How did you find Smogon?

[goofball]

I believe it was Christmas 97 or maybe 98(I was maybe between 5 and 7)but that is when I received my long awaited pokemon RED. After, I quickly removed the wrapping and inserted it into my gameboy. I read carefully what each word said then bam ! I woke up in my room, I walked round and round and my failure to see that those were stairs were horrible. I headed down and say my mom !!! Now, this is where I was sadden, I quickly walked around and around talking to my mom forever till I finally saved and quit. My cousin wanted to play, so i was like "sure go ahead," after about a minute he fucking discovered where the damn door is! I quickly grabbed my game and started my pokemon journey!


Fast Foward to about the release of G/S in the US. I was like "oh shit awesome," so I arrived online at the tender age of 12, to search for new pokemon stuff. So, I typed pokemon into my aol broswer(xD) and out came this huge list and I went to every site there was. I remember going to a site where I could shit flying pikachus and stuff after a bunch of gorey shooting, I decided to move along and surf other sites where I would find Serebii. From serebii, I would quickly find PE2K, RaichuForums and several other big pokemon sites at the time. From there, I found a site called TVsIan with a program called Netbattle and downloaded and played it from then on.

lol pokemon is rather boring now !

 

[havoc]

Only played Red and Blue in 1999, 2000, and 2001.

However, no one played where I live, so I never battled anyone IRL. Snooped around the internet and found MP, the forum that I hail from. Found out about the bots, played the GSBots in their final days...RSBot was fixing to come out, but I wanted to try and be good at GSC before I tried RS.

Downloaded NetBattle and continued to play GSC, tried 200 on RSBot but wasn't that great at it...I thought that it was because I hadn't really mastered GSC, so I went back to it. Registered at the NetBattle forums as Cyrus, but ended up forgetting my password.

Never really said much until Dweedle and chaos showed up at the NB forums and the original Smogon came to be, near the beginning of 2004. Been with Smogon ever since. There was a time between the original Smogon and this Smogon where Glalie bridged the gap with the Tafop forum.

 

[Sir Spanky]

I loved glen [the frog]'s early trolling days on gamefaqs, including the invention of hidden STAB and general pikablu winding-up.

 

[Somebody]

Pokemon

Well I guess I started when most people did. Up to that point I was always up for a new video game if I could get my hands on it. Final Fantasy VII was already in my list of favorites games, but beaten, and donkey Kong Land (my favorite Game Boy game) was getting a bit boring. I needed something new and different. And then bam, there pops up Pokemon Red and Blue. Two new Game Boy games that involved catching creatures and using their powers to fight with other strange creatures. I got a Red version because the dragon on the front looked cool.

I went on to play Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, and a couple of the spin-off titles (Pinball, TCG, Snap), but lost interest sometime in the 2nd generation. I heard about the new Ruby and Sapphire versions some time later, but by then I really wasn't wanting to learn the names and info for another 100 or so Pokemon.


Pokemon on the internet

I guess it kind of started when I was playing the rom of Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. I was very into the game but wanted some more in-depth info on some of the mechanics and strategies. My natural choice for such information was the internet. One site in particular that I had heard of was GameFAQs, so I scoped it out. I read a couple of the guides on FFTA and eventually found myself on the message board. I didn't post much, but I lurked a lot and really enjoyed my first forum expirience.

Sometime while the FFTA board was declining in popularity I ended up venturing to the Pokemon Ruby FAQs and boards. I immediately noticed that the people there seemed (for the most part) to be much more competitive that I was back in my RBY/GSC gaming days. There were specific movesets (a term I learned quickly) that were deemed better than alternate choices. This still confounded me, so I began reading one of the guides there. It was blueshirt32's moveset guide, and it fascinated me. I learned about things like Hidden Power (It had thoroughly confused me ingame) and combos like SubPunch and BoltBeam. In the guide's section on Dunsparce, there was a link to a topic on the ign forums. This post had a long outline of what was apparently a Pokemon battle between two real life people and their specialized teams, but I had no idea where it came from.

I lurked around the forums a bit (under the alias ScubaBob lol) and began hearing more and more about NetBattle, but was skeptic. When I finally learned that it was indeed NetBattle that was this online Pokemon battle simulator I had been hearing about, I quickly downloaded it and started it up. I was forced to build a team, so I put together a ragtag group of various Pokemon who I thought were very powerful. Something along the lines of Lugia, Kyogre, Suicune, Zangoose, something, something. I had to choose a nickname as well, I picked my first name, and went to the server list. At the top was Blue Heaven and just below that was something called "Tafop." I double clicked on Blue Heaven, but it said my name was already taken. I probably cursed lightly to myself and went back to switch the name. I really couldn't think of anything interesting and decided to try Somebody, and sure enough, it worked.

Blue Heaven began to get less and less people, so naturally I started going to Tafop. I even registered at the Tafop forums, but by this time I was already seeing lots of people talking about something called "Smogon." I guess I just timed it right but when Smogon launched I quickly signed up for the forums, and ended up being member #36 or something (which is quite high nowadays). I've been here ever since, but still mostly as a lurker.

 

[stl8008]

How I first started playing pokemon:

First my sister's friend came over once with red, and he let me play it. I immediately got interested, so I got red and my brother got blue. It was really popular at my school (I was in 2nd-4th grade at the time), but I realize now that no one really had any good strategies. After I got to middle school, I moved to a different town, and lost my pokemon red. So I didn't play that for awhile. Around 2003, I got Silver, and played that a lot. Then I got crystal, and played that too. Eventually, I found other games (mostly RPGs and the like), and lost interest for a long time. Once Ruby/Sapphire came out, I didn't get a copy right away.

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

One time, I was surfing the net, and stumbled upon NetBattle. I downloaded it, and found that it was pretty fun. Some time later, I got Ruby, and bought Red again. The most popular server was smogon, so naturally, I picked that one. I didn't really go to smogon.com for awhile, and I did not play too often. But then I did decide to join the community and forums, and I've been here ever since.

 

[(TO) JUGGERNAUT]

by accident. i had google searched hacks for my psp and somehow i got the tvsian website. i found nb, downloaded it, read the extra info and found smogon

 

[Jibaku]

Playing NetBattle.
Then I decided to find out if there's such thing as www.smogon.com
I did
Few months later, I was convinced to join

 

[Maxwell]

I played the games a lot but never looked online about it.

I decided to play @ JAA Philly towards the end of may so I picked up firered and looked online for stuff to see what was different in the game from the older ones. I had 4000 saved hours between red yellow and silver versions and had registered for JAA philly before I bought firered version or found smogon. However, this community is extremely helpful when you have only a few weeks to beat a game and make a team for an event. I don't want to play online, I'm not smart enough to do that. I much prefer to play in person where my hard work pays off and I can outsmart my opponent.

I got reamed in philly for the qualifier, but it was a great time. Thanks smogon.

 

[btway]

How I started playing Pokemon:

My cousin had Pokemon silver (yep, I was a late starter) and since she's 12 years older than me, she didn't really want to play it after like the first 10 minutes of it. So I took it (I was..11? 12?), and was captivated instantly when I saw Togepi and decided to train it into a level 100 Togetic. Anyhow, that was my first attempt at Pokemon, then I got Crystal for myself. I didn't do much on Crystal, but when I got Sapphire, I really started to read strategy guides and stuff. Recently I went back to my Crystal to finish the miniquests that I never knew existed (i.e. unowns) back then.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:
I started two years ago when my friend had this slight interest in Netbattling, and I was bored, so he sent me the program. At first I thought it was easy battling, but when I started to run into sweepers, I was confused (and eventually found out about EVs). My friends all lost interest in Netbattling, but I'm still on it :] (As for how I found about the Smogon server, it's sorta the biggest server around..so yeah) I found about Smogon Forums when I randomly typed a np: in the chat and khold happens to like Atreyu and introduced me to Smogon forums. Hence, here I am :D

 

[Shichiro]

I first got into Pokemon years ago, when I was a little kid and got a Pokemon Red cart. I really enjoyed it and have been playing the Gameboy games on and off since.

I found Netbattle over a year ago, my cousin showed me it, but I quit, and then went back to playing it in early January. I quit again a couple months ago and still haven't gone back to playing it but I might when Competitor is out.

I found Smogon a year ago, like Netbattle, but I didn't post or anything, then when I rediscovered Netbattle I joined Smogon in early January. I used to post a lot (way too much actually) but at the moment I've just been lurking. I'll probably post more again when the site/forums are done (not postwhoring this time though).

 

[the funky monk]

My Pokemon Story
Well, i think was around 1st, 2nd, maybe even 3rd grade when i started, '97 - '98, somewhere around there. I was first introduced to pokemon when a friend was at my house. he had 2 pokemon cards, a charmander and a venomoth iirc, and said something like "check these out, they're called pokemons. they're really cool! you want one of them?" and i responded with something like, "yeah! i want the fire guy! he looks cooler!" and i think my friend was disappointed when i chose the charmander card because he was sort of hesitant to give it to me. that pretty much ended my contact with pokemon for a while.

Then, about a month later, i was with another one of my friends, and he had his gbc and a red cart with him. i believe this conversation went something like this: "check it out, i just got a gameboy and a pokemon game! it's called Pokemon Red Version! i chose a charmander for my starter pokemon!" and i said "cool, i have a card of that pokemon! so-and-so gave me it." and then he sat and played while i watched for about 5 hours. i was so intriugued by it.

After i had went home, i immediately asked my mother if she would buy my a gbc and a pokemon cart. didn't get one for another week or 2 i think. but when i did get it, i got one of those kind of see-through purple-ish ones and a blue cart. i was completely obsessed with that game until yellow came out. then i played that and so on. i eventually bought red and then when gsc was all the rage, i got gs right away. never got crystal though. that's when my gameboy pokemoning stopped.

I had a 64, however, and i played the 2 pokemon stadium games quite frequently up until about the end of 5th or beginning of 6th grade. after that, i quit pokemon until about 8th grade, when a good friend of mine (who many of you know as Curby) introduced me to roms and emulators, mainly leaf green and the vba. so then i started pokemoning more frequently again. eventually getting sapphire and emerald roms also. at that time i was unaware of many things about pokemon. basically, i was training a charizard and only having fire moves on it ._.

I was taught about stab and the ev and nature systems by curby also. that was when i started putting stuff like calm mind on suicune and giving things status moves because i realized that all out attacking wasn't the only thing that pokemon could do. time passed, and then in the summer of '06, this last summer, i was introduced to netbattle. can't quite remember how, but i know for sure that it was curby that told me about it. i think he was telling me about ivs or something and that he used a program (netbattle) to determine what ivs an in-game poke had.

shortly after, i downloaded netbattle. i think it was late june/early july. didn't start battling online until mid-july, maybe? i was still quite noobish. i think my first team i made on netbattle consisted of: lapras, articuno, arcanine, gyarados, and 2 other random pokes. they all had shitty sets on them. i believe articuno had sheer cold on it, and was holding a nevermeltice and lapras had mystic water, as did dos. and arcanine had charcoal i think. so yeah, my first team on netbattle was pretty pathetic. then one of the mods that was in the server currently had suggested that i go to smogon.com and look at their strategies. (don't remember who it was that referred me to smogon, but thanks for that.)

after that i lurked around smogon quite a bit, but didn't register until late july. after registering, i don't think i made a post for a few days, but then i started posting maybe once or twice a day for about 2 weeks. a little later i found out about irc and started hanging around in there, even though i didn't know anyone yet, hoping to befriend someone, which i don't think i managed to do. after about a week of that, my computer shit out on me for awhile, so i couldn't really do anything with nb or post in the forums. if that wouldn't have happened my postcount would probably be at least double what it is now. but anyways, i've now decided to return and contribute and hope to become a part of the smogon community

and that's that. typed quite a bit, but i had nothing else to do at the moment, so i figured i'd put some effort into typing something good.

 

[Curby]

cheers mate

 

[cloud]

How I first started playing pokemon:

i started way back when red/blue was released, and the show was fresh and exciting, the cool thing to do was to know as much about pokemon as possible - i remember playing the tcg with our own rules at school, at the top of the swings, sometimes for keepsies. i didn't have a gb then, but in seventh grade i attained one, and got around to buying myself gold. a few kids still played, one of them being my best friend, eric. eric and i used to play pokemon in art class, and sometimes during recess, in between soccer games, etc. i remember eric hitting on this girl while playing against me haha. he wasn't the best, but it was fun for us.

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

in eighth grade i got around to visiting the gamefaqs gsc forums, when people like frak, SD, phildo, etc. were still posting. i had my first scuffle on the boards with some jerk who criticized a surfing snorlax i used. haha.

i played on PBS a few times, and even chatted, but quickly got bored of it because a) everyone kicked my ass, and b) anidean was an op and kept messing with my modes and junk. i didn't know what any of it meant then, but i knew he was mocking me and that wasn't cool.

anyway, i started hanging out on #pokebattle, and eventually the bots came out. darthsidious and kongler were my first friends (#pokegsc for life), and eventually i met a few other cool cats you all know now (chaos, justin, sonuis, arti, gk etc.). i was at this point i was more or less a veteran at the gamefaqs gsc boards, under the alias 'Cloud9x' because 'crono258' was banned because he admitted that he was underage. stupid crono258.

i gained some fame in gsc with ladderbot and made a name for myself when i climbed to first rank after beating up lp and then celia (lp used to use fishtauros, which if you've ever played gsc against is fucking annoying; celia used to use that gay stall team which was destroyed by electabuzz). haha i remember when i beat justin and laid claim to the colour scheme 8 7 on the bots. then i made that undefeated team and became a standard name on the then in-decline gamefaqs gsc boards.

when we branched off from fanha and co and kinda moved towards nb, i had a bit of a hiatus. partly because i found adv pretty boring. then i came back.. and i brushed up on adv, and i think i can hold my own against most of the top players in adv (i don't think i'm anywhere near the top 5, though, there are a LOT of good adv battlers out there). and here we are.

it's been and promises to be an awesome ride. this community is awesomely cool, and it really is awesome how we still gain so many cool people (dm, sanders, cs, noobster, roy and all of the other cool jerks i forget to mention but talk to regularly and are cool come to mind) with time. keep on rockin', smogon.

I WISH NOOBSTER WOULD SUCK MY DICK

???

 

[Kongler]

i got started playing pokemon when my local friend david picked up stadium in '99. i got online from honda finance and began researching my new found love. first place i regged at was azure (under the nick pokejud which was lost and replaced with kingler at a later date). next i regged at gfaqs and made the pokemon specialty board my new home. i would fight on pbs all the time from work. articuno144 was my arch rival! i also enjoyed myself at mp.
ds and i started #pokegsc with the likes of sexy cloud, ls, nin and the everlovable chaos. i was first directed to smogon at it's inception as part of chaos' project called linear. we had forums and got this ball rollin'.
my life is enriched and made complete by my affiliation with smogon. love, kongler

 

[Railith]

How I first started playing pokemon:

I was in 6th grade and at a friends birthday party when another friend of mine had a gameboy with Pokemon Red. I got Pokemon Blue for my birthday and have been playing since then.

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

I was on a fourm when some dude posted a link to netbattle. It was awesome to finally be able to battle online, so I entered the pokemon that I was using in Leaf Green to totally dominate my friend with and set off to battle. My ass was handed to me by 1 pokemon. So I went to gamefaqs to read up and see what I was doing wrong (shit EVs) and thought that now I stood a chance. My ass was handed to me by 2 pokemon. Then I followed a link in gamefaqs to here, read up on some stuff, and can actually win sometimes. To this day, I lurk around here.

 

[Forretress Fan]

In First grade my friend eric brought in a pokemon poster and i was all like omg thats so cool so I started to gain my massive 2000 card collection from pre gold silver. I then got a gameboy on the summer in grade 2-3 and got blue and was instantly captivated i then got silver in japanese and then in english and was amazed by the graphics and gameplay.when ruby and sapp came out i bought two gameboys ruby and sapp and a link cable.

Smogon my friend eric introduced me a few weeks ago

 

[Ecnemalas]

I started when it was considered hot shit back in 1995. Red and Blue were the days. Anyways, as I played Pokémon and continued life I eventually found a site called...

GameFAQs!

I read the boards a lot, looking at almost every thread there was. Users I liked to read messages from included Glen, Loki, AA, and other friends. As I read more, the more I learned about the competitive battling. As I read, I learned more about sites such as Serebii or Smogon. Smogon itself aroused my curiosity so I went there and met the full blown competitive battling of Pokémon.

Soon after I joined GameFAQs as a complete retard. After about a week of blissful posting I joined Smogon.

And here I am !

 

[Sarenji]

How I first started playing pokemon:
Way back in the day, when Red/Blue first came out and became insanely popular. I was wondering what it was, and thanks to that common Pokémon shirt, I thought you caught Pokémon by putting them in cages. And that the entire game was a 3D FPS where you found Pokémon not in tall grass, but in wild plains stretching farther than the horizon.
With all these thoughts tumbling in my mind, I decided to buy a GameBoy Color and Pokemon Blue. I eagerly ripped the package open, fumbled with the batteries, ignored the instruction manual like a true player would, and finally got the GBC to work. Upon actual play, I was astounded to see that Pokémon was, indeed, not a FPS. And that you couldn't throw Pokémon in jail. I wonder if that pure surprise is the reason why I stayed with Pokémon - because I was so awed with it. It was my first game, after all. So I moved up from Blue to Yellow to Silver to Crystal to Gold to Ruby to Leaf Green. Whew.

How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:
It started with me and my cousin finding out the other loved Pokémon. We both talked consistently about it and (Correct me if I'm wrong. Yes, he is here now, as well) decided to buy the same Pokémon version, which was Ruby. Then we learned about EV training, IVs, and all the good movesets. I moved far higher than he did, as I had an obscene amount of free time, and I looked for ways to battle online. I found a person on the GFAQs forums - he was basically my first internet Pokémon friend. I don't remember what he was called on the forums, but I still have his MSN. He introduced me to RSBot, I tried it for a bit, but didn't like it. Then a while later, he introduced me again to NetBattle. This was about two years ago, and it is how I got into NetBattle. I went through three popular server changes, always conveniently taking a break before the most popular server changed, then coming back after it did. Blue H(e?)aven, Tafop, and then, finally, Smogon.

 

[Pikapoo]

It was the summer of '99. I came home to find a little blue square with a turtle on the front. I turned it on, and it turned me on. It was a story about a little boy, who would go on a journey to capture little monsters and stuff them into littler balls. I was awakened. Enlightened, I went on my own journey to capture coloured squares and cram them into a little machine. I caught them all.
Fast forward to winter of '06, I was feeling a little empty inside. My journey had ended, there were no more to capture. I was sad. Sad and alone. My imaginary friend told me about netbattle, so I logged on and found Smogon. Smogon showed me that my journey had just begun and so perhaps, there's a little Smogon in all of us...

 

[Muchabi]

I found Smogon while looking through multiple website for movesets, and someone told me to come here.

 

[Reflect Suicune]

How I started playing pokemon
I went to my friend's house and I saw him playing Pokemon Red, a couple of days later I borrowed it and I was addicted forever. I bought Gold secondhand(lol) and then immediately started saving money and bought crystal as soon as it came out.

How I started competitive battling
I have known about gamefaqs since it started, and when I got crystal I immediately went there to read up on stuff. Then i saw someone talking about "some bots" and eventually I started playing on the GSBots with other people from GFaqs (Uriel, Blackthorne, Sulticune and AA </end cheap shoutouts>). I was a very good battler for some time, but then personal shit happened and no more computer or stable life. Years later, I try to start battling again and I hear about Netbattle. I saw smogon's server in the list of servers and next thing you know, I'm a smogoner.

Sorry I'm not a very good story teller :p

 

[metalScyther]

How I first started playing pokemon:

I first heard about pokemon in 4th grade, because my best nerdy friend at the time had a gameboy and would show me all of these "awesome creatures" that he trained. Next year, I became a huge pokemon TCG guy. I lived for the trading cards, bringing them out to recess and trading with other classmates and etc. At the end of that year, I traded someone a Blastoise and "100-damage Zapdos"(if you guys remember the original series of cards) for a Game Boy Pocket and Pokemon Blue. And so my quest to become the best pokemon master ever began. I was hooked - I played pokemon constantly.

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

Next year, in 6th grade, I bought pokemon silver and began visiting Pojo. I signed up there, got my team rated and stopped sucking over the process of about a year.

Come next year, I started battling online. I used the PBS, and got a lot better over the years. I registered at TPM, and that became my board of choice over the next few years. I still remember being best buds with SilverSuicune and pikapeace007 and waking up every morning in the summer just to battle them on the PBS. Good times.

Before too long I started battling GSC competitively, and I spent a lot of time on IRC and almost all of the pokemon communities talking shit and kicking ass.

Thinking back on it, I still can't believe that I started battling pokemon online when I was like 12 and still do it today occasionally, as a 17 year old.

Anyway, over the next few years I took many hiatuses from pokemon only to randomly show up at times to join new communities, the first one being PokeRevelation. Then I stopped going on IRC for another long ass time, only to come back and introducted to smogon by JMC. And here I am today. I still take huge breaks from pokemon, pop back randomly for a RBY battle(the only thing I battle pretty much nowadays), and dissappear again.

 

[Nitrous]

How I First Started Pokemon:
My friend had a yellow version and he haed the game so he gave it to me. I was hooked as soon as I caught a pidgey. I used to make fun of people who watched the anime too, before actually playing the game. Go figure. The anime still sucks though.

How I Started Online Battling:
I saw screenshots of nb on some forum, I forget where. This was during the early-mid gsc days. So I dled it and started under the name "skar". I met alot of people on there but I don;t know where they are now... KholdStaire was one, ingrowntoenail and manalugia were two others. i doubt they remember me though cause i quit after a while and came back to the game when r/s came out. i am not fond of the r/s metagame and quitting gsc made me forget everything about that game and now i suck at gsc. anyway when i got r/s i joined serebii cause that was the only forum i knew and this was during when serebii and smogon were sort of hostile toward each other banning chaos and all. and jshadias gave me the link to the then new smogon and here i am.

 

[reverie]

how i first started playing pokemon
well, obviously i got caught up in the initial craze when red/blue came out. i was in seventh grade and i played my red version constantly. it was all me and my friends talked about during lunch and we even watched the gay show. then after playing through the game a couple times and getting bored of even the missingno cheat, i just moved on. i still liked it, played through silver and ruby once each, but it was never like the craze with red/blue. <3 mewtwo

how i got started with smogon
about three weeks or a month ago, a guy i know from this message board i go to posted a link to smogon to download netbattle and the the tiers for help assembling teams. i put something together and played around a bit, but there was a lot i didn't know since things have changed since the red/blue days when i knew everything pokemon. i've played the later generation games, but not as intently as red/blue and i wasn't as familiar with them. i found out the hard way after seeing shit like ninjask+baton pass to someone that endure/flails and sweeps my team and im like what. anyways, i wanted to find out more and i was bored enough, so i registered here

 

[parrot]

When i Startede Playing Pokemon

I was the first kid in schoo to get RBY. I saw the show, wanted the game, got blue for my bday. We had some insane link battles back in the day, level 100 Dugtrios and Blastoises and all these crazy things. I was like, 7.

Gold version was a natural evolution. Sadly, my files corrupted now.

I forgot about pokemon when Advance came out, but then I saw it so I just bught it and hated Sapphire. Didn't play much.

Competitive Battling
I forget.