Your Pok

[Seahawk]

What's your story with Pokémon? How were you introduced to the series? Were you there from the beginning with Red/Blue, or are you a late comer to the series? What other Pokémon games have you played aside from the main series? How have your opinions changed on the series as time has passed? Do/Did you get in on the massive amount of content surrounding this series?


In short, this thread is about your personal experiences with Pokémon universe, and how it has affected you.


My story:
The first time I heard of Pokémon was in Nintendo Power. One issue there was a huge booklet in the magazine all about it with the tagline "The Pokémon are coming!". One thing I distinctly remember about it is that the original artwork was all in watercolors! I remember thinking the original rendition of Pikachu looked a bit chubby.


I never actually played the game until sometime mid-1999. Before then I was always insanely jealous of all of the other kids who had Gameboys, as I had never owned a portable system at that time. Christmas of that year I got one and Pokémon Blue, and was sucked into the phenomenom. Pretty soon I was collecting stickers (I had a poster) and cards (like the gold ones from Burger King!) and waking up at 6:30 just to watch the show every morning. After watching the show I was determined to get a Pikachu, and grinded forever in Viridian Forest just to find one! This happened once:

( Click to show/hide )

After playing Gold version I started losing interest in the series, and my game purchases slowed down. That's not to say I dropped the series entirely. I still love a good session of Pokémon Pinball every now and then (there needs to be one for DS!). IGN posted an article about why Pokémon Snap is awesome the other day, and I totally agree with the article. I couldn't help but smile when I saw this pic:

( Click to show/hide )

Vulpix's expression is priceless.

So that's my story. What's yours?

[Winnebagel]

Good topic Hawk.

As some of you know, I am still new to the whole Pokeverse. I am a bit older than some of you guys, so when the whole Pokemon thing hit, I was really more into girls and the music scene. Because of this, I missed most of the craze. I would hear about it from some people and see commercials and stuff, but I had very little awareness of what it was about. I recognized a couple of the characters like Pikachu and Jigglypuff (a girlfriend's little brother was into Pokemon), but that was pretty much it.

Then, I saw you guys on here talk about it so much, I decided to create a Pokemon group to learn more. I just finished Pokemon Red for the first time and it was fun. That's about it. I am still early on the Pokepath.

[joz]

I was introduced to it because of my younger brother I think...then the craze hit at my HS and started to play at school with my geek friends. I played Red while my brother had Blue...or was it the other way around? I didn't get past the first generation since I started to work and party more often due to my new found influx of currency. Chicks and booze took over as a priority in my life and I distanced myself from games for a while. When I came back to the gaming world, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were the latest thing and I couldn't get back into it since it was still a very time consuming game and I didn't have the systems to play them on anyways.

[Tails]

Whew it's been awhile. Introduced to Pokemon by a friend who owned I think red, played it and loved it, unsure which one came first but I watched Pokemon for the first time and Pikachu was getting volts of electricity to his cheeks to face Brock. My Mom saw that and banned me from watching it O_o somehow I convinced her it was ok (she never even let me watch Power Rangers.. but TMNT was fine?) and being so young I just had to have it so I sold my Genesis and my bros PS1 + all games for a USED Gameboy color and a new (maybe used? Unsure.) Pokemon Red. Yeah worst idea I ever had, but that's how much I wanted to own it. Grew outta it I'd say after Gen 2, and a girl I liked liked Pokemon so I got back into it only to fizzle out again until my best friend got me back into it again (SS/HG remake helped).

[Mareeps]

I was about 6 or so, and someone I knew had a co-worker that just beat Red and got tired of it, so he gave it to me. needless to say I got addicted to it, and a cousin showed me the missingno. glitch, but I never figured out a bunch of things until much later, such as how to evolve kadabra.

[CrispyChicken]

I'm not sure. When I was a kid, I used to watch the series all the time and I always had Pokemon Blue. So, I guess I got it when I was like 6 and just kept on playing the games.

[joz]

Originally Posted by ChrisP

I'm not sure. When I was a kid....

Aren't you still a kid?

[Demon-Mask]

I got into it when I was about five years old. I've played Red, Yellow, Silver, Emerald, Leaf Green, Diamond and Pearl, along with "Pokemon Trading Card Game" on the Gameboy and the first "Pokemon Mystery Dungeon" game on the GBA.

All of those games were fun, even if they all blur together in my mind due to the sameness.

[CatalystiCam]

I got Red and Blue about a week apart probably anywhere from 1999 to 2001. Both my brothers gave me their Gameboys and a link cable and they sometimes borrowed their games back and stuff. One was a Red Gameboy pocket, the other was a purle/blue gameboy color (going to spell it like that this time since that is the consoles name). I think I played through Blue first but it's hard to remember, I was little and I wound up playing through each at least 10 times between the two although I only made it past the sixth gym 2 or 3 of those times. At one point I screwed up with trading between the two then deleted the game where I traded all the good pokemon to. (I think all my good pokemon from blue went to red and I deleted red) s I was left with nothing in blue and had to start over again. That was leading to the third main time I had to start ove rI think. The first time I had to start over was because I only leveled up my squirtle and nothing else, got to the fourth gym and my oldest brother found out I did that and told me that I can't do well with one powerful pokemon.

I've had a lot of fun with these 2 games and I may play the advanced versions as part of my rpg return thing or whatever. Basically, I have this thing going with myself that I have to go back and complete all the rpg's I got close to beating as a kid but never did, these rpg's being Final Fantasy IV, V, VII & pokemon Red/Blue. I completed Final Fantasy VII all the way through again about 2 weeks ago, then I went to finish V but unfortunately it keeps freezing 5 minutes into the very final boss fight! and I still haven't gotten to Final Fantasy Iv and pokemon red/blue may be after, but I don't know.

After Red & Blue I didn't really touch the pokemon games for a long time until pokemon Emerald. I went through that whole phase for a few years where I thought pokemon games were for little kids and stuff like that even though I was ironically 10 or something. I rented Emerald Eventually and enjoyed it a lot.

Next I hit up the DS after I saw my friends playing Diamond all the time, so I bought Pokemon Pearl. Everyone I knew had Diamond so I wanted pearl and I enjoyed this game a lot once again. I played my friend a lot and we had a lot of fun with the underground mode too. I got to 65 hours or something before I stupidly sold the game (one of the only games I ever sold, and boy is it for a good reason. I regret selling games eventually!).

So I haven't really touched the games since I was 13 years old or whatever age I was. It was a few years ago anyways. I bought Emerald used last year but the stupid battery in the game died out after 4 hours of gameplay so that's that, ironically enough the game is sitting on my computer desk right in front of me for some reason. I have been very tempted to buy the new pokemon games or even get diamond/pearl back, but unfortunately I would have bought them yesterday if it weren't for BC's stupid HST 12% tax making me 35 cents short...

I have a lot of history with pokemon I guess. It's been the only other RPG series I really played along with the Final Fantasy games so yeah.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by Demon-Mask

"Pokemon Trading Card Game"

I thought I was the only person in the world to ever own this game.

[Demon-Mask]

That was one of the best games on the Gameboy too, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

It's a shame so few people played it.

[StarfoxFan2009]

I got attached on Pokemon when i was introduced to Pokemon Red. suffice it to say i was hooked on the show as well and have played all of them except the DS versions o.o

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by Demon-Mask

That was one of the best games on the Gameboy too, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

It's a shame so few people played it.

What was your strategy? Mine was stuffing the deck full of Kangaskan and double colorless energy, and hoping that I would get lucky on the four coin flips for the attack.

I always liked that wierdo Imakuni, he had that unique music and the card that inflicted confusion on himself :D.

[StarfoxFan2009]

My favorite strategy on TCG involves adding Articuno and Gyarados to the water deck

[Tails]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I thought I was the only person in the world to ever own this game.

I loved it, beat it many times. Goal is to do that on RU when it comes to town.

[Mareeps]

I got it downloaded somewhere, but I suck at it.

[Seahawk]

Well damn all of a sudden it's a TCG party here! Seahawk is pleased :3.

Anyone ever play matches with the actual cards? I always thought it was too much of a hassle compared to the GBC game.

[Tails]

I think the same way plus card-wise I am very messy often gets left on the floor.

[Seahawk]

I always hated just keeping track of all of the numbers from attacks, defense, resistance, weakness, HP, blah blah blah. It's much easier and faster for the game to do it. Although admittedly this makes it almost impossible to play against other people because this game seems pretty rare, and nobody has a link cable anyways XD.

But that's okay, the opponents were pretty tough in the game anyways.

[CatalystiCam]

nobody has a link cable anyways

Don't know how true this is, I mean we had a link cable, but other than that I've never seen anyone else with a link cable, same with GBA too. Never knew anyone with a link cable.

I think the Gameboy color had some sort of laser link thing where you had to point the tops of the two Gameboy colors at each other in order to have them connect and enable you to play a linked game. This was just what my brother told me as a kid, never knew if it was true or not but it sounds pretty unreliable if it is.

Edit: Thank you google

Yet another first, the GBC used an infrared communications port to allow information to be exchanged between two systems. This feature never became popular, but it was a precursor to the wireless link that is built into the Nintendo DS. The GC however utilized a more primitive infrared signal similar to the one in your TV Remote control. This was mostly used in the Pokemon games, but was also included in the final GBC game, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets.

[fenrir1887]

I was introduced when a friend allowed me to play Red. Needless to say, I've been hooked since.

[Demon-Mask]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

What was your strategy? Mine was stuffing the deck full of Kangaskan and double colorless energy, and hoping that I would get lucky on the four coin flips for the attack.

I always liked that wierdo Imakuni, he had that unique music and the card that inflicted confusion on himself .

My strategy? Two Gengar a couple of Kangaskan, a few Slowbro with some other good psychic types like Hypno. More energy cards than most people would bother with. {let's just say that I like inflicting Sleep}
Imakuni was so cool, I don't know why but he always made me laugh.

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Anyone ever play matches with the actual cards? I always thought it was too much of a hassle compared to the GBC game.

I did when I was younger, and I started up again in the summer of 2009, played for quite some time and stopped. I got pretty good, usually placed fourth or fifth in tournaments. Not the greatest, but good enough. Psychic/Dark type deck for me. It barely got adjusted no matter how many cards I got.

[fenrir1887]

I wasn't big into playing with the cards. I used to have a holographic first edition Mewtwo card, but someone I knew tore it and a bunch of other cards up. I was upset because I'd found a huge notebook full of cards in the park a week before.

[CrispyChicken]

Originally Posted by jozman3000

Aren't you still a kid?

+1, I guessed I missed this

Well, when I was a small kid! I'm about to turn 15, so I'm a teenager, not a kid, if you want to get technical

[Squall]

I was introduced when my older brother brought home a deck of pokemon trading cards one day! I'd never heard of it, it was still new and soon EVERYONE had the cards, is was through my school in what seemed like one night.

My cousin had red, but I never had a gameboy. The first game I've owned and played legitimately was Pearl, and so I've always been annoyed - now, on Black, is the first time I'll ever have had the chance to complete the National Dex - the old DSlite won't connect to teh interwebs through my router (security is too tight :P ) but the 3ds will - and why would I go back now? I've already traded everything forward!