What are your earliest memories with Pokemon, do you remember how you were introduced to the series?
What are your earliest memories with Pokemon, do you remember how you were introduced to the series?
What are your earliest memories with Pokemon, do you remember how you were introduced to the series?
I thought it was a good conversation idea ;_;
Then why didn't you engage with it?
Because I don't like to tag myself, I figured if I waited a bit someone would say something and I could say my piece without samegayging
It's not samegayging if it's your OP, but it's moving now so whatever.
I assume most people got in to it through the anime, but maybe newer fans aren't.
The first Pokemon I saw was a Ponyta card from the original set.
Okay I'll contribute
>Be me 8. Year is 1988
>Everyone at school is talking about and playing Pokemon red/blue.
>Convince my grandpa to buy me pokemon red.
>Fire it up and pick Charmander because I'm a kid and fire is cool.
>Played the game to absolute death and had a trade friend so we completed the Pokedex including a new he got legitimately through one of the few American distribution events.
>Still play every new pokemon game to this day and while the last few releases have been just okay I still love this series and probably always will.
>1988
Bruh, are you a time traveler? Pokemon Red/Blue released in 1996.
>1988
nice try reddit
redditor
why did you bring it to the beach
>5yo
>learned how to read
do you have down syndrome? why did it take you so long to learn how to read?
>many dildos found
gay
yellow for crystal is such a steal
This isn't necessarily like my earliest memory or anything, but I have this really great memory of going on a school trip over a few days and pretty much everyone who was still into pokemon (this was the gen 3 days), brought their GBA and games along and it basically turned into a battle club. It was real fun and I haven't had an experience like that since.
The first time I saw anything Pokemon related was browsing a toy catalogue that had an ad for red and blue. Not even screencaps from the games but just the box arts. The page also had pictures of the gen 1 starters. For some reason I understood the evolution concept despite not knowing anything about the series, so I figured out that Charmander grows into Charizard. But then I was ahead of my time and thought that Bulbasaur and Squirtle fused to form Blastoise. I remember wanting the games but I dont remember why I wanted them, like I said, they didnt tell anything about the games, apart from something along the lines of "The world wide sensation arrives!".
Later that year the anime began airing and my enthusiasm went with a more regular path. Watch the show, get the goods/cards and then get the games. The games were a culture shock for sure, as I only played platformers and shit beforehand.
My brother got Pokémon crystal and a new gbc and he gave me his copy of yellow when I was 3 it was my second game I owed I never beat it I lost it at the beach 🙁
I believe I should set the scene
>be me
>5yo
>haven't even had my first day of school yet
>spend my days exploring the neighborhood and my house
Many dildos and porn magazines found to everyone's chagrin
>nobody in my neighborhood locks their doors
>some just have a screen door so bugs don't get in
Anyways
>I wonder the neighborhood, as I do
>enter some house to see if one of my park friends are home
>see weird brick on table
>what's this?
>it's a Gameboy with Pokemon Yellow
>first time seeing a video game that wasn't on my dad's computer
>couldn't read
>played till someone got home, couldn't even get past the sleeping old man btw
>asked them what this thing was
>told it was a Gameboy and to go home before my parents start to worry
I spent the next two years saving up for a Gameboy, but I wound up getting a game boy advance instead.
I actually learned how to read just so I could understand what was happening when I played the Pokemon yellow at my neighbor's house.
It was a better time.
My first game was yellow when I was around 5-6. I remember being stuck inside Red's house for 2 days. I also thought the party of 6 you carry was permanent so I was thinking I had to be really careful on deciding which Pokemon to catch. I should have read the instruction booklet but I was only 5 and hyper fixated on the gameboy screen. I didn't even know what instruction booklets were. Eventually I broke through everything and ended up beating and replaying the game over again maybe 3 times. I encountered a kid at a laundromat my parents used to go to. He was the son of the laundromat owner and I traded my Yellow for his Crystal for about 2 weeks or so. I was mindblown at all the enhancements it had (better sprites, day/night cycle, day/night wild music, fully colored overworld, etc). Crystal has just come out a year after I had gotten Yellow. Experiencing the upgrade in quality that a sequel Pokemon game could have at such a young age solidified my fixation/addiction with the series forever. It was the first thing in my life that caught my interest on a personal level.
I wanted to play at a park after school with friends but everyone would go home to watch Pokémon instead. I heard about the game but wasn’t playing.
I eventually caved in not wanting to be by myself at the park after school and watched it at home. The first episode I wound up watching was actually the Lt Surge ep and I dug it.
kid at daycare let me borrow his copy of red while he borrowed my copy of super marioland 2.
Eventually beat it, we swapped back, told him i was gunna buy the game and trade my team over, kid seemed ok with it, afterword's, asked him to trade my team back and he already wiped the game and was replaying it...
Like come on...
But my most favorite memory was helping a kid a few grades under me on the bus beat sapphire. From that my love of gen 3 was cemented.
When I went back to school after the summer I noticed kids in the playground all had these cards and my friend gave me some of her doubles and I fell in love with the concept and designs.
It was the original base set cards.
First Pokemon game was my brother's Pokemon Red.
But I never even finished it. Watched the anime a ton more.
I got a gameboy pocket with yellow, tetris, and star wars in 1999
I'd never played a game that wasn't on NES or anything like an RPG before that, and I didn't understand what to do or how to play. I told my mom that I hated the game because it was boring. eventually my cousin showed me how to take the pokeball off the table and pokemon became my favorite thing for a few years.
I was 15 when it hit my country. My earliest memories is of finding Red in-store, buying it and playing it, then discovering there was this whole toys/cards/cartoon/movie shit behind it.
I got blue and a gameboy color for christmas of '98 while my sister got red. Played the shit out of both red and blue cause my sister never got into it and just traded the exclusive pokemon over.
For me it was the commercial with the bus driver
I got Red, my brother got Blue.
A classmate asked to borrow my Gameboy Pocket during recess. I, an absolute moron at the time who thought people never lie or steal for real, trusted him and wandered off to play with someone else. I went back like 10 minutes later and he was gone but my system was there... but empty. He said someone else took it but didn't say who and then claimed he could buy me a new one if I gave him my pretzel money to replace it.
I'm gonna admit I gave him a couple quarters at first before realizing he was lying and then started hiding my pretzel money when he was around.
The anime looked fun
Years later I played Yellow
Got Pokémon Blue in 1998. The Pokemon show was huge, I remember one kid brought a big folder of printed out pokemon pictures and we all made tracings of them at lunch time. Used to be amazing seeing all the new pokemon when you watched the show, even if you played the games you never saw everything because of how esoteric some parts were. You genuinely didn't know if the pokemon someone was telling you about was real or something they made up
I honestly don't understand how new fans of pokemon were made after 2001 or whatever due to how soulless it's become. No one plays the new games blind, all the interesting secrets are spoiled before the games are even out and the games have been designed to be blitzed through without needing to solve any puzzles or explore any towns to find clues where to go or what to do next.
>I honestly don't understand how new fans of pokemon were made after 2001 or whatever due to how soulless it's become.
The new generation is as soulless as the games are. And TPC is riding the vestiges of Kanto.
>6 years old in 1999 (Europe)
>elder sister buys me a TCG base set booster pack
>what the frick is Pokemon, what is a trading card game, oh well, the pictures are cool (I still remember the holofoil Magneton) and the cards have words in this weird language on them (English)
>sister has been studying English at school and helps me understand what the cards say, also the anime starts airing on TV and some of the neighbourhood kids have Game Boys with Red/Blue, most kids at kindergarten become obsessed with the franchise in one way or another (getting a few TCG cards to ogle at and watching the TV show at the very least are affordable to all), I never stood a chance
>spend the next few years not just starting school but completely immersing myself in anything Pokemon I could get my hands on (which is to say mostly TCG cards and some toys), I hated getting up early on weekends but I had to do it if I wanted to watch Pokemon on Saturday mornings. I spent hours upon hours just hanging out in the playground watching the neighbourhood kids play the new Gold & Silver games
>family buys me a Game Boy Advance for Xmas 2001, but no Pokemon; instead I get Super Mario Advance and Wario Land 4, setting me on the disastrous path of becoming not just a little Pokemon nerd but a dirty gamer
>later get Crystal and also buy a used copy of Yellow with my allowance money
That's about it for the cliff notes version.
My first memory is playing my brother's copy of Gold up to the point of the battle against Silver in Azalea and because I only used a Quilava I would just get stuck there against his Croconaw
he had to buy two copies of a few games (he was 10 years older than me) and use them as decoys because I would just reset over them constantly
First Pokémon game I had to myself was his copy of Emerald he left behind when he moved out to do whatever delinwuent shit when I was like 5 or 6 I think
good times
>What are your earliest memories with Pokemon
Playing Pokemon Blue before bed with a small lamp over Christmas break
Using Bubblebeam on shit with my Wartortle in Mt Moon.
Reading through the first Pokedex book to see what moves things learned to see if I should bother to use it.
Can't even find a picture of the guide book I had.
it was mostly Salmon colored i think
You reminded me of this book that I read cover to cover so many times the binding was falling out.
Anyone remember these magazines with weird fan art covers that used to have a catalogue for all the cards and how much they'd sell for? There was a DBZ one by the same company too
Those all look cursed
it was a simpler time
I remember seeing these on the shelves at the store. Were these the ones that had the page in the back of modified joke cards people would submit to get featured? I remember someone making an arbok pun card called reebok
>it's the year 1998 or 1999 and I'm in kindergarten
>I changed school this year because I learnt a swear word in the previous one and that was enough for my dad to decide it had a bad influence on me
>recess time
>approach a random kid, can't recall if I knew him beforehand
>he's playing with pokémon cards
>not playing the tcg, actually pretend-fighting like they're action figures
>the three cards I distinctly remember were a diglett, a charmeleon and a staross
>he lends me the diglett so we can play together
>I'm a spoiled five years old who saw a Pokémon card for the first time so obviously, I steal it
>I'm stupid enough to brag about my new card to my mother, not realizing it's obvious It's stolen good
>she scalds me about stealing, respecting your friends and so on
>later the SAME FRICKING DAY
>dad comes back home with a fresh booster
>IDK how she got a hold of him the same day with 1998 fricking phones
>I'll always remember opening pic_related
I love my parents
One or two Christmas later, my dad got me Gold in English through one of those company organized "bring your family" Christmas events, I never got far but spent enough time trying random bullshit to get a typhlosion before reaching Violet city
Which I wouldn't do before I traded my game for a French silver cartridge
Clumsy me, forgot the king
Damn you opened up a holo Nido during Kinder? Nice
>staross
Well, you got me, this one is similar enough to the English name for me to slip sometimes
Staross is obviously the cooler name tho
I'm Belgian, tho, frick the frog-eating frousses
>obviously, I steal it
What part of any of that made it obvious? Little kids are psychos, but even then you gotta teach them that not everything in this world is for them. Did you ever return the card?
As stated in my greentext, I was a spoiled child, no self control and little to no empathy for my peers when my hobbies were concerned
That's what makes it obvious that I was gonna steal it
I mean, my mother heard about me stealing from one of my first new friends and decided to reward me by getting my dad to me a pack the exact same day, it felt like pure ecstasy to me but that's not how you teach your five yo son some discipline
And no, I don't recall ever giving it back, which means I either used it to the point where it was barely recognizable as a cardboard rectangle with a pokéball on the back or gave it away to my nephew with a shit-ton of other random commons and bulk rares after entering college
It was obviously a dick move in retrospect but I can't be bothered feeling bad about such a minor misdemeanor 20+ years later
Plus I'm 90% sure the dude stole a bunch of cards from me when we got into MTG five years later
I suppose it makes more sense when you word it like that. Didn't really register with me how strange your parents' way of handling the situation was on first read.
>do you remember how you were introduced to the series?
charizard, unironically
6yo in 1998. in no particular order
>see red/blue featured in a toy catalog
>stumbled across the ending of EP28 pokemon fashion flash while channel surfing
>noticed someone playing with an aerodactyl figure in the school bus
was 10 years old in 98' in america. literally peak pokemania. Suddenly everyone had the cards and I made my parents buy me a gameboy for just this game. Literally every single kid in middle school had the cards or the game. Black kids, white kids, rich kids, poor kids. All of them. I traded a black kid my zapdos for a bent charizard card. I remember laughing at the arab corner store owners for digging through their own store inventory boosters and selling charizard cards for a hundred bucks next to the cigarettes and boner pills.
jesus christ what a different time it was. there was a video rental store in my neighborhood floor to ceiling with VHS tapes, NES games, and for whatever reason the most pogs I've seen anywhere in my life under the glass counter along with individual pokemon cards. I wish I could go back just to see and smell. that building is some gayass autoshop now.
that black kid stole the charizard card. it was bent in the struggle
Got my brothers old Blue version but was too moronic to play it, then watched the ashime and saw how short Jessie’s skirt was and thought to myself even as a child wow what a bawd I hope I see more of her
Earliest I remember was being 4-5, and one day seeing my step brother at the time watching the anime. Then pretty soon after, my cousin had a spare copy of Crystal and a Gameboy Color, and he just gave them to me, and I've been hooked ever since.
>had to be like 2000
>was already into the anime but never played any game
>my father buy me a 200in1 cardridge at the flea market included games pokemon red and blue
>it doesnt work at all
>go back refund it and my dad asks me to pick another game
>pick pokemon gold
>the anime wasnt that far so im amazed at every new pokemon
>i used to start new games without saving to test out different starters
one time i find a shiny hoothoot but i get stuck at the bellsprout tower cause i and the oppponent run out of damaging attacks so i just turn the gameboy off
I remember restarting my Ruby save file because I had Treeko and couldn't beat Maxie. My mom was like "just train instead!" but I restarted and grabbed Torchic. I think I did that with BW2 as well, but from Oshawott to Tepig because I couldn't beat the Victory Road rival fight.
Bought a DS with Pearl and Phantom Hourglass
>5
>family member gets a copy of Red from a friend they dont want
>get to play it
>play through it, don't really think about stuff and didn't have any favorites
>had a team that had something like blastoise/kadabra/zapdos/haunter
>gen 2 comes out shortly after and enjoy it a lot more
>first favorite mon
I remember getting Leaf Green & Emerald at a flea market when I was very young but I do remember the save being at a Battle Frontier with Raichu in the party
After I made a new safe I remember encountering a wild Latios before I even got the 3rd badge (and it never happened again), I've never knew why it happened
If i have it all correctly:
I watched the anime first
Then played Stadium at a friends house
Then i got Diamond, my first mainline game
My first game was pokemon X, i got it at gamestop sometime in my mid teens. I never played pokemon as a kid. I loved gen 6, beat it, deleted my save, beat it again.
Bought alpha sapphire, ultra moon, then diamond and soul silver, black and black 2, blue, ruby, and silver / crystal.
All told I have about 1k hours split across every generation (excluding 8 and 9 as pokemon games)
21yo Zoomer here, I got Pokemon HeartGold pretty much upon release so I was like 8 or 9. Idek how I got to that, probs because of the anime?
I chose totodile and I basically one man army'd the whole game with it. Killed almost every legendary on the way, half of them not knowing they were supposed to be rare, half of them on accident. Also I wasted my masterball on Raikou so I also killed Ho-Oh when I ran out of Balls. Killed the Sudowoodoo, the red gyarados etc etc. My feraligatr was good enough to solo the game tho. Dont remember my hall of fame but I think it was like a lvl 50ish Feraligatr, a lvl 15 hoothoot, the togetic at maybe lvl 20, ghastly lvl 14ish, lvl 41 raikou and another trash Pokemon.
I just kept swaping in other pokemons and used them as bait to revive or heal my feraligatr and it worked out surprisingly well. Before Red I caught the Lugia and the respawned pokemon like Ho-oh, Suicune etc and trained them up to around 60-70 with my Feraligatr at lvl 92. took me a lot of tries and refining my strategy until I eventually won. I had like over 300hrs on my safe but I still for some reason deleted the safe eventually and started anew. I kinda regret not saving my Pokemon...
also I struggled so much with the 3rd arena that a friend traded me over his hacked lvl 100 arceus and I ended up still losing because that homosexual didnt obey me so he just took a nap mid fight or refused to attack and that miltank had her way with me. Eventually beat the arena without the arceus and handed it back to my friend lol...
>1998
>Fourth Grade
> Getting ready for school, turn on the local Fox station and catch the ending credits of the anime, Mew flies across the screen.
Had no idea what show I missed but I was instantly fascinated. Started waking up early everyday to watch it everyday before school.
A few months later I discovered that Lunchables had Pokémon "cards" you could cut out of the back of the box. Me and my friends would bring them to school and show them off, even though there were only like seven cards in total.
Eventually I got Blue version and never looked back. I remember doing the Missingno glitch, almost crashing my game with a Gameshark, seeing the movie in theaters and getting my Ancient Mew card, the Burger King gold cards, the Pokégods, getting gym badges at the Barnes and Noble TCG events. . .
Peak Pokémania was absolute kino and I was the perfect age to experience it, I feel bad for any fan of the series that didn't get to.
Mew was what sold me too. My habitual lying cousins would talk about it and then I had a moment where I was like hol up, it's real? There's actually a super secret in a game that no one knew about till now? Mew will always be the top legendary for me because it literally WAS a real life legend come true.
Exactly, totally blew my mind when I found out you could get it in the game. I never knew you could legit get it in game at the time, I thought it was only through GameShark.
>Peak Pokémania was absolute kino and I was the perfect age to experience it, I feel bad for any fan of the series that didn't get to.
I have never seen anything in my life since that even remotely resembles '98-'00 pokemania. There was something utopian about it, at least from the perspective of a young child.
funnily enough the closest thing I can think of that resembled late 90s pokemon craze was covid. every billboard, every business, every restaurant, deeply effected all schools that had to make rules about it, all over television and everyone of all ages talking about it. weird comparison I know, but best way I know to get zoomers to understand. imagine if all of the covid bullshit was replaced with pokemon related stuff and you might understand what pokemania was like.
It was even in an episode of Norm, Norm Macdonald's sitcom. He battles a kid with actors from the show dressed as Pokémon and the kid dressed as Ash.
No way another cultural phenomenon comes around that seeps into literally everything like Pokémon did at it's peak.
It was heaven
Getting home from school in your pokemom themed shoes, taking off your pokemon themed socks and pokemon themed backpack, sitting in front of the crt in your pokemon themed dress watching pokemon while shoveling pokemon themed cereals in your face from a pokemon themed bowl with a pokemon themed spoon to shower with the pokemon themed showergel and brushing your teeth with the pokemon themed brush just to get all cozy in your pokemom bedsheets with your pokemon plushy
SOVL times I've been trying to recapture ever since
I went to a rural elementary school where it took like 50 minutes for me to get home on the bus. sometimes I'd get home for the last few minutes of pokemon.
Pokemon blue car ride home, didn't know how to read yet, only saw cute lil turtle, wanted to know it's name