How did you find Smogon?

Status
Not open for further replies.
How I first started playing pokemon:

For my birthday my Father got me the pokemon trading card game for gameboy colour. I popped it in and couldn't stop playing. When I brang it to school the next day my friend told me about pokemon Y/B/R and I played his game for a bit and I loved it! I got silver later that year for christmas and I played that game the whole day through. I continued playing pokemon through the years and as of now, I still do.

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

I was asking my friend on MSN which moveset I should have for my Riachu and he put up the link to this site. I joined and used it for a couple days then I forgot all about it till yesterday.
 
I honestly don't remember what made me start liking pokemon because I have a bad memory and it was quite a while ago(I don't even remeber when I got my first pokemon video[or even what it was]).

I found smogon when I was searching for netbattle sites.
 
How I first started playing pokemon:I got a gameboy colour and siver version for my 8th birthday. All my mates had it so I wanted so see what it was like. I wasn't dissapointed. I have been a fan ever since.How I found smogon:It was reccomened to me in a GameFAQ# on competetive battling by Blueshirt32 that I was reading. I decided to check it out.
 
I found smogon when I downloaded netbattle from this site a while ago. I ignored it for but then I found out there is such thing as competitive battling so joined the fray.
 
I loved the card game, even the japanese cards, as soon as they became available. On easter, I recieved a gameboy with pokemon yellow, which I played a sum of 242 hours on within 7 weeks. I had noobish sets (I.E. a seadra with ice beam, water gun, take down, and substitute) that only gradually improved as I bought gold, and then crystal. I had played a grand total of about 30 different friends who owned a pokemon game, and I was getting better and more skilled at semi-competitive battling. Then, in 2002, my friend Zach must've found his way onto some competitive battling site of some kind, because he made his team virtually invincible to all of us. Everyone else quickly did the same, except me, who didn't so much as have a computer. At the time, we were playing with the rule of "no legendaries" (this still shapes my philosphy to this day) and everyone was getting good at genuine competitive battling. I stopped playing for 3 weeks, and during that time, spent my free time talking with my (not technically) older brother's friends over the phone, many of which still liked pokemon, and most of those that did were quite solid players. I spent another 3 weeks raising a team (we played that they had to be between 60 and 70 in level) and giving them good movesets. I returned to the world of competitive battling and moved on to beat almost everyone I ever met that had the game. I lived for it. The sets that I used were admittedly unorthodox, but they actually worked great! I retained my seat of "best-battler-in-the-metro-out-of-the-people-that-I-knew-and-their-friends-as-well" league until a few months after R/S, when the games' popularity just collapsed. I gradually stopped thinking about the competitive aspect of pokemon and just played it for fun for a long time. But then...

A complete and utter fluke occured. I was looking up Ampharous on wikipedia, to see if it said that it was better than jolteon, because I was preparing to start emerald over again, and I like to be prepared. I breezed through the strategic information and found such terms as UU, outclassed, and sub-puncher. I looked to the sources to see who could've put this bizarre information down, and I saw "tactical information provided by Smogon.com". It was a link to Smogon.com, of course. At first I wasn't impressed, thinking "Oh, it's just another pokemon fan site". I had started visiting PE2K 5 weeks before the release of R/S, and I was not impressed. I knew about Serebii.net and liked it (and quite honestly, still do), bit it didn't provide the kind of information I was looking for. Then I discovered the strategy oriented pokedex. Wow. That was downright orgasmic. My entire world opened up before my eyes. It came at an especially convenient time, because I had just had a falling out with about 6 seperate friends, and I was feeling kind of lonely. Smogon provided that for me. So, after 4 months (actually slightly more) of reading the forums and committing the entire strategy oriented pokedex to memory, I signed on as "the voice of reason", named after that funny voice that comes into your head sometimes and tells you what's correct and what's incorrect.

Thank you everyone, I love you all! I've seen the photo album, and I still don't recoil away from the majority of your faces in disgust; in fact, I'd love to meet everyone (not quite, as some people are pretty stupid). I've read a bunch of the JAA stories, and I wish so badly that my parents would've let me leave town to go to the competitions.

PS. I know that this sounds like a tall order, but I'd love to hear Chaos himself's story. How did the founding father get introduced to pokemon? I'm sure that I'm not the only one who'd like to know!
 
How I started playing Pokemon

I was in the 4th or 5th grade when the games came out. I had a friend who had imported Green from Japan and was in love with it, so when they came stateside, he convinced me to somehow buy a game. I bought Blue, started with Squirtle, and it's been history mang.

How I started online

I joined the GameFAQs board when it first opened up in late 1999. My user name was T34A, a random bunch of things I came up with when I was trying to think of a username and I ran across an R2D2 picture on the net. idk dude. Anyway, I was pretty much a lurker on the poke boards, mainly just reading stuff, and checking out the RMTs. At this point I had really shitty movesets, like having 3 water moves on my Blastoise and all that good stuff. When my account got banned for death threats and other stupid shit, I made my Dark Mewtwo1 account. This was in 2002 iirc. By this time I had already begun to try out the gsbots on Sorcery, although I wasn't that good. I went by a bunch of different names while on Sorcery, finally sticking to DM1 because I realized that I used it the most.

When I started to use the Pokemon boards on GameFAQs more actively, I was already a pretty good battler, and I took part in the old GS board vs. Crystal board thing. The Crystal board got its ass beat because most of the good people were lames about coming online and battling. I did win my match though, so I was happy :). It was around this time that I met my bestest friend online (BH) and I started trolling servers with the likes of chaos, nin, dennay, BH, tete, kaine, and all those dudes. I followed Arti when the split happened and #neodome rose up, but near the end of '02 I had personal problems and I had to stop coming on IRC and things.

I've been an on-and-off veteran for quite sometime, seeing that my life isn't very stable. But for the most part I've been here for the most important things, and I've helped just a little bit in developing this community, and I feel very happy that I've been a part of it. Being a part of this for over 6 years makes me remember the great times I had when I was younger. Now that I'm legally an adult and everything, you wish to go back to those things.

As of right now I'm retired from battling, but I go on netbattle every once in awhile to show that I still have skills at battling. I haven't been a top battler since early GSC though, and that still bothers me. I plan to make my return on the next Smogon Tour season or whatever big thing is going on, so everyone better watch out, I have a big chip on my shoulder.
 
How I started playing Pokemon:

Well it was the "in" thing back then so I decided to try it out. And I was hoplessly hooked. I ended up still liking Pokemon despite it had fallen from mainstream.

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

I went on playing Pokemon games but I wasn't able to get myself a GBA. So I downloaded an Emulator to play Pokemon. When after beating the game, I decided to look for guides on where to find this pokemon and that pokemon. I was directed to SPPf. Where I first found out about competitive Pokemon battling. I found out there was a thing called NetBattle and that Smogon was the authority when it came to that thing so to Smogon I went.
 
How i started playing Pokemon:
It's 2001, Warsaw, the capital of Poland. I, as every 8 year old child go to school. Also, as most of them, i have an ICT lessons. Well... kinda. We draw in paint and write in word >_> So, after finishing my SREABT (Some Random, Easy And Boring Task) go find some games on Hard-drive to play (Hooray for illegal games in school :|). I saw few other ppl play on their machines in game with Pokemons (Back then, i hated pokemon, mostly because of the dumb TV show :|). I wasn't interested in this, seeing as the only thing their were doing was choosing some attack and sending another pokemon if one died. Days passed, and once i've got a PC (We switched places on PC's >_>) with almost no games to play :| As one of the most famous polish commercials says, almost makes a big difference. There was an emulator, and one pokemon game called "PoKeMoN SiLvEr EdItJon" (Yep... written exactly like that). So... i started playing it, and found out that's much more interesting that just choosing attack and switching. I began planning a clever tactics (Such as leer+physical move or even, omigosh, SubPunching) and after some time, somebody found out something really really great. That emulator had a Link Battle mode! And strangely enough, these PC's were connected by LAN! So, the crazy battles began. I remember we once got double lesson, and everybody asked teacher to let them make tournament. She agreed. After some planning, we decided that everybody should have 10 minutes to get their teams ready. There were 16 (Yep, call that a luck) ppl that wanted to play, so there was no problems with pairs. So, i started "unluckily", with the guy who played them for longest period of time. But that doesn't mean he had idea of using any tactic (For god's sake, it's a 8 year old child! Well... i was 8 year old and made some, but... whatever). It was a pretty tough battle because he got pretty high leveled pokemon. At the end, it was pretty funny though, cause he got beaten by my EndReversal hitmonlee. Not to mention that almost every of his pokes got quick attack :| So, other battles were pretty easy, too, and i became a champ. Soon ppl wanted to learn from me, but they thought that, quotation: "Substitute is worst move ever cause it drops your life!" :|
How I started battling online/How I found out about Smogon:
So time passed by, i bought a Crystal Version, then Saphire, Fire Red and Emerald, beaten them all and got bored of battling in game. It was just too easy for me (Except for BF hax :|). So, i wanted to find an alternative, and found something that is pretty fun IMO: A PBF (Play By Forum, it's a kind of RPG where you post what you wanna do and then a Game Master answers to your post saying what happened). So soon i became a player, after some time even a GM. But then somebody posted a info about "NetBattle tournament". I didn't knew what NetBattle was, but it interested me. I readen that it was an online pokemon battling simulator, there was a link to official website, but it didn't worked :( So, guess what would an intelligent person do, if it would something great on internet, but the official website wouldn't work? Google it of course! So, i entered NetBattle in there, and soon found out a site called Smogon. I downloaded the NetBattle and started playing. After i lost the tourney (I didn't knew about the natures, EV's and stuff) i went to serebii to found out some help about it. I readen the articles, but still, i didn't knew much about it, and how to make best use of it. Then i remembered, that there was a pokemon section on smogon. So, i thought it may be good idea to check it out. It was. After some time i registered to forums, and now, well, i check the forums and post pretty often :)
 
How i Started Playing Pokemon

when i was being tortured at my baby sitters house, when i was about, eh, 5, she turned on the television and made me sit in the living room. her daughter was watching pokemon, and i listened in. both me, and my sister immeadiately took a liking to it, but i was the only one with the game. i first bought blue, and it took me a reeeallly long time to finish it.

How I started playing online Pokemon/found Smogon

well, i joined sppf, put up my first FR team to rate and realized how much i was doing wrong. someone linked me to smogon, i used the dex to look up some sets, and i became really good- at in-game. then i started to get interested in competative. i lurked around the CRMT section on sppf, then downloaded netbattle and joined smogon, and here i am now.
 
At first, I joined Nsiders at nintendo.com. When I started visiting the Pokemon boards there, I began to hear a lot of talk about the Pokemon metagame. That's when I went over to Gamefaqs to read a little about competitive battling.

I know the basic stuff like EVs and IVs, but there is much more I'm willing to learn. I'm glad I found this place, as it was linked to me in a thread at Nsiders
 
How I started playing Pokemon:
The kids I used to babysit were hopelessly addicted to the show and we watched it every day after school. From there I found out about the video game, bought a gameboy pocket and blue with my babysitting money and the rest was history. (3 weeks later, game boy color was released! -_- )


How I started playing online Pokemon/found Smogon:
Years of being out of the pokemon loop, I recently went to the sppf and someone mentioned smogon in a competitive battle thread. Did a search, voila, here I am.
 
My friend,you may know him as Pkmn trainer Zach or Pkmnmaniac Zach(i forget which),told me about pokemon netbattle and I really liked it and i asked him if he knew about any other pokemon websites and...botabing...i found out about smogon.not a long story, but its what happened.
 
How I first started playing pokemon:

It was the year 1999 it was sometime during summer i'd just got myself an now old Game Boy I'd kept hearing about a "pokemon" game for the GB so I thought I'd get it out of intrest eventually I liked it a lot and even started watching the cartoon

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

Battling online was thanks to gamefaqs there was a topic about a program called netbattle so I'd thought I'd look it up on google and download it

smogon was because of the smogon's netbattle server
 
How I first started playing pokemon:

I got a Game Boy Color with Red Version as a present for getting a Scholarship to a school, when I was about 9 or so.

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

Sarenji told me to do it.
 
How I first started playing pokemon:

I got red as a present. I forgot if it was on my birthday or christmas.


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

I didn't start battling online yet. I found out about Smogon on the IGN forums.
 
How I first started playing pokemon:

I started playing when RBY came out.


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

Joined Serebii in October of 2004, and then left. The forums had a bunch of stupid people on them, and most didn't care about battling too much. After wandering in the dark for a while, I decided to just randomly start playing Pokemon Stadium 2 again. The game rekindled my love of Pokemon. After a while, I discovered Netbattle after browsing the internet for some Pokemon game torrents, and read about it on Bulbagarden.net. I discovered Smogon in late January of '07 and here I am now.
 
How did I first started playing pokemon:

I first began playing it ever since my older brother gave me his copy of Pokemon Silver

How did I started battling online / found Smogon

I had heard often about Netbattle and how it was, so I decided to play it for fun. However, I really wanted to become better at competitive battling, so I decided to join the community.
 
How I first started playing Pokémon:

I bought myself and my little brother Pokémon Red (me) and Blue (him) along with two GBPs so that he and I could play together since I was in my early 20s by then and had moved out, and knew that he was greatly into anything Pokémon, but my mom just had a Wal-Mart job at the time and couldn't afford to buy him a new game system or the game.

So out of guilt for having left for three years (lol) I wanted to give us some common ground, and I didn't have any taboos about adults playing Pokémon or anything, so I shelled out the ~$150 bucks at the time for me and him, and it was neat. We both played through the game independently so we could have "teams" to battle against each other. My team was a very low DV Alakazam named "Id", and his "team" was his Charizard.

Flash forward about a year when Gold/Silver came out, I bought him Silver and kept Gold for myself, and also shelled out another ~$150 for a couple GBCs. All the new style and color and monsters and held items and breeding and everything was really to my liking, so I kept playing even after my little brother stopped. But, as an adult playing a game that at the time had very few people my age playing, there was no way I could battle competitively, without going to the local middle school and making myself look like a complete retard.

How did I start battling online/found Smogon

So in late 1999 I was posting on GameFAQs Gold/Silver board as Phildo, learning about the game and helping the then team raters Frak and Uratoh with their duties of clearing the chaff out. I started to develop some competitive teams myself, including an abysmal but imaginative Baton Pass that got the attention of CatGonk who'd started posting there to pimp his new DT/Rest team that he'd made for GS. I decided to go to Azure from there, only this time as Automaton, although a great many people still knew me from GameFAQs as Phildo (like chaos :D) and I didn't quite leave GameFAQs completely for another year or so when so many of the original people had left.

So I pimped my Baton Pass team, people thought it'd go down in flames but appreciated the unorthodox thought and tactics that it brought to the table and encouraged me to try it out. This was before #gsbot had came into existence and since the team was GS only, PBS wasn't good enough.

Once I had tried it out on #gsbot I realized that having a chain of 3-4 Pokémon with baton pass was excessive and needed an actual team in which Baton Pass was a potential autowin strategy. Many revs later BP teams were hugely popular on #gsbot at which point I made a counter team with Fireblast Snorlax in lead (haha, it made sense at the time) and a devilish Attract Jolteon build. That team of course died to the prediction counters of neokefka (Celia) which discouraged me from continuing to battle cuz LS was all "OH YEAH DO YOU LIKE HOW IT FEELS FOR NK TO BREAK IT OFF IN YOUR ASS OH YEAH".

Contemporary to this time I had made friends with Skarmory and Sabergirl, and the aforementioned LS and was still in contact with Uratoh over AIM whom I'd adopted as a little sister of sorts (along with my adopted bro LS :D). I'd also made friends with starCaliber and MewTwoSama in Karp Park and I eventually went over to Uber more or less when they started banning people at Azure, and it was a good community of pretty tightly knit friends that mercilessly questioned each-other's sexual orientations.

Around this same time I was playing D&D 3.5 over OpenRPG with a bunch of people I knew from Azure/GameFAQs including Uratoh, SandSlashMan, RainDance, Anthrax, Mentar, Sonuis, Jenova, and some others. Good times!

By then I'd all but stopped playing Pokémon, competitively or otherwise and was just a member of the community by association. I didn't really get into Generation 3 that much although I do own Sapphire, D/P seems great but my gaming tastes seem to have changed, I did put like ~60 hours on it just in the process of getting 5 badges (lmao) but hit a sort of dead end due to choosing Empoleon and not having many options to deal with the Steel gym, by then I'd asked Fish where the fuck everyone went and he linked me here. I started playing Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar after I got hung up on Pokémon Diamond... So we'll see where I go from here. The biggest contributor to my not getting as deeply involved with WiFi is the fact that my computer hates the installation disk packaged with the USB Connector and it can't even tell that I'm on the fucking internet.

Sooo, that's my story, long I know and would understand if you don't read it in its entirety, just felt like it had to be told.
 
Here is my story.

How i started playing Pokemon.
I got Ruby as a good luck gift with a SP because i was having my adnoids (What are they anyway?) removed (they actualy fry them while they are still inside you but they dont want to scare little kiddies.) To put it this way, i sucked at it. Then, around the time of FR/LG, i learned some in-game tricks. i found some friends, and with my Electabuzz/Slobrow combo i massacred all who stood in my way. i riped of my friend since kindergarden with a over-leveled standered Kyogre for a fresh Zapdos (i got the Kyogre and he got the Zapdos) and i killed his mono Drew from anime team likity split. I joined NetBattle.

Found Smogon through Wikipedia and here i am. the only living boy in new york. (Play 60s soft rock)
 
How I first started playing pokemon:

Pokemon Red and Blue version were real popular when I went to a YMCA summer camp back in the day [sixth grade], and some one let me get a shot at battling. Though it was nothing serious, it was a glorious sight, at the time. Since then, I've played the games and been somewhat competitive but nothing like some people I've seen around here and there.

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

After some research on the internet, I stumped upon Netbattle. And after looking around various Pokemon forums, I found Smogon. After all, Smogon is a pretty known. Personally, some people need to take heed of this. :P
 
How I first started playing pokemon:

Unlike most of you guys here, I started playing Pokemon when my dad got Silver for me on my birthday, that and a Game Boy(with some other games like Kirby's Dreamland and Dragon Warrior Monsters). And i was in India at that time. (Yeah I'm Indian). I wasn't at all hooked to the game. I liked Dragon Warriors and Kirby way better. That was probably because my Pokemon game already had a game already created on it lol. so I decided to start a new game in Pokemon Silver and I became hooked on it. And so my brother got jealous of me and told my dad to get him a Pokemon game too. And so he did. Instead of a game boy, he got a SP and instead of Silver he got the "cool" Sapphire. At first, i thought the Pokemon in there was fake and said they stole "geodude and machop" from the old games.

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

Well, later when i went to 11th grade in US actually...I found out that this was a "real" deal. My kindly brother though let me borrow the game and I remember being stuck on Victory road so I promptly googled and found Gamefaqs. Big surprise huh? Then i joined Pokerealm but didn't really post there. But I found out how to breed, look for decent Ivs and Ev train there. I downloaded netbattle and I was pretty decent at it too. I always used the standard stall team with Blissey, dusclops, claydol, zapdos, skarmory, milotic though. I remember battling with my best friend online called "pokeownage". I would only fight him and he beat me most of the time. later, I was on a winning streak and then he got better. yeah that was fun. i dunno where he is now though since i quit netbattle. :sad::(

And then I found out about smogon and yeah.
 
I got Blue when I was in like first grade, and it was defective actually so we sent it back for a new one, and I was hooked from then on. I remember playing Blue, Yellow, Gold, and Silver (never played Red though). I actually drifted away at the time of R/S, but later decided to play them, and here I am today.

I found Smogon because somebody mentioned it being better than Serebii for moveset advice when I was searching the GS forums. I've read the forums for a good year or so before deciding to make an account.

And I haven't found another Pokemon community that I like better than this one.
 
Well I started playing pokemon when good old red was released over here with the Gameboy colour. I remember I got both for my birthday and got kind of hooked on it really fast. Then came GSC, and now RSE for Advance. Still haven't thought about buying the necessary for DP though.

How I got into online battling:

Hmmm well along time ago I used to post of Azure Heights and somewhere else I can't remember it was that long ago. Then posted under the name Houndoom at Marble palace, and then I think went on to TVSian. I was around there since pretty early on to be honest; and now of course we have Smogon. I also posted at TPM sometime aswell, although I can't remember when in the context of time. I haven't really been active in the battling community lately though :\.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Locked
Hello to all...
Replies
2
Views
622
Mekkah
Mekkah
How Did You Get Interested in Anime?
3 4 5 6 7
Replies
174
Views
17K
ferron
Matthew
  • Locked
How did you create your username?
33 34 35 36 37
Replies
900
Views
89K
skarm
skarm
Did you like High School?
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
148
Views
12K
UltimoVenusaur
playing pokemon at work
2
Replies
25
Views
3K
Taylor
Taylor
Back
Top