Your story of Pokemon?

[NismoZ]

So, what are your stories of Pokemon? What was your first experience like? What did you think about Pokemon at first? Share your stories here. But first, if it's long, PLEASE put it in a spoiler tag.

Now for mine    

My experience started when I was about six years old. My sister obsessively watched the anime, and at the time I thought it was stupid. Probably because she would always put it on the TV in the morning, when I wanted to watch something else. Anyways, I had discovered the games a few months later, and I decided to try one out. I could only afford Silver at the time, though (Gen III had already been released by then, and my sister played Sapphire obsessively), so I bought that. Unfortunately, I didn't have a Game Boy of any sort (my sister's GBA was the only one in the house), so I didn't get to play it much. Then at some point my sister bought a GBA SP for some reason, so my sister let me use her old GBA whenever I wanted. Then I started playing it all the time. I guess I liked it because I was always very careful for my age, and so Pokemon let out my sense of adventure in a virtual environment.



Apparently, that copy of Silver used to belong to my friend, who sold it to a local game store for some reason, and then I just so happened to buy that copy. He had a level 64 Togetic. So I used that save file for a while, and then I eventually decided to start my own, and discovered I was good at Pokemon. I managed to get a level 86 Feraligatr, before I eventually stopped playing.



Over the next year or so, I started to get more in to the anime around the time that my sister decided that it sucked. Then, on my eighth birthday, I got a DS, and my sister told me that two new Pokemon games had been released, and that she was going over to Walmart to buy Diamond. Since I had gotten a DS and some money, I went as well, and bought Pearl. That's when I realized how much I loved the Pokemon games. I had a great time playing it, until I beat the game, and then the major flaw of RPGs struck again: it gets boring once you've beaten it.



Sometime later, HeartGold and SoulSilver were released - the first mainstream Pokemon games in years. I bought SoulSilver, but was disappointed, though still impressed by increased use of the touch screen. Around my twelfth birthday, I decided to join a Pokemon discussion forum; Bulbagarden Forums specifically. About a month later, I got sick of Bulbagarden, and decided to try something else. I had been following Floatzel.Net for a while, and had recently seen that their forum had been moved to VR. It didn't really interest me at the time, but eventually, I decided to go for it (It was a fairly new forum, so there would only be a handful of active members, thus not making it as overcrowded as Bulbagarden). I had a great time here, through the conversing, debating, chatting, spamming, and forum gaming...



...And from there it basically gets broken up into small pieces of information, so basically that's as far as I can go.

[SK]

Got my GBA for Christmas, age 7. Pokemon FireRed was my first game for it. DS at age 11 I think it was, with PMD Blue Mystery Team... And it goes on and on, maybe I'll go into detail later.

[coteup]

1. got gameboy at age 7.

2. liek the anime, got fire red at age 8.

[The Spirit of Time]

I knew Pokémon as I became 5 due to the animé through a local channel. A year after that, the animé stopped and so did my interest in Pokémon, although during that year, I had bought the Movie 2000 and was collecting some sort of unofficial Pokémon cards. By the 6th grade, five years later, a friend of mine reintroduced me to Pokémon by showing me Dialga and Palkia. As I discussed further with him, I got a GameBoy SP (not DS :S). I also bought Pokémon Fire Red, Ruby and Emerald. One year later and got a DS with Diamond. From that point, I started getting further interested, buying more games as they got released and signing up to forums.

[Shiny]

I started getting into Pokemon sometime during Kindergarten. I had started watching the anime at first. I remember it was interesting seeing these weird creatures battling and evolving. I was always watching every episode from the Kanto and Johto era.
I remember finding a Silver cartridge on the floor at some store. It was just laying there and I was tempted to grab it. I brought it home and played it on the GBC and it was pure epicness.
Then when Johto disappeared I lost interest. I would collect Pokemon cards occasionally, then they grew into a huge collection. I occasionally lost interest after I had nothing to do.
Which is when I got interested into Yu-Gi-Oh

One day in San Jose visiting family I saw the Hoenn episodes on tv. I had thought the series died. The episode I viewed was what brought me back into it. It was one when Ash was fighting Drake or one of the Hoenn Elites. I saw a bunch of new Pokemon and was amazed by them.
Then I got Firered and Ruby for my birthday and started buying the other games.
I got into Diamond sometime I had found Pokemon forums on the internet. When they were developing Gen IV I became a Bakugan fan and forgot about Pokemon.
One day I was searching for a Bakugan forum and instead f9ound a Pokemon one.
I then bought Diamond and HG/SS.

So yeah. That's my story.

[LucarioMario]

Semi-long story ahead    

At age 4 I had a few Pokemon anime tapes (Johto) and occasionally watched those. Otherwise I wasn't exactly interested in Pokemon (I don't remember much stuff that happened here.).



Later I got a PS2 and a Gameboy Advanced, but I didn't really get any Pokemon games for the Gameboy since (To the extent of my knowledge) I didn't even know Pokemon still existed.



Then I got a DS, but still, for a while, I wasn't interested in Pokemon (Although Nintendo games were starting to grow on me.). But that's when I met PMD Blue Rescue Team. The game was so great, then I noticed how there was Pokemon Diamond and Pearl out for a while. So I got my mom to get me a copy of Pearl one day, and being a noob to the mainstream games, I powerleveled my Torterra. Then I couldn't get past the Elite Four, so I got an Action Replay despite the fact I felt something bad was going to happen. And I was right, I restarted the game (Quite a few times) and started training a whole team. Then one day I put a Kricketune in the PC box, and the next time I played it said the save data was corrupted and loaded the last save data. But it wasn't the last save data, it was the recent one, except my Kricketune was gone. So yeah, my game got hax'd and then I noticed weird (Yet subtle) stuff was happening in my other games, which means my DS got virus'd and I believed it was "infecting" my other games. Plus the top screen was hanging by one hinge due to rough handling on my part.



Later, I got a DSi and even later Pokemon Platinum. And did things completely different. No power-leveling, no hacks, no restarting. For a while I was training a whole box of Pokemon (Training about 30 Pokemon to Lv. 35 FTW!), but then I decided to use only six Pokemon. I had a Lucario, Rampardos, Giratina, Togekiss, Floatzel, and Raichu, which were pretty much the best Pokemon I have ever used in any Pokemon game. Then after finally defeating the Elite Four I went to the other accessible places I couldn't go to before. Later, I traded my Giratina to a friend and put my Torterra in the GTS for a Chimchar, which later grew into my Infernape. Then I got more Pokemon stuff, joined this forum, etc. That's pretty much my story.



You know? I actually sort of wish I could de-level my Pokemon to level 90 or so just to relieve the nonstalgica of going to the Survival Area and training my Pokemon there every day. At Lv. 100 it sorta seems a bit different not receiving Exp. points or anything.

[Digimon Kaiser]

I have owned every game for a Nintendo system EXCEPT for TCG, Puzzle Challenge, the 2 N64 Stadium games, PokePark, Trozei, and Ranch.

[Shadow]

Here's more or less everything that happened from when I first found out about Pokémon until now:

My Pokémon Experience    

I don't remember when I exactly got into Pokémon, but I know it was through some fake TCG cards which I used to play with my cousins. Then, while flipping through TV channels randomly, I watched one episode of the animé dubbed in my language. That was when Pokémon started growing on me. However, there came a time when I completely forgot about it for some unexplainable reason, but this changed when I reached grade 5 (or was it 6?). Two of my friends showed me their Pokémon games on the GBA, and I got interested in it again. I started by buying Emerald and then FireRed. I liked Emerald so much I was initially against buying a DS to play the new games (D/P at that time). However, after feeling left out, I decided to buy a DS along with Platinum. That was when I truly became attached to the series, subscribing to forums and buying every subsequent release in the main titles.

[JC]

Well, I always liked the franchise at '98 but in '99 I bought Yellow version, I continued to play it, it was fun and challenging. Honestly I thought that was the best game ever, but then Gen II came along and I liked Umbreon as my new favorite, been like that for years now, then Gen III came along, story wasn't so great but many new Pokémon appeared so that was a plus and I continued to go on, When Gen IV started I didn't immediately buy Diamond nor Pearl, but I got them for the following Christmas along with a DS Lite, and that story was pretty good, and I continued to play it, when HG/SS came out I was ecstatic about it, in fact it was the return of my favorite games ever (inb4trolls) and personally I played that the longest, when B/W was released in Japan I thought I should buy one of the two early and I did and I play my Black version for hours, when B/W was released in America I play White for hours as well, it had a near perfect mix of content ie. storyline, Pokémon, and mapping, I honestly I believe if my favorite Generation wasn't Gen II for just because of Umbreon, I would say that Gen V is my top favorite.

Honestly I've been playing for years, and I will continue to do so WAY after the franchise dies (if it dies) I honestly believe that these games were made for me, a somebody that just wants to have fun, not to have a huge overall strategy, but just fun.