How did you find Smogon?

[.nite]

How I first started playing pokemon:

Well, I've somehow always liked Pokemon. Actually, I've starting playing Pokémon when we (my family) didn't have enough money to buy Gameboys. So, my friend lended me her Gameboy Color, with two games : Kirby something, and Pokemon Gold. So, I started liking the game and so, when we had enough money, we bought the Gameboy Advance at Boxing Day. Then, we bought Pokémon Crystal, the first game of Pokemon I've owned.

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

I found out about NetBattle, when I was chatting with my dear friend zapper, when we met at a cheats and codes website. Then, we spoke very often on MSN, then he finally said:

« I'm playing NetBattle. »

So then, I asked what was it, then he explained. So, I installed the software and started liking it. Then yeah, I first joined Smogon, about 2 years ago, then I moved to PokeRealm, when they were number one (IIRC) in the Database. Then, after a year, PokeRealm started to suck and because boring, then Zero left. After, it was a disaster. It was boring, sucked, gay and yeah. So, my only path was Smogon. There you go.

 

[natalie]

How I first started playing pokemon:

I was in year 7 (first year of high school) in an english class that was being taught by shakey makey mr makinson. he was a very angry man who would shake violently while shouting and threatening to bang our heads off of brick walls when we refused to do our lines.

a male friend of mine was sat at the back playing pokemon blue, and i, ever curious girl in skirt, asked him if i could play with it. he said yes so i sat there for most of the lesson walking around as a little pixelated boy in a red cap trying and failing to catch pokemon, crossing my fingers as the pokeball rocked and quietly expressing my anger when it popped open.

although i collected the cards and had a much sought after shiny charizard i had never played the gba games before, and after this english lesson i was pretty hooked. we'd play it together at dinner and the next week my mother bought me a gameboy and a red pak. i loved it. i'd play it in the bath, on the toilet, on the schoolbus, in bed.

of course i ended up buying every subsequent pokemon gba game.

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

oh the shame. browsing gamefaqs looking for tips and answering question threads whenever i was at my computer, i noticed lots of rmts and netbattle talk and was curious as to what it was all about. i made a thread asking what it was and how i could get it.

i downloaded and then posted another thread asking why the registry was down and when it would be back up. someone posted smogon's ip, and i happily started my first battle as 'natalie' with the extra info 'hi i'm natalie i'm 18 and i live in england :D'. my first opponent was carl, iirc. he probably doesn't remember but i guess my team of water allstars wasn't that memorable. i lost, of course..

 

[Neon]

I forget when or how I found it, but it was about a year and a couple months ago, I felt like seeing what's up in NetBattle (I had joined NB back in Version 8.9. and took a break) and I never bothered with Smogon until that day and I forgot where, but I went in the server, I guess I saw the link in the server and became a reg. But I never joined the forums until like last August.

 

[Hazerider]

I just realized I never posted itt.

How I first started playing Pokemon:

The year was 1999. I was a 10 year old kid like any other.
...With severe anger management problems. But still like any other 10 year old kid.
I was, like always, checking out the games at some random supermarket while my parents bought dumb, superfluous things such as food. I came across a blue box with big, yellow letters which caught my attention. "Pokémon", it said. My first thought, despite what many of you might think wasn't "I have to buy this game!!". It was "now how the fuck do you pronounce Pokémon?"
Anyway, after checking out the box, I became interested in that game. I didn't know what that giant turtle was, or why on earth was it carrying two huge cannons, but I knew I wanted it, so I convinced my parents to buy it.
From there on I bought Pokemon Red, a bunch of TCG cards (I had every Base set/Jungle/Fossil card!!), Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Snap, and god knows what else.
Some time later, I was no longer your average 10 year old kid for obvious reasons. NOT because I was addicted to Pokemon, but because two years had passed. I had heard of Pokemon Gold and Silver coming out in Japan, and I was pretty much counting the days until it came out here. I instantly bought both, and they're still my favorite Pokemon games to this day.

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

Not as exciting as a 10 year old kid wondering what the fuck is a blue turtle doing with two cannons on its back.
I had been reading the GameFAQs boards for quite some time then. The year was 2003. The month was October. The Windows was fucking 98. I heard about this "NetBattle" quite often, but never decided to try it. One day I realized downloading a virus would just mean I would finally get a decent computer, so I downloaded it. Me and my Ice Beam Sneasel were pretty addicted to the damn thing, until my poor, old computer finally gave in to its age. I only bought another in August 2004, and by then, RS NetBattle had been released. In December, some people were obsessed with reviving this Smogon thing, which to me was nothing but Koffing's name in German. I was the 25th person to register on the forums, but vBulletin grabbed a black strapon and brought me down to #30 when we made the transition. That's all.

 

[Vineon]

HMMM

I.... actually got well into pokemon on gb and googled it. At the time the top one reffered pokemon site was TPM.

It had its own PBS, and I was honestly thrilled to see we could battle other people online. So I joined it along with my first ever irc chatroom.. which was #pokemasterspbs, where I met red13n, gotmiltank, hipmonlee and others.

At the very first however I was sort of dissapointed people all used max stats pokemons instead of inputing their real pokemon stats into the simulator, eh.

I had a freaking awesome PBS run, winning virtually every tom rby tournament, including 3 of red13n's 32 men tournament in a row :D.

RBY was however dying atm though, which forced me to try those obscure things known as gsbots where I met many other people.

I later joined NetBattle where I met the rest of EVERYBODY.

I guess I first joined smogon when a combined effort of chaos and paperfairy launched this great project.

 

[Chevelle]

How I started playing Pokemon

In a nutshell, my freinds got me into it. They all had either Red or Blue so I picked up Red and got Yellow for my birthday.

How I found Smogon

I found Smogon through the guys at Groudon Forums back in the day. I just posted around and looked like a big n00b, then I dled NetBattle and chatted around. I battled a couple freinds and won most of the battles I was in, then I deleted the program from my PC because I was loosing interest in Pokemon. I still have dled it again.

 

[dynamo]

NB -> Smogon Server -> Link to Homepage -> Forums

 

[peter_pan]

how i first started playing pkmn

yea, when pkmn came out here in germany, i first thought it was just a stupid game for little childs. me and some classmates laughed about others who were playing with their pkmn cards. but then my neighbour got pkmn blue and i watched him playing, and i was like wtf, what an awesome game. then i got a copy of pkmn blue (my mum's dumb, i wanted pkmn red) for christmas and i played it the whole night. a few month later i also bought pkmn red and could finally complete my pokedex. then somehow my interests in pkmn died and i forgot about it. a few years later when gsc came out, i watched a friend of my little sister playing pkmn gold and i asked him if i could play it. after playing, i bought me pkmn crystal and i was happy. i also bought pkmn gold to complete my pokedex but i never got all pkmns, it were just to much. then again my interest died, but were revived when ru/sa came out. since then i somehow didnt stop to play pkmn.

how i found out about smogon/started battling
christmas 2004 i finally got internet, and because i was playing pkmn ruby at that time i googled for tips. about 3 month later i found a german forum, and registered. i was learning pretty much about pkmn. then i found a board at that forum, where i read very much about programs called netbattle and rsbot. i downloaded netbattle and played with it. i read some guides about team building and strategy. ~2 month later some user at that forum linked to smogon and i also registerd there. so i found smogon ^__^

sry for bad english^^

 

[Picollo]

how i first started playing pkmn

Well if i remember right , it was in 1999, where a friend of my brother played Pokemon Blue and i was interested and looked into this game also...at this time i also watched Pokemon on Tv and was fazinated..but it took a long time to own my first version..in 2000 Pokemon Stadium came out and i buyed it, since i needed some new games for my good old N64...after I realised that i need good pogayman to beat the Cups on Stadium (at least i had "Skill" ad won the first Round Cups with Lent Pokemon only) I bought Pokemon Blue ^^


how i found out about smogon/started battling

Well..I also became Internet on 2000 and started to chat/look into Forums ,mainly the old Pokemon Aol-Forum lol..there was a female User called "Masterchu19155" (the oldest battler here may know her) and she talked about Forums, where people talk about pokemon strategy and also about PBS/GS-Bot..That was the good old Village-Forum who was at that time the highest and best Forum for pokemon strategy (too bad that its still dieing now ,blame the Administrator who made the village as a Ragnarok-Forum) and well..i looked some months on the Bots with my Older Username "Profi14m" (yeah very creative) and started playing around 2001/2002 though my first official Battle i had on July 2002..it was very hard for me at that time to learn all pokemon-moves in english and also to use this stupid Bots, since PBS didnt work for me somehow..ah well in late 2003 i discovered Netbattle,played there and 1,5 years later smogon was there and i signed on at the first day on the forums i guess...

ah good old times...pokemon at this time wasnt really profesional imo..i remember that GaraMasta and me where the only Germans for a long time battling recently on Gsbot..but everything changed.

well i guess the older semester also know azureheights.com ^^? its still alive!

sry for bad english^^[/QUOTE] <<< seconded

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

Heh you germen are so funny ^_^

 

[Amelia]

How i Started Playing

It was 1999, i was a 9 year old kid. Well, the 1st time i heared about pokemon was when i saw my friends challenging each other. I looked at their GBC's, saw their mewtwo, and decided then i could become just as good as them. Thus, i jumped at the chance when my cuz wanted to sell his GBC and Pokemon Blue.

My first team was composed of funny cool pokemon, including tauros. When i saw that tauros basically owned everyone including their mewtwos, i decided that i wasn't the only one who knew about it. That's when i tried to google pokemon.

Nothing came up, and i gave up. For 5 years. Then, GSC/RS came out. I just played through GSC once, found it boring. Then when i saw RS, i really got intrested. Good graphics, colour, items, traits? I tried googling it, and found Netbattle!

how i found out about smogon/started battling

Sadly, the 1st time i found netbattle, i had no idea what was it all about. I was unfamiliar with the terms, the new pokemon, and the most used pokemon. The only good thing i had on my team was a tauros. Since i had a 0 win, 25 lost streak, i gave up. For another 2 years.

At 2006, Feb, i tried googling it once again. This time, i found it, and went onto Smogon Netbattle! Seeing the website, i accessed it, and read all the articles. And since then, i've been battling on Smogon.

 

[DekarTKB]

How I found Pokémon

I got the game for my birthday the year it came out (11th birthday, I think.) How I learned of it....I'm honestly not sure of. If I had to guess, I'd guess that I learned of it from Nintendo Power, or a similar magazine.

I remember my first pokemon team pretty well, since I named myself after it online: Kingjoltfabletwo. So, a Kingler (wow! Look at that attack! And swords dance! And Crab Hammer! This thing kicks ass!), Jolteon (Electric moves yes! Thunder wave? Why would I use that. I'll just use pin missile.), Clefable (I had actually gotten that it was a good idea to use multiple types. Trouble is, I did this through a Clefable with Mega Punch, Bubblebeam, and Solar Beam.) and Mewtwo (Don't remember the moveset. I think I didn't bother with TMs, though.) I used a Venusaur and an Alakazam (WITH HYPER BEAM) as filler.

Anyway, back to the internet. I got it when I was twelve. I had been a huge RPG fan since I was 6, so it was natural that I'd look up info on RPGs. This led me to a little site called RPGamer, which had a Pokemon forum. I stayed there (and still check the site today, actually, even though they never discuss pokemon ever anymore.), and learned some of their tricks (Alakazam? Psh. Use a Hypno. Hypnosis rocks, and it has more defense! Also, use Kangashkahn! They knew enough to know that Starmie, Gengar, and Eggy kicked ass, though)

How I discovered battling from there

It was pretty simple finding online battling from there. About a year after joining (I had changed my name by then, thank god. Not exactly sure about the time frame there, though), an RPGamer named Blizzard started testing a little program called the Pokemon Battle Simulator. After the obligatory jokes comparing it to the television station with the same initials, I started testing it, had fun, and was hooked from there. I joined Argo's god-awful IBT as a sub for RPGamer, and pretty much joined every tournament I could find after that, with the exception of the CLST tournament. No idea why I didn't join that.

When the time of GSC battling, and IRC came along, I kind of dropped out of the scene. I checked the IRC channel every so often, but when it came to GSC I was kind of...Lost. It seemed like people were following the game since it was released in Japan, and there wasn't really a good reference for learning, so I pretty much got my ass kicked when I started (it took awhile for me to get started, too, since I hadn't previously used IRC, and was kind of apprehensive when it came to starting it out.) I gave an effort, even joining Sneak3 (you can see how good I was at GSC from that. <_<.)

It took me awhile to get started on RSE, too. I had barely even played my copy of Ruby, and when I first tried Netbattle it wouldn't work, no matter what I tried. Once I got a new hard drive, though, it started working and I started playing RSE (four months ago.), stopped played for about 3 months, and started up again at the start of November. I've had some success, so far, mostly thanks to Smogon. On the bright side, though, I'm 6-0 in tournament battles! Granted, five of those wins came from a small tournament on GameFAQs' board 8, but...<_<.

Anyway, here's a summary: I AM OLD SCHOOL, AND ENJOY WASTING PEOPLES' TIME WITH POINTLESSLY LONG STORIES HOO HAH.

 

[ETJ]

you're the biggest baddest NB server. hard to miss.

on a more general history of my pokemon:

1) got a preowned gold (no idea why i didn't get blue. i wanted to. but i was 7 or something, so i blame my parents)
i didn't do too badly, but i never got a lvl.100 or progressed to competitive battling.

2) i got sapphire. everyone else did too. i traded around and things, and somehow ended up with a full pokedex. noone else in my area did. so, basically everything since then has just been me finding myself at the top, and trying to maintain that. i trained lvl.100s and then worked my way into competitive battling.

3) started battling on NB because i wanted to practise and test out these advanced strategies without having put in too much effort of actually training the pokes. guess what the best server was?

4) joined the forums a while ago, posted here and there, found it's a great place. lol at firebot board, and nice work and research in DP board.

5) i got blue, quite recently. i'm sure this is everyone else's pokemon story in reverse. lol. i'm starting to train a team on there, which is in a topic somewhere.

 

[Hicky]

K, I just feel like making a serious post, I saw this thread and decided to post.

Pokémon in General -

In Spring 2002 I joined CGI-Way. Being 11, nearly 12, I couldn't nearly post properly and my posts were stupid and pointless. I completely forgot about this forum and my short internet experience. In 2004, the thought about CGI-way somehow reoccured and I began to post there. Pokémon is on every community, everyone loves Pokémon. Some guy, his name began with "b", somehow mentioned Pokémon. I don't know details, but I decided to check it out. I went to my crappy local Gamestar thing and bought Pokémon, since I'd previously thought it was a kiddy game and this guy had told me otherwize

I got Pokémon Crystal and began to gradually build up the time I spent on it. I never really got hooked or addicted like some of you, I just got somewhat infutated by the game. I liked it, my friends constantly called me nerdy and stupid and I lost friends from it. I had a fight with this guy called Josh Poulding because I played Pokémon too much and he was teasing me. I totally schooled him out, that's another story for another time.

Smogon / Internet Pokémon -
December 2004 I was on my computer and I got talking to this guy from CGI-way again who taught me that there was more to competitive battling than being a twat, and he showed me the shiznit involved behind being able to beat people and he briefed me in on NB but never really described it's awesome ability to please and entice one. I gradually began to come better with my Crystal cart, although Matthew was my friend and Matthew had Ruby. I wanted it but my parents never got it for me.

So I just got better in Crystal, which is why I'm best at GSC albeit not good. I battled losers in the tour, I totally won. I got pretty good but I had no knowledge of the metagame or anything. This period sorta kinda ended in December 2005. In this period I got a nifty PC and I downloaded my awesomeass NB software. I had no idea how to do it, I called myself XenoNeon and made a pretty worthy team that was of a decent standard but nothing special.

Then I joined PUK, PUK was Pokémon-UK at the time. I got talking to Raven The Hero from said site. Raven was a cool guy who knew how to get down with it. I NBed occasionally, but never really that seriously.

I started NBing quite alot in the period of May. I joined PR then I think and posted analysises that got rejected. I was flamed by g80 regularly and just plain abused. My analysises didn't meet their standards so I got raped in the internet.

Then I joined Smogon in early June. Smogon was really just a fun move and I just felt like posting in Misc. Pokémon threads. It was fun. I was an alright battler, so I only really came on to post an NB team in Ever Grande City. I found Smogon to be a pretty cool community at the time, hell knows what I think of it now

So, here I am now, posting in FireBot and getting edited because I don't meet your failed elitist standards. And that is my Smogon life.

 

[Broly The Legend]

i started hangin in nb in smogon to be exact joined atq later and after some months (13 to be exact) i joined smogon coz of the ST3. wasnt that hard to be found there is link in server not to mention that if u search google for pokemon u find it <_< :P

 

[.astrokid]

Pokemon
huh... primary school?

Online
Found out about IGN and the forums - for SSBM. Then later got into the pokemon boards, read about MIRC, checked it out, found the battling and team making too fussy. Later came back to the boards after a while, netbattle was very popular, checked it out, easy to get into so i did. It was ...so much fun back then. I remember a lot of ol' school mods/users and crazy events and those IGN tournies that never completed.

Ahh.

 

[CaptKirby]

First encounter:
I started playing pokemon the first summer it was out in the U.S., because I was at my grandparents, and they bought us video games. We had two gameboys and a pokemon blue/pokemon red, and I had three brothers. So they played the games too, which kind of sucked. But pokemon was so amazing that for my birthday and Christmas present combined, I got my parents to give me a gameboy with pokemon red. I raised a Sandslash to level 100 first, at the time I liked that pokemon for some reason.

Online:
Around August of 2001 I found Pojo, I think to play pokemon cards online. Then I found out about the IRC community and online battling, and from there I started battling. I also signed up at IGN, but mostly to play 'IGN Arena' (for anyone who remembers that, which you would not if you were not at IGN before 2002, since it was shut down). When IGN Arena was shut down, I started posting on the pokemon board there, and started the first pokemon community thread, so, I helped that board start being as spammy and retard reproducing as it is now! I battled on Azure Heights PBY thing or whatever it was called, that was too long ago for me to remember specifics, then I battled on the gsbots, then I left a couple months some time in early 2004, IIRC. I came back here in around August, and here I am again.

 

[Superkid11]

Well, I first got into Pokemon years ago when I was around 6. I liked the anime, so I decided to pick up a gameboy and Pokemon Blue. Best day of my life I reckon. :)
I came around to Netbattle when I was bored one day and was curious about what real competitive battling would be like. I got hooked ever sense. :D And Smogon was the most populated server so I naturally went there...

Now Netbattle is a bigger source of procrastination for me than Runescape. =P:P

 

[Mystica]

First Encounter
Wow, I must have been the tender age of 7 or 8 when I first saw pokemon. Some boy at school was playing it on his Game Boy and about 30 kids were hovering over him and watching. Curious, I stoped by and gave a glance :p That Christmas I got a GB and Pokemon Blue, I was obsessed.... Since then I got Silver and Gold and loved them so much. But at that time if my life, I didn't care about pokemon anymore and I stopped collecting the Trading Cards (I had... like every card until the GS generation) and stopped playing pokemon completely. But wait! RS came out! I just *had* to get that game because I was so curious what it would be like. Well that was that, played the game, it was fun. I happened to also get Emerald in September of 2005.

Online
(cont) I loved that game... so much, and eventually I looked online for some guides (I had no idea about the whole EV thing, etc). I happened to find Serebii.net around October and in the RMT board they were talking about Netbattle. Yet again my curiosity kicks in and I find Netbattle... Installing it in January of '06. I didn't play it that much because the first time I logged in I got my ass kicked so bad and I realized this just isn't right for me. Oh well, fuck that, I came back because I was pokemon-absent and starting playing all the time in March...

 

[Nate2180]

How I first started playing pokemon

When I was young I got into the card games when it first appeared, as did all other little kids, I eventually started watching the show for a bit, and soon afterwards began playing the games. I love the games and I made a mistake selling all of the ones in my possesion, I plan on getting three new games though and getting back into it.

How I found Smogon

Through Gfaqs. More specifically, how they told people asking for movesets to visit Smogon.

 

[Mold]

jumpman16 told me.

 

[Sanders]

http://xerocreative.com

ya

 

[Suica]

Started playing when pkmn became popular years ago. When its popularity died out I also stopped playing. But one day. I got bored. I picked up my Gameboy and...here I am again.

I didn't do netbattle until a friend introduced me to it. He told me to download from the NB page here and...yeah.

 

[Warthog]

In my freshmen year, I got into pokemon big. I was on gamefaqs all the time and talked about how R/S kicked so much ass etc. Then came along someone named Green Yoda who told me about Netbattle and I started playing quitely for a few months before joining the Netbattle forums. I shortly met Crazy Starwolf, who became my "tutor" and we grew to become friends, which turned us creating some crazy movesets and teams. Didnt really join any major tournies until coming here, but yeah.. when Smogon hit I was one of the first to sign up and its been a hit since.. made a lot of friends a long the way too.

 

[Tay26]

How I got into Pokemon

My friends showed me the Pokemon Trading Card game, and later I got into Pokemon.

How I found Smogon

Through Serebii and GV.