How did you find Smogon?

[alamaster]

I started playing pokemon when it came out, back when I was in grade 3/4. I got into the games and trading cards, and have been a fan since. I have been to many forums and websites before Smogon. I have been posting on forums since 2001 and been going to sites like Pojo, Smashboards and Gfaqs since 1999.

Once Blue Heaven died, I needed somewhere else to go, and heard of a place called Smogon that recently opened. I joined the forums 5 days after it was made and started playing on the server. I have been going here ever since.

 

[toy]

How it all started:

Ok to start things off, at first i thought the idea of pocket monsters was quite retarded. At around age 8 my firend jeffrey was a nintendo enthusiast and was very knowledgable in pokemon before it even came out, telling me to buy it, i figured i was so beyond it and shrugged him off. Later that month he had gotten the imfamous red version (obviously cooler), i gave it a try and from moment when that damn ratata finnaly stayed in that ball I was transfixed.

COMPETATIVE BATTLING:

Basically, i played RBY(carts),GSC. I though pokemon was over. Saw an advertisment for Ruby / Sapphire. Went out and bought it. While searching for cheats I stummbled upon SPPF. I from there i posted terrible teams. From observing 0ma and others at sppf i began to get good with natures and MS, but I was still terrible so I just skimmed through the CRMT and ripped off alot of teams from certain members. Ever since ive been fairly good. Ive only been NBing for a year but ive grown very creative with MS and team building, Thanks in moslty to a good freind Delta and later on the every one at Bm

thats whats good with Toy

 

[obi]

I started playing Pokemon when I found a Pokemon Red, Yellow, and two Golds in the park. I had never played it before, and I thought it was just a dumb craze, but I figured, "Hey, it's free, might as well play it." It was awesome.

I found Smogon by hearing about Netbattle from GFAQs.

 

[Arkeis]

How I first started playing pokemon:
Remember when you bought Red/Blue, there was a little booklet that came in the box along with the game? It was brown and had the Pokemon logo on the front. It was basically the manual for the game.

Well, one day in 5th grade of 1998, one of my classmates brought that booklet to school. I asked to see if I could borrow it. When I read through it at home, I noticed that...hey, these creatures look like real life animals! There was a caterpillar, and a purple rat, and wow, even a brown-and-yellow tapir! Being obssesed with drawing animals at that time, I wanted to draw these creatures. But that booklet only had a few Pokemon out of the 150 that were there. I wanted to know what the other Pokemon looked like, so during summer break, my mom bought me a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Blue.

When I went into the 6th, Pokemon had become a huge hit. Everyone talked about it at lunch and recess and on the bus. Everyone brought in their games and trading cards. We were all excited for the new Pokemon movie featuring Mewtwo that was about to come out. And I finally completed my Pokedex on the bus during a field trip, where I traded someone for an Omanyte, my 150th Pokemon.

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

I heard about Netbattle a long time ago...even visited the site. But battling Pokemon over the internet? That was weird, and it wasn't even an official Nintendo thing. So I didn't download it.

Well, later I read a competitive battling guide on GameFAQs and thought that I would like to try it out. At least NB was free, so it couldn't hurt. Spring of 2005 was when I logged into NB for the first time. Naturally, I went to Smogon since it was the biggest server. The link to the main page was posted, so I checked it out.

It wasn't much of a website at that time. There was only the Pokedex and a link to the forums. But everyone on the forum was so witty and sarcarcastic...I was kinda intimidated so I just lurked around for a few months. I laughed a lot at some of the posts there. I hadn't laughed so much on an internet forum since...well, since forever really. So I joined because I wanted to be a part of this. And never did I expect that someday, my artwork would actually be used in the layout for this site.

 

[Judgement]

How it started:
My cousins let me play their Pokemon games back when I was 7 or 8 or something like that and it amazed me since it was also the first video game I had ever played. So I got Red version for Hanukkah and it snowballed from there.

NB and stuff:
I heard about NB at Nsider from Ecnemalas (I think) and I decided to try it out and it was fun. I had known about Smogon for a while and the day after my birthday, I chose to finally get a damn account.

 

[Bugsy23]

How I got into Pokemon

I remember playing Pokemon when it first came out, and I had like every game posible at the time (R/B/Y/G/S/C), and I used to collect trading cards a while back as well. However when RS came out I was losing interest in Pokemon and video games in general outside of Madden and NBA Live, so I forgot all about it. I remember being bored on day in Spring Break '05 and browsing the internet on my new computer, when I randomly searched Pokemon to see what was going on (I had no idea what any of the new Pokemon were except for Mantine and Groudon). Groudon had this one particular poster I found that caused me to like it, and I started searching more Pokemon stuff. I came across a Pokemon Ruby ROM and and emulator and started playing, with no idea what EVs, Ivs and the like were. That's where GameFAQS came in.

How I found Smogon

I was searching for Pokemon Ruby guides and came across GameFAQS, which I used to help me get through the game. Still, I couldn't exactly understand what EVs and IVs were on my own, so I signed up at the Pokemon Emerald boards to ask questions, like most noobs do. That's where I came across a few faces; Noobster, Warthog, Amazing Ampharos, Synre, IPL, Loki, and a few other guys who were already leaving PEB when I joined. I found Netbattle there, and with Netbattle I found Smogon, however when I first started using Netbattle I hated it because I sucked, so I uninstalled it and stopped playing Pokemon, again. I came back towards the summertime (I still posted on Gamefaqs every once in a while) and had an urge to get back into battling, so I reinstalled Netbattle and played on the Smogon server for a few weeks. I signed up eventually during that summer, and everything just came together...

 

[Life]

Discovery of Pokemon:
I would have to say around 1998. Thats when I bought and traded my TCG collection in Belgium. Then, saw another kid player pokem[SIZE=+1]n NO$GMB, imo the best emulator ever. Its so cool with all the code around. Started playing TCG trading card game on GBC in Utah.

Netbattle:
I discovered the joy of netbattle in June of 2005. It was on a summer day, I was browsing around GAMEFAQ when I heard about RS Bot. It lead to the IRC, where I was informed that Netbattle had replaced the outdated method. I've been playing ever since then, didn't bother about posting in forum at the start. But now, I am posting like mad.
[/SIZE]

 

[Red-Cosmonaut]

I was introduced to pokemon in 2004 because it was the "fad" in my elementary school. I got it played it and didn't enjoy it too well. My first game was Red version. Yeah. I started playing online in late 2005 and enjoyed it. Smogon was impossible to miss. The biggest pokemon community in the NB service.

 

[Wikey]

I'm surprised at how many people didn't play the RBY games until fairly recently.

How I got into Pokemon:

A friend of a friend had Blue version when I was in 4th grade. I watched him play for a bit and then looked through the pokedex. I saw Snorlax and decided I needed the game. Unfortunately, I didn't get my own game until Yellow version came out. My brother had Red, I had Yellow, and we got Stadium like as soon as it came out. I was only in like middle school at the time and had no idea how Pokemon worked. (In stadium his Mewtwo could beat my team of 6 pokemon [including a Mewtwo of my own] using a moveset of Psychic/Recover/Mega Punch/Mega Kick.) We played and collected the TCG for a while when it first came out, my little bro still has his non-first edition Charizard in a little plastic case. We got Gold/Silver when they came out and I got a little better at the game learning that attacks weren't the only moves worth using. After I got all I could out of the G/S games there wasn't any pokemon for me for a while until...

How I found Smogon:

This summer I decided to finally unzip that VisualBoyAdvance I had downloaded in school one day. I found a site that supplied me with what I wanted. The ADV gen of PkMn games. I was having fun playing those when I got a groundbreaking idea, wouldn't it be cool if I could play these against other people online? It took me about half a google search to realize that, yes, it could be cool, and that people had been doing it for ages. I downloaded NetBattle from www.smogon.com and built me a team and went to start battling. I saw the server list, figured ~100 > ~30 and have been lurking SmogonU on NB ever since.

 

[Kater]

How I got into Pokemon:

I was 4 or 5 at the time so I don't remeber very clearly but I remeber somewhat. Well Pokemon became very popular in my school so I kind of got into it. I started watching the show everyday. Then for my birthday I got Pokemon Blue Version. Though it took me an hour to get out of Pallet Town, I loved the game. I got to Saffron city with my Charizard before someone deleted my file by accident. I restarted with a Blastoise and have been in love with Pokemon ever since.



How I found Smogon:

Sadly in my noob days of Pokemon battling I hung out at Nsider and became active there. I used to think Serebii was the greatest (Not anymore) and I had no idea there were any other big Pokemon forums/sites than serebii and Nsider. Someone posted about Smogon on Nsider once so I found out about Smogon that way. I didn't become a member though. A little while passed and well I quit Nsider like 12 times. Finally one day I decided to click some of the affiliates links on serebii. I found out about Pocketmonsters and PPN. Through that I found out about Bulbagarden. I became an active member on the Bulbagarden forums and chat (almost becoming a shipper) for about 6 months when I was kind of banished because of some things I did. I then went away for awhile from internet (because my comps motherboard crashed) and came back to Smogon. I was active for a while then went off to go do a pokemon project elsewhere and now I'm back to be active again. BTW the project failed but I found out about Pokezam.com and got a job there.

 

[xboa2000]

How I got into Pokemon:

It was in fourth grade when a classmate was looking at a magazine. He showed it to me and it had an illustration of Pikachu next to one of Raichu. I remebered seeing that Pikachu became Raichu, and I thought that was awesome. The first game I got was Blue version in fifth grade I think. The damn thing got erased like 6 times though. On my last play through (when I actually finally completed the damn Pokedex) I racked up 300+ hours.
On October 14, 2000, I got Pokemon Silver. Playing through the game was AMAZING. I loved the new, improved graphics, new moves, new Pokemon, and all that crap (also the fact you could go back to Kanto and get 16 friggin badges). Of course, that game messed up and got erased, causing me to lose not only the Pokemon I got in it, but the ones I got years before and transferred over from RBY. To make matters worse, the cartridge would NOT save even if I started a new game. So I pretty much quit for a while after that.
Eventually, news of R/S came out and I played through one of the partially translated versions (don't remember which) as the girl character, creatively named "BITCH." Of course this was in an emulator. I also played through the game in English.

But to this day, I haven't bought Ruby Sapphire or Emerald, despite playing through all of Sapphire and Emerald. There was just no point to actually buying it for me. I got a flash cart, so I could play on my GBA, but NOBODY I knew played them, so I couldn't trade or battle, making it pointless to buy. And of course I played through FRLG. Those are my favorites so far. Although I still didn't buy them. Blegh.

How I found Smogon:

As you can see by my postcount, it wasn't long ago. I have checked out many Pokemon communities before, but not really posting much. I never stayed long because all the other communities had too many morons and I couldn't stand it. I eventually came here to look through the Advance Dex, which I must say is VERY awesome and useful. I then decided to take a look at the forums and here I am.

 

[da gold sun]

How I got into Pokemon
Eh, I was only 6 or 7, and, oddly enough, I saw ONE episode and I became obsessed with Bulbasaur. Yup, after that, i asked for Red for my birthday (kinda odd 'cuz i asked for the TCG Game, but I think I was A LOT better off with the original). I finally beat the game after a while. My brother and I got Silver (my bro got Gold; his 1st pokemon game) on Christmas 2000. I then became obsessed with Chickorita (lol spelling) (yup, you can see from my avatar i like grass starters) and my bro liked Cyndaquil. And then, long story short, i wound up here! YAY.

How I found about Smogon.

I was looking for new ways to make my LG game less boring, so I went to Game Faqs. Like many others here, they mentioned Smogon, so I decided to try it out for myself...10 months ago (New Years 2006). I joined Smogon very recently after "a cutting and pasting incident" where I forgot how to clear my clipboard and posted "giga shock"'s spam on the RPG server. That was in July (goofball saved my butt; thanks, man).

Well, thats my 2 cents. Good thread, Justin-numbers.​

 

[PM]

I'm sure none of you are even going to read this, but whatever.

How I first started playing pokemon:

Just like everyone else, I was a young boy, fell in love with Red and blue, and became a long-time poke-fan.

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

I have to type all of this again because I accidentally erased this whole reply =\.

It was a dark and stormy 7th grade. I had just bought Sapphire, while my friend bought ruby, and about 2 weeks after the purchases, he challenged me to a match. I was trying to finalize my Slaking moveset because my $15 Wal-Mart strategy guide said it was a good pokemon. (it was basically coming down to Slack off or yawn for the final moveslot =\). So I googled "slaking moveset". Among the google list came an article by the writer "pokemonofthedaychick". I clicked it, read it, and saw there was a link to other Pokemon related articles, and enjoyed the article so much, I decided to read them all. At the bottom of each link was this mysterious link to boards.ign.com/Pokemon/b5012. About halfway through the articles, I finally was brave enough to click it. That was the gateway to the pokemon world.
I came up with some stupid name like "potdcrules--------" or something. Upon joining, I decided to post my team that I eventually beat my friend with. It sucked. I then posted some other movesets and stuff that I copied off of pokemonofthedaychick's articles and said the were the best in the world etc. Everyone hated me. Especially this one guy by the name of unknown_1(mekkah?)
I decided to sign up again under a new name because everyone hated my first name. I was trying to fit in with all these pokemon-fans so I decided on the name pokemaniac5999. After spamming the boards to 1K, I kept noticing people mentioning this RSBot thing, so I downloaded it and played on #rsarena.
I built my first team and everything, and was ready to go prove to everyone that I don't really suck that bad. I was wrong. I really sucked. I remember getting advice from someone there simply called "snorlax" (t0y?) who eventually helped me fix my mistakes and stuff.
Like everyone else, I battled and battled, and eventually got better. Unlike most people, I never built up a name for myself, mainly because I could never keep the same IRC name. I left pokemon. I left ign boards. I left it all.
But then, I decided to buy pokemon firered and leafgreen, the new games. I decided to check out how IGN was doing. I noticed a bunch of links to this place called "smogon.com", and eventually I was hooked on it reading all of their articles, strategies, etc. But I never joined the community.


One year later: I had been computerless for a while, so when I got my computer back, I looked through all of my old bookmarks and noticed smogon.com again. That was when I joined this community. I swore I would never download this "n00battle" thing. But I eventually did. I got back into pokemon just recently, and am now an avid battler. Nice story, huh?

 

[giga]

i um stole my sister's game boy on a road trip to florida a few years ago, and pokemon ruby just so happened to be in it. i beat it and shit on the ride there. I had played Gold as a kid, but it was nothing serious.

Smogon!

Then of course I was always a gamefaqs member, since I was about 12 I think. I went to the firered board right when it was made, right when firered was released. i met some cool dudes there like earthwalker3, bluelightstar, SSBM Roy, and the rest of the UU stadium forum dudes.. I remember a lot of people from gamefaqs who are members here now. Roy MASTER!! there were others but their names changed or something - i just don't feel like typing. I found out about smogon, signed up with a username "drache" which is Dragon in german I think, then I just.. never posted.

a few months later while going from invision board to invision board I came back to smogon with the username giga gaia12, was banned a few times, and if i can remember correctly was pretty much hated by everyone, which lead me to pokerealm which some describe as the place for ...smogon rejects. came back to smogon after realizing what it really was, the rest leads up to now!

I have only been around for a year and a half or so... I could surmise that I've come pretty far in this community

 

[sxcdude]

started as soon as pokemon blue came out...

how i found smogon, i searched everywhere for pokemon theory, after learning about ev training from serebii.net i came here and i started reading the articles

then how i found netbattle... i never bothered playing netbattle until i started loosing with relativley good teams, and i realised that i needed to actualy play the game and not just have theory, so yeah, ive been netbattling for about 1 or 2 weeks

 

[Okashi]

How I first started playing pokemon:

I was about 6 or something when I broke my ankle. Now, it was right near my birthday, and I was feeling pretty upset. I couldn't have that birthday party at the Funplex like I had wanted. So I thought it was just another day, but then....HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Lots of lights and balloons and party things. We had cake and everything and I had a blast. But the best was yet to come...for my birthday, I had received a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Yellow! I was so excited, as this was the game everybody wanted. Now, I was a very good reader, so this game was no trouble for me. Even though I thought the Boulderbadge was some kind of courage you gained called Boldabridge. My party was, at first, a Metapod and a Pikachu. Eventually I gained the legendary Mewtwo and caught a Dragonite. After that, the next step was the recently released Pokemon Gold and Silver. I just had to have one. I had saved up enough money for one game; Pokemon Gold was my choice. playing through was fun as usual, me and my friend often discussed it. I remember how he got the Espeon before me; I was so jealous. But better yet was the great Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire! This introduced tons of new features and gave meaning to my life (well, not really). I played this up until 5th grade, about 1 year.

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

After I had quit pokemon for a bit, I started to play it again in 6th grade. But I realized, where had the joy gone? It was all so easy now. Looking for something more, I found the Gamefaqs message boards. Now, I couldn't get an account at that time, because I was too young and honest, but I loved reading the posts. I saw how users described evs and ivs and hidden power and I was like: "wtf?". So I saw a mention of Smogon in one of the topics, and went there. Again, too young to join, but I read every strategy article. I built teams in my ingame, but alas, there was nobody to battle with. All of my old poke friends had gone on to...ugh....Grand Theft Auto and friends. I saw netbattle, but I have strict parents who HATE downloading/buying things off the computer. But when I asked, they let me, and I was very happy. Unlike most people, my first netbattle haven was not smogon. I played standard for a few days, then went straight to aa's modserver, where I recognized every single person there (they had no idea who I was, of course). So I got into the modded metagame and played it for a couple months, then went back to mainly standard battling. And here I am today. ^_^

 

[Bulblax]

Pokemon:

Probably when I was around ten I got a GBC for Christmas, as well as pokemon gold, which was the first video game I ever played <_<. Everything else just kinda spanned from there.

Smogon:

Late 2003, I was browsing the gamefaqs pokemon blue boards, when I decided to try online battling on the PBS. I only had one battle on that (with gunbladelad), but then I decided to try netbattle under the name Zapdosman. At the time the only main server was Blue Heaven, I was a noob and I disconnected a lot and used ubers <_<. Well who didn't :p One day I decided to randomly go through the list of servers other than Blue Heaven and I stumbled apon Tafop, which was of course, glalie's server. I hung around there and became part of that community, and then later tafop took over as the main server. I quit NB after some time and rejoined like 2 weeks before smogon took over. I didn't like smogon "taking over" at that point (see I'm glad I kept my mouth shut on tvsian when you guys were trolling in 2004 otherwise i'd be made fun of now :p), so I quit with that name again, and became Bulblax, which kinda stuck for some reason. I was around NB for a few more months and then I quit for good and I haven't been battling since. Yet I still stick around the forums because I don't want to leave :p I may return to competitor once the DP metagame is released :)

ok that was a tl;dr. :D

edit: and i'm an idiot and forgot emoticons dont work

 

[Wikey]

Holy shnikes, Okashi, you're in 7th grade?

 

[Okashi]

Actually I'm in 8th.

 

[theamericandream38]

lol someone is younger than me ._.

How I first started playing pokemon:
My dad got Red and Blue for My brother and I, respectively in 98. It was really popular at school and everyone played and traded and battled with the games and cards. I was one of the few who had a link cable so that was quite gg back then. I continued playing with GSC and then kind of fell out of it until RS came out and I got Sapphire. I quickly "mastered" it and battled with my friend quite a bit. I was already a member on GameFAQS because of SSBM and started visiting the RS boards. I remember users such as Sir Spanky and Amazing Ampharos from those days. I used Netbattle back when it was only GSC and then found RSBot and used that for a long time (Synre remembers me because he banned me on several occasions from #gfaqs :[ ). I fell out of pokemon for a while and then started getting back into it when the version of NB with the database mods came out. I was a regular at another board (sig) at this time, and also visited PokeRealm because of the tournaments.

How I found Smogon:
After a while I lost interest in pokemon and in May of 2006 I returned to (sig) and heard a lot about this place called "smogon" and joined in June of 2006 and the rest is history!

 

[skarm]

Origins

I started playing Pokemon Blue in 8th Grade the first week it was released in North America. I had learned about the game about 6 months prior when Nintendo Power started doing previews on it because of the huge hit it was in Japan. I immediately wanted to get it and did so.

From then to the end of Grade 9 my friends and I, including two I met in high school and Caleb (who went with me to Seattle), played continually.

Omg Pokemon Online?

In Grade 10 GSC was in full swing. I finally managed to convince my parents to get internet. Hey Pokemon is fun lets check out that. Enter Gamewinners.com. This is where I started my Poke-Mastery. I lurked for a bit, then started posted. Eventually after only being there about two months I managed to become a Moderator (On a forum with thousands upon thousands of members this was unheard of) of the new "Forum Battling" which consisted members posting their teams, moves, etc, and me/a few other people manually calculating the damages for battles. This took forever.

Not too long into this a gentleman named Lugiastorm, along with a crony named Mr. k mouth from Azure Heights decided to troll me. They said "GET ON THIS GSBOT THING WE'LL ROX0R YOU". I did. They kicked my ass, but I was instantly hooked. I was more obsessed with playing on GSBot than I had been originally with playing Pokemon. I put a lot of effort into becoming decent and it didn't take too long. This was June 2001.

Eventually I became friends with NeoKefka, who was male at the time, because Fanha had both banned us from #battlearena for some stupid reason. A month or so later #neodome was made. The first taste of authority in the online community came when Kefka opped me in #neodome. Among the crowd opped there were names like Articuno64 and some random known as "chaosS".

From #neodome to #rs, from sorcery.net to mediadriven and finally dejatoons I've followed around the online community which eventually became known as Smogon.com/#smogon today. Its been a grand 5.5 years, people. Thank you. :)

 

[Glen]

i um stole my sister's game boy on a road trip to florida a few years ago, and pokemon ruby just so happened to be in it. i beat it and shit on the ride there. I had played Gold as a kid, but it was nothing serious.

Smogon!

Then of course I was always a gamefaqs member, since I was about 12 I think. I went to the firered board right when it was made, right when firered was released. i met some cool dudes there like earthwalker3, bluelightstar, SSBM Roy, GLEN THE FROG and the rest of the UU stadium forum dudes.. I remember a lot of people from gamefaqs who are members here now. Roy MASTER!! there were others but their names changed or something - i just don't feel like typing. I found out about smogon, signed up with a username "drache" which is Dragon in german I think, then I just.. never posted.

a few months later while going from invision board to invision board I came back to smogon with the username giga gaia12, was banned a few times, and if i can remember correctly was pretty much hated by everyone, which lead me to pokerealm which some describe as the place for ...smogon rejects. came back to smogon after realizing what it really was, the rest leads up to now!

I have only been around for a year and a half or so... I could surmise that I've come pretty far in this community

just fixing that for you, giga

ill do mine later

 

[Cerivious]

How I first started playing pokemon:

Well, in 2002, i got my 1st Pokemon game, Gold. Being the first ever game i played, i was hooked on immediately. I still remember when i played gold for the very first time, i didnt know where to get the HM Fly and i surfed back and forth between Cianwood and Olivine five or six times before finding it. And when i beat Ash, my totodile was in the PC, at level 14, while my Pidgeot was was lvl100 with Return, Wing Attack, Mirror Move, and Swift. After i beat the game, i downloaded crystal as a ROM but never got into it much since i played Gold to death. Quit pokemon until Ruby came out, when i purchased a copy right away. the improved graphics and the new pokemons got me hooked again. It was pretty fun i guess, though i still didnt have knowledge of EVs, IVs, or even things like STAB. It wasnt until late 2004, after my primary school exams, that i really started going online and looking for guides because i couldnt complete the game(yea fine laugh at me), I saw this moveset guide by blueshirt32 on gfaqs, and i read it. It mentioned about battling online using Netbattle and i googled it immediately. Once I found NB on Ians site, i was fanscinated with the prospect and downloaded it right away.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:
I started in some remote server and eventually started going to tafop/blueheaven. I battled a lot but wasnt really good at it. Thus, i quit for about 6months, and came back, bam, smogon was right at the top, so i clicked on this. For i long time i didnt even know the forums existed. I just came to the smogon site for EVs help and movesets. When i finally found the forums, i mainly lurked and didnt become a member. Ironically, i became a member to report a mod(lol), to which i have to thank Hipmonlee for replying in a very helpful and polite way. And i thought "hey this community looks quite cool, i should visit here more." And then, i became a semi-regular on nb.smogon and improved a lot. Made a few friends and now not at all eagerly awaiting d/p release =/

 

[Qzahk]

Pokemon: Other kids had it, I got it.

Smogon: google; netbattle; smogon

 

[giga]

glen was just the mysterious cool guy who would always make fun of me : (