBattle. Either way, I found my way there, and realized what a great resource it would be to test the FUBAR Pokemon. So, I told everyone about it, and besides the break I mentioned earlier, I've been playing ever since.

How I first started playing pokemon:

I watched the show a few times, and eventually the curiosity got the better of me. I broke down, got the game, and ended up liking it.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

GameFAQs


See, that wasn't a long explanation.

How I first started playing Pokemon:

The fad was simply raging at school, and I wasn't really into the cards, but I learnt you could play ROMs on the PC and poked my dad to download Yellow. I couldn't save, but later I found out we had another emulator that could, so I played with saving my progress. This was in the late RBY days. I soon started playing Gold and Silver too, and later Crystal. I played the beginnings of Ruby and Sapphire, in around 2003, but my interest faded.

How I started battling online/found out about Smogon
In 2005, my interest was rekindled and my search for Pokemon knowledge, especially of the battling aspect, begun. First I found serebii's POTW, but since my advance knowledge was limited (my experience was limited to rby and gsc) I started posting on the serebii gsc forums, asking questions, being aided, trying to learn things. I found The Cave of Dragonflies (the other forum I frequent) which was way less based on pokemon battling, but more on the concept. Serebii's knowledge did not satisfy me and although I enjoy the TCOD community, their knowledge was limited. I had to find another way of looking for battling strategies. Soon I found Smogon's articles in early 2005, and read all the RBY articles. Later I started reading ADV and GSC, too. As of now, I have read every single strategy on the dex, and the additional articles as well. Smogon gave me exactly what I sought: a description of the battling prowess of Pokemon, what was useful, what wasn't. It tributed me the knowledge I was seeking.

How I first started playing pokemon:

In a somewhat weird chain of events, I saw on the news that some Japanese kids had been hospitilized due to having seizures from seeing a cartoon, Pokemon. I saw the game later at Toysrus and immediately picked it up and it's been a pretty big part of my life ever since. I couldn't have been older than 10 or so then, sure has been a long time.

It always appealed to me because I was never allowed to have pets in real life so I tended to enjoy all of the games that gave me virtual ones.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

Sometime around the middle of the GSC era I got this cool thing called 'the internet.' Perhaps you've heard of it. Anyway I ended up on gamefaqs and saw some posts by cloud, among other people, and a few logs of gsbot matches and decided to check it out. I played on the bots for a while but never really got that involved with it. I ended up getting Netbattle a while later and used that pretty frequently until RS came out, although I never really cared much for GSC.

After RS was released in the US I stopped competitive battling for a while and became the messiah of gamefaqs. This got old quickly, and eventually I joined up with the other intelligent gamefaqs posters (LazarusLong, Ultima96/ShrimpBondage/whateveritisheuseshere, Mr_Mister/primeape59/AJ, IronHead, Shroomie/Supadawg/SeductionWeasel) and came to the rsbots shortly after they came out. I got absolutely hammered in MPGT(fuck you McGraw I'll get you in DP) and decided that it would be good if I became good at pokemon. I idled in #rs/bot for a few months and eventually became and average battler which got me some notoriety. At some point during this we had a fierce(lol) gamefaqs/ign rivalry which gave me the opportunity to meet IGN's version of my gamefaqs clique (Absolut-Kaos, Canoftuna, etc.). Kept playing until a few months after Netbattle RS came out and bored of the whole thing, I guess.



As far as finding Smogon, I was around when it was made(the first time anyway). I had a really nice low number on the old forums but chaos went off and made new ones while I was gone with WoW so now I have this giant smelly number. bah.

How I first started playing Pokemon

Back in fourth grade (I think!), I started watching Pokemon because that was what everyone was talking about. I liked the show and soon enough decided to play Pokemon cards... I kept buying them for maybe a year or so, until it started becoming unpopular. (I never got a fucking Charizard either!) Then, I decided to stop playing Pokemon altogether and this interest wasn't rekindled until Dec 2001 I think, when I got Pokemon Gold for my birthday. After beating Gold, I bought Red a couple months after, and then Ruby when it came out almost a year after. I put down Ruby in the Summer of 2003 because I got bored of it.

How I started playing online Pokemon/found Smogon

A year after this, April of 2004 I think, I needed to find a walkthrough for a game I had trouble beating, and found GameFAQs. I was interested to see if some losers still played Pokemon, so I searched for the Pokemon Ruby board, and guess what! It was active! I was a total newbie at this point: I had no clue about EVs, STAB, IVs or any of that complex crap, but was eager to learn. I basically "pretended" to have Netbattle but I didn't; I actually thought you needed to pay for it or something, and I had no clue where to get it either. After registering another account to ask in privacy, I downloaded NB and started playing under the name Groudon80 aka pokemon + ##. In late 2004/early 2005, I quit playing for a few months and then came back, and was reffered to join Smogon forums. Being fresh of gfaqs, I obviously sucked, so I didn't really make much of a name for myself until afterwards, and now I am g80, 2 and a half years later, hopefully a bit less sucky then I was before !

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:

Well, about early summer 2001, I was seeing logs of battles appear on my message board, Pojo, and asked them how they had battles, and then I was shown to PBS, in which case was dying down for the start of GSC, in which I experienced the full blast of EvilGSBots. Stayed there until the start of RS, and then as bots died through server moves, came on NB.

I was in the original #RS, in which case, decided to break away with #smogon as 'the rs channel' after complications with said Fanha and company. chaos got innovative and starts a board, and MoP registered after redunandcy to do so at first!!!

When I started playing Pokemon

Even though I live in the UK, my friend had the American copy, and we both instantly loved it, and got into it before it started to go crazy here in England. I played RBY to death, and even played the GS rom in Japanese as soon as it came out. I got bored fairly quickly from here, and didn't even buy GSC when they came out here (played the roms a bit). I then stopped playing Pokemon completely, and never played RS (still havn't).

Just before Fr/Lg came out, I decided it was about time (for nostalgia sake) I had another go of them. I quickly obtained them, and finally I found a new Gamefaqs community (I was getting bored of the social boards I visited) to integrate into!

Competative battling/Smogon

I quickly became a regular on Gamefaqs, as the Fr/Lg boards were very new, but was still very much a noobie compared to the vets that had come from the R/S boards, and were already botting/NB'ing.
Of course I had no knowledge of IV's/EV's etc, but I read some guides and quickly picked the idea up. I also got myself learning all sorts of memorable base stats and actual stats.
Around this stage, it was the early summer of 2004 (crazy to think it was 30 months ago) and this was when I downloaded Netbattle and started battling competatively and playing in tournies.

I quickly found out about Smogon, but for some reason I just lurked there for a very long time, churning all of my online-Pokemoning into Gamefaqs, quickly becoming one of the vets near the end of Fr/Lg era, and immediatly on the Emerald boards.

Infact it wasn't for over a year later that I suddenly felt the need to reply to a topic on smogon (even though I regularly read/followed the boards) and made an account.

Here I am now ^_^