How did you get into Pokémon?

My cousin and I were BFFs as kids, he brought his Game Boy over one day and was playing Red and I had a blast watching him with his overleveled Venusaur and fresh Dugtrio from Diglett Cave running through Surge.
 
When I was in the Second Grade I invited all of my classmates (None of whom I was ever particularly close with) to my birthday party. There was one kid who gave me these Pokémon Cards. Later I played the game with my cards as there were two packs and specific instructions on exactly what to do. She ended up picking the lucky side and winning, and since then I've always had it in my mind. Fast forward a year, and I'm in Toys R Us with my Uncle and he said he would be me and my brother 1 thing each. I look around and eventually find Pokémon Black. I remember at the checkout the cashier told me it would require a lot of reading and me, already loving reading, fell even more in love with the game. Ever since hen I've went through other phases where I was interested in different things but I'm back in Pokémon and have been for a year. Since this is the longest I've ever liked somthing I think this might be permanent. The competitive community has also helped to keep me engaged with the franchise as it's constantly evolving.
 
Man, what I always remember is my Pokémon Emerald game. I remember the day like it was yesterday. Won't go into the details of what it was that got me emerald, Emerald has always been one of my favorite Pokémon game out of what we have now! I still have it to this day! My motivation to play mons has dropped over the past year, but recently it has somewhat picked up again. I am interested in NatDex OU. I will like to get involved with that community more! I still play because of the community. I do not ever regret joining Smogon and being part of Wi-Fi and the various other communities at large! :blobwizard:
 
I grew up in the height of Pokemania here, when pretty much every kid was into it. Used to play on my brother's Pokemon Blue when I was younger, then got my own Game Boy Color w/ Pokemon Yellow when I was like 5, then I got hooked.
As for competitive mons, I used to be active on the PurpleSurge IRC server and saw people always talking about the D/P metagame, but I didn't really give it a try until Pokemon Online launched in Summer 2010, because I thought the interface looked so clean compared to grey old Shoddy. stayed active on PO after winning a 128 man Challenge Cup tour, and soon got promoted to server mod, but I lost interest around 2013 and quit.
Came back in 2016 after Pokemon Go + Sun/Moon hype, and I'm still here:blobwizard:
 
I thought it would be a good time to post on this thread :')

My very first Pokémon contact was actually not a main-game Pokémon. It was (I think) Pokémon Ranger! One of my uncle gived to us a R4 card and the card had Pokémon Ranger. I actually don't think I ever finished the game. iirc, I was stuck to final battle where you can to catch Raikou/Entei/Suicune (? I barely have memories of this game lmao).
Anyhow, this game didn't hit me very much and it's only few years later that I really got into Pokémon hype.



I missed entirely DS era of Pokémon. I only went intro Pokémon when 3DS gaming came out. I remember, I was like "Uh, I never played a Pokémon game, I must try it someday". Because like I said, I didn't have played any Pokémon game before it, and I was seeing Pokémon cards at school without actually knowing what was behind this. So this and my curiously made me buying Pokémon Moon. Well, I had fun playing the game casually, grinding for beating the Elite 4 and becoming the best one. I guess I stuck around because I wanna be the one?
Anyhow, I was also interested in post-game content, and notably the Battle Tree. I originally struggled to even complete simpler fights, but once that I got physical / special splits I eventually managed to beat simpler levels. Around this time, I watched more and more Pokémon-related content (and specially competitive-related) on YouTube, Google, everywhere really. I quickly switched to PS! for the competitive part, but I still bought Pokémon Oméga and SS though! I liked both so yeah. Regarding competitive Pokémon, the rest can be summarize to "I struggled a lot but I kinda improved over time".

For this 1000th post, I wanna say thanks to everyone who give their best here by being helpful, giving us high-level tournament games or just by chilling. Whatever you come from, whatever your IRL, we all share this Pokémon passion, and we're all on Smogon/PS for this. Thank you for making this place as good it is! :wigcontent:
Thanks for reading!
 
This is going to be more of a collection of quick anecdotes since Pokemon has been really a part of my life for as long as I can literally remember.

I started with Pokemon Stadium/Pokemon Snap on the N64 and watching the anime. My older brother was really into the trading cards and my cousin loved the franchise as a whole, so I kind of followed suit. Our house was filled with Pokemon merch, I had a poster of the original 150. When I was in pre-school my mom hand-stitched our costumes for Halloween. My brother was Haunter, I was Poliwhirl. I was OBSESSED with Aerodactyl, Grimer, Muk, Porygon and Nidoking at the time. When we saw the first movie in theater, I brought my plush Psyduck and Kabuto water toy (the one from Burger King promotions) to the theater; my mom says I cried because I thought Pikachu was going to die during the movie.

My first real, personal Pokemon game was Silver. Lugia was my favorite Pokemon after the second movie and that never really changed. I got Pokemon Silver and plush Lugia for my birthday. I still have the Lugia plush, the poor thing has been to hell and back; plenty of vacations, sleepovers, and other random adventures. I remember spending 3 days trying to catch Lugia in Silver because I only brought 8 Great Balls with me and instead of leaving the Whirl Islands I would just reset whenever I ran out, because I was scared Lugia would disappear. I also loved Shuckle; one of my favorite things was going in the library area in Pokemon Stadium 2 and looking at the Pokemon stats, and seeing Shuckle's massive Def and SpD bars was so funny for me.

Anyways, Silver was where I really got into mainline Pokemon games. DPPt was where I got into competitive; I got Pokemon Battle Revolution for the Wii and tried to win online with my team of Swords Dance Dig Ninjask and Focus Sash Rampardos. I didn't get very far, but not too long after that I learned about Smogon after hearing they banned Garchomp (the horror!), downloaded Shoddy Battle, and that was that.

Competitive Pokemon hasn't always been the main game I focused on, but it is the one that has had the biggest impact on my life. My nephew now plays with my old Pokemon toys my mom saved after I moved out, so that is full circle I suppose.

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This dates back to 2008 or 2009. The first time I played the Pokémon games was using a R4 flashcard, but I was little and I did not have much experience with the franchise other than a few loose episodes that I watched on TV, which aired really early, so I wasn't really enticed to watch it. Then, another TV channel started airing Pokémon DP at 7PM and little by little the anime picked my interest until 7PM became the most sacred time for me.

Naturally, the next step was to beg and implore my mom to buy me a Pokémon game for the DS, given my flashcard didn't work at the time. The game cost approximately 40 euros back in the day, which would be mindblowing nowadays, and from there on, my love for the franchise would just increase further and further.

My first game was Pokémon Pearl. Following the natural life cycle of a Pokémon epic gamer, I completed the game by only using my starter, which to this day I still preserve, and the legendary mascot, while the rest were just sacrifices for my full restores and revives. It was tough, but I managed it. Then I got a copy of Soul Silver, then Platinum and by the time Pokémon BW released in Spain (March, 2011), I became a total fan of the franchise.

I made a lot of friends thanks to Pokémon, in real life, but mostly on the internet. In early 2013 I joined a Latinamerican Facebook group for competitive Pokémon. At the time, I hadn't fully grasped the notion of EVs and IVs, so it was still hard to adapt to a competitive environment. There was a page called PokeGTS from where I generated a bunch of Pokémon, whose sets I copied from a website called Pokexperto, but they were just teams composed of 6 Pokémon I liked with no real syngergy to it. In fact, I got banned from a tournament since the host used Pokecheck and noted that my Pokémon had all 31 IVs, which given the breeding system at the time, it was too much of a coincidence. Either way, I guess I should have wasted hours of my life running around the region trying to get them juicy perfectly IVd babies :blobthumbsup:

Then, late 2013 I finally found out about Smogon, thanks to a bunch of Latinamerican youtubers, DrakeCPKMN and GearsWill, who frequented Smogon Battle Finder. When I went on and tried it by myself, it wasn't working and instead there was a thread to look for battles. Gosh, my English skills were so bad then so I obviously had a hard time communicating. Finally, I got into Pokémon Showdown, where I grew up to become a really problematic kid and got banned from two communities until I finally redeemed myself.

Finally, in 2015 I participeted in my first World Cup and, from there on, built my way to success until it came to a halt :psycry:

Nowadays, I'm 20 and although I don't indulge in Pokémon that much, it is a franchise that has defined a huge percentage of my life and one of the few good things I hang on to during these hard times.

P.S: Here are my first cartidge and my starter vibin in Pokémon HOME waiting for the DP remakes.

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I just saw an episode of the Pokémon anime as a kid and thought it was the greatest thing ever created. I remember it was the episode where Ash was fighting Whitney’s miltank with his totodile, other than that it’s hard to remember but I keep coming back to it because it is just so much fun and has gotten me through a lot of hardship in my life. I’m so glad I happened to see a blue crocodile fighting the embodiment of satan, and Whitney
 
I came home one day when I was 5 to find that my mum had bought me a copy of FireRed while I was at school as a surprise. That was my first Pokemon game, and I enjoyed it enough, but I don't think I really properly started to get interested in Pokemon until Gen IV. From there, I branched out into side-series games like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and managed to pick up all of the other GBA games pre-owned over time before they completely disappeared from game shops, as I wanted to make sure I could catch all of the dongle-exclusive Pokemon.

My first experience with the competitive Pokemon community was advertising Skarmory as an offensive tank on NeoSeeker and getting told I was trolling. In actual fact, I was simply a 12 year old with absolutely no idea. I got redirected to Smogon from there, so I joined the Smogon forums and Smogon Pokemon Online server as a 13 year old with absolutely no idea instead. As it has turned out, I have ended up spending more of my time on the forums and simulators socialising than indulging in the fine art of competitive play, and when I do play competitive Pokemon I usually don't take it very seriously. I barely play any cartridge Pokemon these days, though - I just cannot get myself motivated to do so anymore.
 
How I got into Pokémon ? Many years ago for my 3rd birthday my godparents have me a game I don’t remember if it was gold or silver. But I had my game boy color and I remember having fun with it. I lost my game boy a few years later my mom then bought me crystal version so I once again was able to enjoy gen 2. Later on I branched out into more Pokémon games later playing emerald and platinum, while also indulging in the anime around the same time I had each of these games. As far as competitive Pokémon (started in gen 8 ) I’m new but I’m pretty decent as I hit top 120 on ou ladder at one point. Pokémon is one of the things that bring me joy from when i was a child even now at 22. So that’s all :)
 
A long time ago, maybe when I was 11, my Dad sent over a used copy of one of the Gen 3 games and I'd eventually get into it. I sucked at RPGs though, so I played through the entire game as just my Torchic starter lol. I had no concept of strategy of team-building at the time. I also got Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team around the same time, but it'd take me years to warm up to the game and appreciate it. The formuliac structure of the Pokémon anime bored me to tears as a kid, so even though I knew of it prior to playing any of the games I didn't watch much of it. I just wanted to punch Ash in the nose!

I was introduced to Pokémon competitive play by an old friend from 2014. I learned the hard way that sticking with my favorite Pokémon wasn't effective for competitive play and ended up experimenting a bunch on Pokémon Showdown. I still have a long way to go as far as competitive play goes (HAHA) but it introduced me to a bunch of my favorite Pokémon (esp. Krookodile, Roserade, Sableye) and it remains fun for me! My love of certain Pokémon grew so much that I bought Pokémon Platinum and Pokémon White just so I can use them in the actual games!

I'm still into Pokémon today, but only for the competitive scene and the funny little guys themselves. False Swipe Gaming is a great YouTube channel that I watch somewhat regularly to learn about the history of various Pokémon in competitive play. I hold the series dear to my heart, even when I'm going on rambles about how much I dislike certain aspects of the series to my friends lol
 
Was having a hard time around February and my friend was already a long time Pokemon fan, so I decided to try Pokemon Shield and I got addicted to it. It really distracted me from all of my issues by just being fun. I've put 500 hours into it lol, and I also decided to play Pokemon X and Pokemon Ultra Sun, the latter I ended up liking more than Pokemon Shield. I suppose it's my comfort series now
 
I got into Pokemon because a friend of mine let me borrow their Gameboy and let me play their Ruby game. I fell in love with Torchic, hated Blaziken (I was really girly back then, that's like more than 15 (?) years ago), but liked it overall because of Flygon. That Christmas, my parents let me buy Leaf Green, and that's where my simping love for Dragonite started. I ended up playing the Gen 4, 5, and 7 games even if I'm a bit too old for Pokemon (at least for my peers, as they moved on to Anime / Waifus / Whatever games they play these days ;w;). Though, I did find out about Pokemon Showdown because one of my friends were bored and asked me to play with them :> (I got rekt a lot of times before "getting" it).

I think I'm still into Pokemon because I like the concept of making bonds with these "pets", and the thing that every Pokemon is kinda unique and could be a "friend", even those scary guys like Tyranitar and Giratina :D. For example, the metal birbs do share the same typing, but have very different roles... or I think they do...
 
My brother right before his emo phase (don't remember the year but I was old enough to walk talk and shit all over the place) decided to pull out the controller. and we had a ton of fun playing poke stadium but then my dad sent to live with aunt in Canada for like a week and all I can remember was Pokemon was everywhere,I loved mons so much I started stealing my older brothers DS to play BW and DPP and I have never gotten bored of mons since.
 
I was in third grade when Pokémon made its way over to the states. Like 75% of the other kids in my class I was immediately hooked. Pokémon was everywhere, I don’t know how the other 25% managed to avoid getting wrapped up in the frenzy.

While no where near poor my family didn’t have excess money so the only time I ever got anything was Christmas or my birthday, so I lived vicariously through my classmate’s cards/game boys/toys and watched the anime whenever I could.

Once my birthday rolled around I remember getting a lime green game boy color and yellow version. It was a wrap ever since then. I sit here now in the year 2021 as a 30 year old man with a fiancé, career, and place of my own. I still find time to play mons, either on showdown or having no lifed Shiny Pearl last weekend.

Pokemon has given me so much, I’m glad I caught the bug when I did a never lost it. I’ll be 65 years old, freshly retired, looking forward to gen 15 dropping.
 
damn this thread makes me nostalgic!
It’s been a while, but I’ve always been a Pokémon fan since I was child.
My first game was rubin and it was a Santa’s gift(yeah, I was a little boy). I remember, once diamond went out, my mom brought it and started playing until one day was looking something on internet and came on Smogon.
I do not remember well, but the months later I met Bloo, Haunter who forced me to play competitive into smogon scenario.
At the time, I was used to play on italian community.
After more than 10 years, with all positive and negative aspects, I’m very proud for being a Pokémon player(despite I keep this thing secretly in real life), but this game and community made me better. I met amazing people in this long journey where I know some day will end , but I will for ever bring in my heart this experience and all the person I met .
For me Pokémon first and the community meant a lot to me and help me too.
When days are bad and dark and you back home because of personal things which often happens, sometimes this game has been a sort of “heavily place”.
You meant a lot to me and I’ll be for ever grateful to Pokémon!
 
Ive been in pokemon since i discovered the internet, my first contact with the saga was pokemon fire red... in an emulator =)
I remember instaling in my oooooold phone, when i was like, 9 years old, an app that had some gba games, like castlevania aria of sorrow, metroid fusion, metal slug, aaaand pokemon fire red, i loved playing fire red all the time, i didnt understand nothing, but i enjoyed it, destroying everything with my overleveled level 80 aprox (for what i remember) blastoise (nicknamed "MetaBlaster", a combination of Meta knight, one of my fav nintendo characters then, and blaster, because i knowed in what was gonna squirtle evolve), using skull bash to all of what moved, i remember myself suffering in lavander tower because i didnt know why skull bash did 0 damage to the ghosts, and yes, im saying right, not gastly/haunter, the ghosts, somehow i didnt understand how to get the marsh badge from sabrina, of it was from silph s.a???,i dont rlly remember xD

And why im still here, well, every time that my past me bored of pokemon, or a new game realeased, or i found something intresting that had to do with pokemon, or, the most recent, founding smogon =).

Lol this made me feel realy nostalgic xD
 
My mom a lot of years ago put a bunch of games on an R4 for me and my sister to play on the DS and pokemon heart gold and platinum were some of the games on there. I have hundreds of hours on that game of heart gold and the only good mon is garchomp that i have. The reason I'm still doing pokemon is because my friend introduced me to pixelmon I eventually started using showdown a lot to test things.
 
My first game was White. I had no idea what I was doing or what were pokemans, but I loved it to bits. Sadly it was on a crappy R4 Chip that stopped working after a few months, but 3 Gens later I still love this franchise.
 
I got a copy of Gold off of a neighborhood kid when I was 5, and I already had a gameboy color somehow, so I played it and had a blast. Although I really, really didn't know what I was doing. Throughout the rest of kindergarten I managed to playground trade Red and Yellow into my collection too. Once I turned 7 I finally got a copy of Diamond for myself as a birthday gift, the first pokemon game that I didn't obtain through bartering.

It's kind of weird that I my first few games weren't anywhere near "current" when I first got them. I remember Diamond feeling so new and high-tech. The tackle animation blew my mind lol
 
Bit of a weird one but my first game was Pokepark 1 for the Wii, which was I guess how I got first familiarized with the franchise but mostly in the surface level way.

First mainline entry was a birthday gift in middle school. It was Platinum but that was brother's game technically so I only got an hour or two in, and hence I consider White my true first mainline game when I got to play it like a day later. Kinda been stuck with it ever since for better and for worse (I love all mainline games but some less equally than others and not always the ones you expect).

Fun bit of trivia I actually used to watch the fan-translations of B2W2 and watched the entirety of Pokepark 2: Wonders Beyond online in Japanese before either game got their official international release.
 
I remember really being into Yu Gi Oh around 3rd and 4th grade but always had an interest for Pokémon.
Once I had a sleepover with a friend of mine I and they showed me their game collection. That was the moment I saw the Pokémon Emerald cartridge. I thought it looked so cool and asked if I can borrow it.
I remember playing until Watson. But at that point my Wingull kept getting obliterated so I felt kinda stuck. I don't think I played any further.
The same Christmas I got Pokémon Heart Gold. Both games hold a special place in my heart eversince.
 
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