How did you get into Pokémon?

[Aizaik]

Let's talk about something that we all have in common!

1. How did you get into Pokémon?
2. Elaborate. (Or, "Why are you still into Pokémon?")

My Answers

I've been "into Pokémon" since I was a very young child, but the situation has always been a bit complicated for me.

Pokémon was a big deal at the school I grew up in, and so I was using Pokémon to connect with people before I even knew much about it. The concept completely seized me, and I never had enough Pokémon in my life. I couldn't play the games, because I didn't have a DS. I couldn't watch the anime, because we didn't have cable. I wanted both of these things for years, but I made do by playing pretend and eventually buying Pokémon cards. I also got a glimpse of the anime through my grandparent's television, and eventually through some DVD's of ~12 episodes that I got for a birthday. Any time that I wanted to relax at home but had reached my video game quota, I would lie on my stomach and analyze each card and each page of my Pokémon card binder. In a sense, though, I always felt like I was still trying to get into Pokémon.

Sometime before 2010, my mother caught wind of the "Satanic Panic" that had been targeting Pokémon during the early 2000s. She did some research via some very credible internet articles and began to voice concerns about Pokémon being related to demonology. I was about 9 and we're Christian, so, while I disagreed, I was too young to have the credibility or experience to refute her. One day she called me into her room, sat me down on the bed, and had a talk with me about the spiritual danger of Pokémon. I sat quietly, listened, and conceded. She told me that we were going to end it cold turkey and get rid of my Pokémon cards. I suggested selling them, but she didn't want for them to lead others astray, so she pulled out a shredder. I helped her to shred them.

What reawakened my old interest was Pokémon Go, really. Before I even understood it, everybody and their mother was playing Go. I would have loved to have seen that as a kid, or even now. I was late to the bus, but eventually I was able to rediscover my interest in Pokémon.

I've kept up with Pokémon because I've enjoyed doing so as much as I could have reasonably hoped to. I started with a copy of Heart Gold for my old DS that I had been gifted shortly after the Pokémon ban. I felt ecstatic the first day that I played it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and played it during longs flights and evening nights on a vacation with my mother. I have good memories with her on that trip, and Pokémon isn't the only reason why. I don't blame my mother for things; she was simply misinformed and has always had strong priorities. Now, Pokémon brings me back to simple times.

 

[yureion]

I was a couple years late to the intial party as a little kid - I remember Red/Blue coming out i forgot what grade but it wasnt for a year or 2 after my grandma/pa took me and my brother (he never got into it as hard beyond Gen I) to get complimenting copies and the following christmas got yellow, and i felt like silver/gold/crystal were right on top at most a year later. I grew up as my obsessions really only ever being wrestling, power rangers (when younger) and pokemon... wrestling and pokemon stayed...

after leaf green/fire red, emerald etc i didnt play any for a long time (outside replaying ones i owned already) cus i was more focused on life & women - now life despite being still chaotic im more use to it and getting back to all that "made me: me" and im literally playing through some games i still missed in that time (mainly never played X/Y atm, really looking forward to it after my current Ultra Moon run)

 

[てんし]

i first got into pokemon when i played the pokemon tcg game for the gbc. i played that game to death and loved it

 

[Ransei]

This was when I was in 4th grade in elementary school. It was late 2010 and Pokémon cards were being brought out everywhere. Every day at recess people kept trading and talking about Pokémon cards. This trend was inescapable. I even managed to get some Pokémon cards myself before I became familiar with Pokémon.

I would carry around several random cards hoping to get involved in some sort of social interaction with someone wanting to trade. Out of the cards I've had, there were some I kept throughout the entire time before I got into the Pokémon games.
I had a couple of cards, but this is the only one I specifically remember always having prior to my introduction to the Pokémon games.

Card

Weeks later, during some weekend in November 2010, I went to a flea market and noticed Gameboy cartridge games were being sold. Looking at the stock of games I've noticed some nice ones. Games like Warioland 4, Mario Kart Super Circuit, and F-Zero GP Legend were there, but what specifically caught my eye was Pokémon Sapphire. I didn't know what Pokémon was all about at time but it became immensely popular at the school I was in. Because of this, I wanted to try out Pokémon Sapphire just to see what Pokémon was like. It only costed $10 at the flea market and I had a Nintendo DS Lite, so I was able to get the game. All the sudden I got hooked!

My experience with the game is linked here.

Smash Bros and Pokemon

I was a big fan of Super Smash Bros Brawl before getting into Pokémon. I absolutely loved that game. When I got into Pokémon, I learned that some of the Super Smash Bros Brawl fighters and even a Super Smash Bros Brawl boss were Pokémon. Lucario, who I initially thought sucked, became my first favorite Pokémon. I was sad it wasn't in Pokémon Sapphire however. Rayquaza easily became a contender to being my favorite as it was that epic giant green worm boss from Super Smash Bros Brawl. Fun fact, before I got into Pokémon, I'd only recognize Rayquaza as a Smash Bros Brawl boss. As a nine year old, I would look at its name and decide I couldn't even begin to pronounce it. So I kept calling it "Giant Green Worm" instead. I mean, it's green, it's giant, and it dug around like a worm in that game. It's weird because Rayquaza can't even learn Dig! I was super excited when I first learned that it was actually a Pokémon in Pokémon Sapphire. I had to beg my friends to tell me where this boss Pokémon was after beating the game.

Being able to connect characters from Smash Bros Brawl to Pokémon made getting into Pokémon an even more enjoyable experience for me and they became my favorites throughout the next couple of years.

 

[explodingdaisies]

Started with Pokemon Blue back in 1998 with my Neon Green Gameboy Pocket. I actually legit caught all 150 in the pokedex. That cartridge actually went through the washing machine. Twice. Still worked. That was a lifetime ago. Since then I played every single major release except Sw/Sh.

Why am I still in mons? I mostly play on here because I enjoy the competitive aspect of it and I don't have to endlessly grind in the game to get my desired pokemon with nature, EVs, IVs, etc. Just gotta click a button and i have all that. It's also free entertainment.

 

[JustWood]

My parents Santa got me a Game Boy Color with Yellow version when I was 6 in '98. It took me forever to figure out how to exit my house, but once that happened, my mind was blown!

 

[Jerry the great]

Here's how I got into it.

Back when I was just a wee 5 year old, my mom got me a game boy advanced that had a copy of Pokemon ruby (with some other games). Of course, since they were my first ever games... I couldn't beat them. Ruby was no exception. With me being as terrible as I was at video games at the time, I only ever got past Brawly. As I got older and played more Pokemon and other series, I became increasingly more addicted to certain series. Those series were Mario, Sonic, and of course, Pokemon.

Now, as to why I still play it? Because to be honest, I can't get enough of any generation (except the recent gen 8... Ugh). We have all these evil teams, huge variety of awesome (and sadly not so awesome) Pokemon, wonderful characters, and more. As I was getting older, Pokemon games went from brutal to standard to... Way too easy. However, about a year ago, I found out about Pokemon challenges, where you handicap yourself to make it more challenging. After awhile, I started doing some of my own! As I predicted, they now feel challenging again just like in the good old days! For about two years, before I found out about Pokemon challenges, I got into the competitive scene to make Pokemon harder. However, these days, they don't feel hard, they feel cheap. So, I so rarely do competitive mons anymore. I hate having to have just the right mons, just the right held items, having to encounter just the right teams, and not be able to use held items or grind when things get too challenging. I like challenge, but only up to so much of it. So I like to be able to over level a little bit (or severely when I severely challenge myself) and use items when I'm about to lose. Generally speaking though, I just plain love RPGS! So ehh yeah. Bit of history there.

 

[Clambats]

When I was a small person, I had a friend who had one of those old fat Pikachu cards. I had no idea what a Pikachu was, but he had it and I wanted it and I was a shit, so I told him I’d be his friend if he gave it to me. So he did. And then I was not his friend. Again, I was a shit. When I took it home my dad (who was extremely religious) got to researching and decided that because Haunter was a ghost and someone on the internet had written about it, Pokémon was teaching kids to worship Satan and summon demons.... so he took away my fat Pikachu. From then on Pokémon because this unattainable thing that I always wanted, so I would sneak and watch the anime when no one was around and whatnot. I didn’t even know there were games until I was in my late teens, but I played most of them eventually. My dad probably still thinks Pikachu is the devil for all I know.

I’m still into Pokémon largely out of habit, I guess? I don’t really know. I play the new games when they come out and follow competitive Pokémon from a distance, but I can’t really say what keeps me coming back.

 

[Triangles]

TCG was my gateway drug.

 

[Coronis]

Was just a big thing when I was a kid, got my first game (Silver) for a Christmas or birthday and have had at least one of every paired version since, as well as later getting both Yellow and Red. Had a fat stack of cards (nobody at my school actually ever played the card game, it was just the collecting aspect). Have gone through times where I’ve been completely obsessed with mons and times where I’ve lost interest almost entirely (BW2 and ORAS were barely touched). Gen 4 was the peak of my interest, both in the physical games (DPP, HGSS, PMD2, Ranger 1 and 2, what a fucking gen) and competitively was the only time I ever took mons seriously.

Reason it keeps drawing me back..... I guess I really just wanna catch em all. I’ll keep buying their games as long as they keep making em.

 

[Don Honchkrorleone]

My story with Pokémon is somewhat weird and complex. When I was 5, I spent the summer in some relative's beach house. One day, at morning I remember a strange cartoon airing at their place's TV that I have never seen before. There was this weird guy with scratches on his face, a mermaid, and the creature I became fascinated with:

My fourth favorite Pokémon, and the first one that I saw

Yes, that neglected magnificent beast (right when it evolved iirc). I loved its design so much that I kept watching the cartoon, then it said the name "Pokémon". I wanted to know what was that so, when I returned home, I started watching it, and I was ADDICTED to that shit, and to worsen the situation, there was a promotion with toys, pogs and a sticker album. Even my 6th birthday party was Pokémon-themed. And to make matters even weird, I had no idea it was based on a game. I kept watching and watching, even though merchandise, and eventually around 2006 (when I first got a home PC, but the internet was of awful quality), I discovered the very first Pokémon game which addicted into this poison me even more: Pokémon Crater! I played that thing too much in fact, and I thought Pokémon games were only that way (I grew up without videogames because family never liked them).

All changed, however, when I saw a kid in my school playing a 2nd gen game in his GBC in 2007. I asked to watch him play, and it was Pokémon! It looked so much better than Crater that I decided to get myself that (I had no idea GBA or DS games even existed at that point, although the anime and Crater have shown Pokémon that weren't on the game), but had no clue on how. Some months later, I won a spelling bee contest and, three days later in a local flea market, I accidentally came accross an old turquoise GBC with a black cart on it. The cart had a Ho-Oh sticker. I knew I had to buy it, and so I got my first official game: Pokémon Gold in Japanese! Of course, I knew no Japanese, so played only through trial and error. My internet was shit and I didn't know how to search things back then, so I got stuck for ages in Ilex Forest without knowing I had to Cut the tree, so I became frustrated that I stopped playing that game, though still followed the anime and bought the toys. One day, when I first went to a friend's house, he had a N64 and had a copy of Stadium 2. It was alright, but haven't played that for ages. Also remember, this is mid-2000s.

One random day, a kid from my class lent me a disc with supposed pc games, saying it had a Pokémon game in it. It had inside a GBA emulator and a Pokémon Ruby rom in Portuguese with some English parts. It was really interesting that, at my first ever playthrough, I got a shiny Treecko, but I thought the game was bad and restarted. After I got the regular one, I started playing Ruby. It was a blast, I loved (and still love) that game, and I played EVERYTHING I could in that, eventually reaching over 500 hours. I knew legitimately nothing back then, so once I became pissed that my Gulpin's Sludge wasn't damaging magnemite. I actually replayed with the very first team I made twice: Once in my first OR replay, and actually the start of this month. Not an exactly replica due to the movesets and stuff (I remember my Sceptile was Sassy, but had no idea what the hell that meant). A picture taken recently:

OC gang remastered

Side note: my internet eventually got (somewhat) better, so when that happened I FINALLY was able to discover how to get the empty spaces of my dex (the Regis), and not only I discovered rom sites that I downloaded Fire Red and (my favorite Pokémon game) PMD Red, but also found out what I had to do with my Japanese copy. I FINALLY beat Japanese Gold with a team of Feraligatr/Haunter/Hypno/Venomoth/my first Pokémon (I HAD to lol)/Shellder and I had a lot of fun. Around the same time, I also managed to steal the copy of Pokémon TCG for GBC some kid in my school had.

But then comes the kicker: Around 2008 I started to deepen my friendship with the Stadium 2 guy. He had gone to another school and yadda yadda yadda, but one day he came to my house with a Nintendo DS. I was 14 at the time, and saw his copy of Pearl. I WANTED it, but my family is somewhat poor and never liked video games, but as I was approaching my 15th birthday, I asked my parents a DS and a Pokémon game. They had to abide (after all, 15 is considered a special age here, and I didn't want any birthday party which I was supposed to have, only the DS was in my wish list). I bought the Dialga/Palkia DS edition that came with Leaf Green cart, and with that I got a Pokémon Diamond cart (I wanted Platinum but that friend convinced me to not get it as he had Pearl, and I was an idiot at the time). Some days later my father also bought me an Explorers of Time cart. I spent SO MANY DAMN TIME in those games. I loved and still love them, with a full dex in my 800+ hours play (except Ponyta and Rapidash), and also a living Dex in Time. I still knew jackshit about type and etc, so much that I had Embargo on my Honchkrow from my ingame team. Eventually I was also able to get an R4, and by that time I was more used to piracy sites, so I played Almia. With a DS, I also met more people that played Gen IV, and some of them wanted to battle. Neither of us knew nothing, and to try cheating, I searched on internet ways to build the best teams. I finally arrived on this site, but only as a lurker to the Dex. I legit only joined Smogon in 2010 (10 years this August!) after I heard about the BW games, and because of the leaks and speculation thread. And the rest is history.

So that's how I got into Pokémon: from a neglected magnificent beast at a random day at the beach that captivated my attention, anime and merchandise, a knock-off game, a Japanese GBC cart in mid-2000s, a semi-translated ROM, and finally a 15-year old gift. As for why I'm still on it? Well, Pokémon was (and still is) a big part of me. When I feel stressed because of PhD or life, nothing is more calming and refreshing than replaying a rom with Pokémon I never played before, or to watch the anime up to Sinnoh saga. It just comforts me, and I hope that once Ohmori is kicked out of GF for creating atrocious dumpster fires (legit, Sun ALMOST anihilated all my interest on Pokémon from how fucking awful it was), I still hope there will be a game that will make me feel what I did playing Ruby for the first time.

 

[stonerchris]

Well, first you should all know, I am old as dirt. I was in high school when Pokemon was first released here in Canada. There was quite a buzz, both for the game and anime, even among high schoolers, which quickly faded with older kids for the most part. I bought pokemon red and enjoyed it, and later got yellow. Anime was relatively new to us at that time, and I just became interested in the designs and overall concept of Pokemon, as a young kid I loved catching bugs just like the game's creator. Some time later I stumbled upon smogon, and the iteration of "showdown" at the time, uh, I don't think it was even netbattle then...I forget...there were no graphics, just text. Smogon forums were a lot of non-pc fun. chaos, dweedle, umbreon had a swastika. I dunno, it's all a haze, check my username. Hello to anyone who remembers those days! Good times. Anyway, it was then I realized how interesting competitive battling can be. I got hooked, and over the years spent a lot of time playing on there even though I was not (and am not) really into other video games. Most video games stress me out, I like text-based ones without frantic controller mashing. I played ruby and emerald on cart (where I bred my first perfect-iv pokemon, a treecko, who I still have now, as a Sceptile named Sweetleaf. Currently living in Pokemon Home and praying it doesn't fuck up and delete him) and the corresponding smogon metagame, until life got in the way and I forgot pokemon. I missed most of generation 4, and all generation 5, then when I heard about x/y I bought it it and a ds got into it again. For the most part, I now only play random battles on showdown, but I do enjoy the 1v1 rated battles on Pokemon Sword cart too.

 

[Astra]

I was in a Best Buy for some trivial reason for me like getting a new vacuum or something, and my mom and I were strolling through the video game aisle. She wasn't into video games at all, though she pointed out to me that the dragon on a certain game packaging looked pretty cool. It was Pokemon White, and she let me get it. Considering the fact that Pokemon caused me to branch out into all of the other games I play, I pretty much have to thank my mom for really getting me into what I enjoy today, let alone Pokemon.

 

[CobsonYaoi]

I got into Pokemon when I was 4 years old, I saw the HGSS TGC packs with Cyndaquil, Chikarita, and Totodile on it. When I turned 7 I started going to a Pokemon club at my library to trade some pokemon cards, then one day I saw 2 Guys that trading a Scyther and a Kangaskhan (He wasted a master ball on it LMAO) in Pokemon X and Y. My mom knew I wanted a Pokemon game so she bought me a used 2DS and Pokemon Y for Christmas. The next year my Grandma got me Pokemon Omega Ruby (The best Pokemon game don't @ me) when I visited her for spring break. Now Pokemon has felt boring to me ever since USUM released. VGC is the only thing I am still interested in.

 

[SOMALIA]

My grandpa in Somalia told me to come his pkmn lab and then gave me 3 options of pkmn and I chose bulbasuar and trained it. Became named venusaurmaster shortly afterwards and then became pro pkmn player.

 

[yureion]

i first got into pokemon when i played the pokemon tcg game for the gbc. i played that game to death and loved it

This game was so frustrating LOL. I loved it, but there was battles I felt like "OK, yeah I got this finally, I'ma mess people UP!" [couple battles later gets my ass handed to me by an NPC] "where is that Dragon Warrior Monsters/Pokemon Crystal copy again? fuck this!"

 

[EV]

A friend knew about the game while it was still in Japan. We used to go to Chinatown in Seattle and buy Pokemon finger puppets and play Pokemon name-games at recess to indoctrinate the other children. Come 6th grade, Red and Blue spread like wildfire. And I was there at the Factoria Mall in Bellevue when the TCG debuted, back when Wizards of the Coast published it and owned brick-and-mortar stores. I pecked my opponent's Onix to death with my Doduo. He was piiissed.

 

[Tenshi]

I'm the youngest of 4 siblings and my oldest brother had all 6 gen 1 and 2 games though Silver got stolen before I was born. I ended up getting all of the gb and gba games he had(also including Golden Sun, Yugioh dark duel stories, the Zelda Oracle games, and pokemon Pinball as well as way later on we found his old cartridge for the pokemon tcg gbc game) as hand-me-downs so I had gen 1, Gold, and Crystal around the times I started playing games when I was extremely little. I ended up playing Gold and Crystal first and I never stopped playing. Funnily playing pokemon is how I figured out how to do a lot of mental maths as a kid so there's a benefit I got out of playing :p

 

[p0ip0le]

i got a few pokemon cards from a burger king promotion when i was like 4. i think i had some shinx line cards? and some of those card holder things and i thought they were neat. plat and heartgold were my first games, played the shit out of them, then in 7th grade i saw some ppl playing comp so i joined them

 

[Karoshi]

My friend in elementary school was one of the few who actually feel for the hype when the series first released. Had a strategy guide with all the Pokemon, both games, hundreds of packs of cards, etc. I didn't own it but he let me play on his game during recess as I ran around the safari zone catching him guys even getting him a Kangaskhan. I don't know how long it was until Christmas but my dad bought me a Game Boy Color with no batteries and a wall charger that was super finicky with Pokemon Blue. Had to play super close to the wall and stay completely still or the "handheld" would lose all power and die immediately. I even remember my first team (Venasaur, Nidoking, Duotrio, Dewgong, Marowak, Weezing) when I did finally beat the game. I didn't know what I was doing, hell I thought "Aurora Beam" was the best attack in the game and Dewgong was the strongest since it looked cool and beat Lance and Blue single handedly. Needless to say I was a dumb kid.

I'm still into it 'cause the games are simple and fun RPGs. I like all the 'mons (except 3) and even competitive with all its problems is a nice time killer. The lore of the series is interesting to learn about and it is just a fun experience.

 

[War Incarnate]

I don't really remember how I got into pokemon, I think it was back in 2012 when I got my first set of pokemon cards (Plasma Storm? I don't exactly remember). This came with my first EX card (Black Kyurem), and since then, I've been a decent fan of pokemon. First pokemon game was Ultra Sun, played the hell out of them, and it wasn't until 6th grade that I started playing competitive pokemon. Plain and simple.

 

[Mavis]

my uncle got me a copy of fire red for christmas. it was a turbulent time for seven year old bkdrew, so I secluded myself away in my room for years to come and developed a fond love for gens 3-5 as I poured thousands of hours into those beloved creatures.

somewhere in 2014-2015, someone on a Minecraft server I played on asked me if I knew what Smogon was, since I was so I to Pokemon. curiousity led me down the rabbit hole that led me to become an ORAS OU mainer, gaining a reputation in my high school for being one of the best pokemon battlers there. I earned the nickname of "bird keeper", due to my love for mono-Flying teams, which is where the "bk" in "bkdrew" comes from.

nowadays, I funnel my time into my RU contributions, because I feel like the playerbase of the tier gave me a home I didn't otherwise have. I stick around because I love my friends, and the sort of contribution work I do nowadays is the exact thing I dreamed of when I was younger, scribbling away in notebooks and hiding them under my bed. young bkdrew would be proud of me now, and that gives me a lot of motivation.

 

[doipy hooves]

My first experience was with my daycare's Nintendo 64 with Stadium/Snap/Hey you pikachu. My rental team in Stadium was eeveelutions + legendary birds, don't think anyone looked at moves or stats. None of us were able to beat the elite four, minigames were pretty fun though. Snap was neat. There was no microphone for pikachu, but there was a save past the intro, so while we thought talking into the P4 port would work, pikachu managed to progress on its own by getting angry and zapping stuff. They also had pokedex books, though I don't think we actually got anything out of it.

EDIT: We also had puzzle league.

Other memories

• Reading random manga from the library, starting off with "the best of Yellow" that pretty much had the start battle with Lorelei and the final battle with Lance. It was cool. I found "diamond/pearl adventure" funny, though I mainly remember the op torrent piplup fighting.
• Playing Crystal on emulator and losing completely in the battle tower against thunderbolt lapras. That file got all the way to Will somehow.
• Playing SoulSilver on cart as my first legit game, and being astonished that cyndaquil learned ember early at like level 8 instead of level 12. Pokewalker was sick, wifi was great once I figured it out. Clair and Kimono Girls were surprisingly hard. I played this over a long time.
• My first step into competitive was getting challenged on showdown via transformice, assembling a team and getting stomped by a Dugtrio. Not even Charizard was fast enough to land a steel wing/fly. Then in trying to get good I found smogon, learned about Shell Smash Baton Pass Smeargle, but forgot about Showdown.
• I don't know how or why, but I downloaded Pokemon Online at some point and remember my losses clearly. With my first game, my Bulbasaur was up against Sash Smeargle going for trick room spore. I had put Sleep Talk on my Bulbasaur for some reason and it was about to work, but then I woke up and died. I recall the Bulbasaur had all evs divided equally, and there was an iron tail porygon2, monferno or chimchar, and Raichu. My lasting regret is using Fly/Surf instead of Grass Knot on a Kabutops while he swords danced and swept.
• Playing Black, getting a perfect max atk shiny riolu through some youtube video/DNS exploit, winning the game with it + event Mewtwo, putting Aura Sphere over its Drain Punch, and replacing that with Brick Break a while later as my real first step into competitive. Found pokecheck/pokemondb/a showdown server around this time. I was still pretty green to the internet and ended up learning a lot from those days in the chatrooms, and it's hard to think back. My name was a deep brick maroon-red back then, today it looks like a washed out pink. Time takes its toll.
• Playing, grinding, and abandoning random nuzlockes, but importantly using a very 'good' Thick Fat azumarill in my first one in Emerald. I don't remember exactly what it did, but it was cute, tanky, and actually lived through. From then on I tried to use Azumarill ingame, and W2/X made it easy to do so. That experience is why Azumarill is my favourite mon. When Gen 6 first came out, I literally cried tears of joy in real life when I read that Azumarill got +10 to Special Attack. Happiest moment of my life.

tl;dr I'm still into pokemon because I'm in too deep and know too much. The drama is funny too.

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

I got into Pokemon when I was 7 years old (I am currently 17, completing 18 this June). It was Christmas and my brother and I got gifts. My gift, specifically, was a Nintendo DS and a copy of Pokemon HeartGold (along with New Super Mario Bros).

I really loved playing on it, as, back then, Nintendo DS was very "advanced technology" (where I am, Nintendo isn't very popular (PlayStation is pmuch the most popular) and so it's a bt hard to find something good for Nintendo, let alone on a reasonable price, HGSS here is around 100 bucks. NOTE: I am not telling you where I am, I sort of have a paranoia about revealing my real-life location) and so, as you can notice, I found my Nintendo DS as pure magic. Granted, like most, I wasn't exactly the best player, but I quickly picked up. I also got, at one point, BW cartridge (I no longer have it) and also loved playing on it.

I have probs replayed HGSS over 100 times, likely because I have never really had many friends (people almost universally treat me as if I were autistic, when I am not) and most of my "friends" hanged out with me only because of stuff like my DS, ironically.

Anyways, back on topic, my enjoyment for Pokemon also got boosted when I joined Pokemon Showdown in 2015. Granted, I no longer go on there as often as I used to (there were times where I'd spend around 10 hours there, again, "friends") but I generally play Ubers there.

I still play Pokemon up to this day, though more in-game than competitive, and helped with the creation of an updated in-game tier list for Black and White that got released not a while ago. HGSS remains one of my favorites, along with FRLG. I also enjoy USUM quite a bit and Gen 5 is good too. I do have a bt of distain for RSE and DPPt but I haven't played them in a while so.

I only wish there were people here where I live that also liked the games. At most people either have "watched" the anime (and not beyond season one, the seasons that are dubbed in my language are very limited) or claim to be Pokemon fans through Pokemon GO (By the way, I dislike both the anime and Pokemon GO. I have never read the manga), so I am pretty much a "loner" where I live in terms of Pokemon.

 

[Diophantine]

When I was 5 and younger, my babysitter would always bring her Gameboy Colour round and play Pokemon Yellow. Sometimes she'd let me play with it. I vividly remember being in Saffron City and using a Dewgong lol. I thought it was so cool. My parents were usually quite strict with letting me play games, but for my 6th birthday they got me a Gameboy Advance SP with Finding Nemo. At Christmas that year, they got me Pokemon Sapphire. My starter was Torchic, but only because I was so excited that I just kept spamming A. Most people get a dog as a divorce present, I guess I got Pokemon lmao.

Back in the day, watching TV shows in order of episodes was hard, so my viewing experience of the Pokemon anime was whatever Toonami had on at the time or whichever pirate DVDs I could get a hold of. I had the first few episodes (up until and including Mt. Moon), the few episodes surrounding Sabrina and Lavender Town, Bye Bye Butterfree (which made me cry lol) and the Ponyta racing episode. I also remember reading the Pokemon Adventures manga when I was around 10. I thought that was really good because it reflected the games a lot better than the anime.

Other kids at my school and in my area played Pokemon, and we would battle and trade with each other. Life was so bliss back then. I remember completing the Hoenn Dex, my first time beating the Pokemon League, battling and trading with my friends, arguing over which Legendary or starter was the best, playing through the Battle Tower non-stop. I played the TCG with my sister and one of my friends, and the three of us got pretty into it for a short period of time. Swampert-EX was my favourite card to use, and I'd always try to build a deck around that. The games I had were Sapphire, Leaf Green, Diamond, Platinum, Gold (found it for £5 second hand!) and Mystery Dungeon Blue. I also had Emerald and Pearl in Japanese, since my mum thought it would be an easy way to learn it.

Playing Pokemon as a child helped with my English skills. I could read and write perfectly fine, but my descriptive writing was bland. I only ever used basic words and phrases to describe things. Reading Pokedex entries (and finding out different names for colours from the towns lmao) really helped me with this.

I stopped playing when Heart Gold and Soul Silver were released. At the time, I was more into other things like sports and PS3 games, and none of my friends played Pokemon anymore. I came back to Pokemon 7 years later when Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby came out. It had me feeling really nostalgic so I picked up Alpha Sapphire that Christmas and played through it using all my favourite Pokemon from when I was a kid. I was surfing through Youtube and found competitive Pokemon pretty compelling. Probably because all my Yugioh friends stopped playing that lol. I remember building my first team of Mega Gardevoir, Raichu, Rapidash, Tangrowth, Swampert and Hydreigon and looking for Wi-Fi battles.

I joined Smogon at the end of 2016 just to see what it was about, but I didn't really play on it until Autumn 2017. I found a good bunch of friends and I had many fun times messing around here. What keeps me into competitive Pokemon is nostalgia combined with the challenge that comes from competitive play. Building fun teams, improving my play, etc. The friends too, ofc. I gave my younger sisters my old Pokemon games and they love them.