First Encounters

[Pyrofrost]

:Exclam:

 

 

After seeing how many old-timers like myself were in the 'how old are you' topic, I thought it might be interesting for everyone to share their first exposure to the world of Pokemon. I remember looking through a gaming magazine back in '98 and seeing a full page advertisement with Red and Blue in the foreground and a giant Charizard in the background. I was completely floored. I thought (and still think) that Charizard was the coolest thing ever. A few months later one of my friends at daycare pulled out his Game Boy Pocket and started playing Pokemon Blue. I asked him to let me play a bit and I was hooked as soon as I started wandering around the tall grass looking for Pokemon.

 

Anyone else remember the first time they saw and played Pokemon?

[Soulicrusher]

I do and it was around 2003-2004 when I got one of those GBA cartridges with an episode of the anime on it and was in love immediately my first game however was Fire Red as it was my favorite color and being a wee child at the time that was all I cared about. As soon as i saw Charmander I knew that this was gonna be a long term thing and not just a one off game series that i'd play.

[Daitana]

Mine would have been when I was about 10, '98 or so. I was at school and a friend was playing Red on his Gameboy. He had the poster with the 150 on it and I was so obsessed just from watching him play. I didn't have a Gameboy at the time but a friend told me about a way to emulate the games. We had the hard floppy disks and we put No$GBA onto one, and the games on another. You have to run it in MSDOS, and save and load directly from the floppy disk.

 

I finally got my first real copy of the game with a Gameboy Colour, and I had discovered the card game at K-Mart while skipping school. I got two packets, one had a shiny Mewtwo and it was the best thing. I convinced my parents that it was going to be huge (they ran a collectible store) so they started selling/trading the cards and would host weekly tournaments. Which meant I could build any decks I wanted and compete. At the age of 11-12 my best friend Mark and I were recruited into a team "Team Scyther" which was a group of 18-21 year olds who collected and played competitively. We learned so much and actually beat them quite often.

I sold my spare first set of cards to them for about $100 at that age and that was a lot of money to me. With that I got gold and silver.

 

I honestly cherish those days, every memory. Pokemon was the biggest part of my childhood, wearing my Charizard shirt to school, seeing the first movie for Christmas, playing "2 B a Master" at tournaments and getting so pumped when I was battling.

 

I'm now 28, have the 4 gen one starters inked on my arm and rep my love for Pokemon proudly. It's a huge part of me, I even introduced my fiance to it and she grew in love with Bulbasaur.

[Honeyman]

I watched it when it first came out and yes I still do :) i was got red as a bribary not long after it came it as blackmail to have several teeth removed, I was young an afraid of dentist but it worked :)

[Honeyman]

155819 Mine would have been when I was about 10, '98 or so. I was at school and a friend was playing Red on his Gameboy. He had the poster with the 150 on it and I was so obsessed just from watching him play. I didn't have a Gameboy at the time but a friend told me about a way to emulate the games. We had the hard floppy disks and we put No$GBA onto one, and the games on another. You have to run it in MSDOS, and save and load directly from the floppy disk.

 

I finally got my first real copy of the game with a Gameboy Colour, and I had discovered the card game at K-Mart while skipping school. I got two packets, one had a shiny Mewtwo and it was the best thing. I convinced my parents that it was going to be huge (they ran a collectible store) so they started selling/trading the cards and would host weekly tournaments. Which meant I could build any decks I wanted and compete. At the age of 11-12 my best friend Mark and I were recruited into a team "Team Scyther" which was a group of 18-21 year olds who collected and played competitively. We learned so much and actually beat them quite often.

I sold my spare first set of cards to them for about $100 at that age and that was a lot of money to me. With that I got gold and silver.

 

I honestly cherish those days, every memory. Pokemon was the biggest part of my childhood, wearing my Charizard shirt to school, seeing the first movie for Christmas, playing "2 B a Master" at tournaments and getting so pumped when I was battling.

 

I'm now 28, have the 4 gen one starters inked on my arm and rep my love for Pokemon proudly. It's a huge part of me, I even introduced my fiance to it and she grew in love with Bulbasaur.

 

Ive got my fiance hooked an she loves Squirtle :) so now thats her nickname.

[Pyrofrost]

155819

I finally got my first real copy of the game with a Gameboy Colour, and I had discovered the card game at K-Mart while skipping school. I got two packets, one had a shiny Mewtwo and it was the best thing. I convinced my parents that it was going to be huge (they ran a collectible store) so they started selling/trading the cards and would host weekly tournaments. Which meant I could build any decks I wanted and compete. At the age of 11-12 my best friend Mark and I were recruited into a team "Team Scyther" which was a group of 18-21 year olds who collected and played competitively. We learned so much and actually beat them quite often.

I sold my spare first set of cards to them for about $100 at that age and that was a lot of money to me. With that I got gold and silver.

 

 

That bit is honestly awesome. I remember when the TCG first came out here in the States, I saw a Charizard card selling for $25 in a trophy/hobbyist shop and I begged my mom to get it for me. She thought $25 was too much to pay for one card. Little did she know how much that card would come to cost later on :Crazy:

[Daitana]

Haha yeah, I remember by the time the Jungle set came out we could sell a Charizard card easily for $60. There was a little chinese store at the markets that had the japanese cards, I remember when I first saw the Team Rocket Charizard card, I ran right back to the store, took money out of the till and went to buy it haha. The cards were amazing back in the day. I tried to get back into the online version, but it's just not the same, and there's far too many cards for me to even try to keep up anymore.

[Honeyman]

155870 Haha yeah, I remember by the time the Jungle set came out we could sell a Charizard card easily for $60. There was a little chinese store at the markets that had the japanese cards, I remember when I first saw the Team Rocket Charizard card, I ran right back to the store, took money out of the till and went to buy it haha. The cards were amazing back in the day. I tried to get back into the online version, but it's just not the same, and there's far too many cards for me to even try to keep up anymore.

 

I know exactally what you mean on that front but mine is Yu-Hi-Oh cards I was big into it and i use to compeate and use to win quite oftern, But then I got working all the time and lost base with the compititions and now I'm trying to bet back into it I'm finding my old unbeatable blue eyes deck is getting destroyed by the new pendualm decks :( but an old friend of mine compeates with pokemon cards and has been to the world championships last year. I will admit I never understood the pokemon card game.

[Daitana]

It was quite simple and so much fun, they used to have the pokemon league for the games and cards. I still have my badges somewhere.

[Zupercooer]

When I was little I really badly wanted pokemon yellow on my gameboy colour and my Mum bought me the gameboy with everything I wanted except, the bundle she bought wasn't pokemon yellow, but pokemon pinball which got me crying for so long (was about 6-7 at the time I think). So pokemon didn't come to a good start until I bought a pirated copy of the pokemon gold game when it came out abroad. I loved it the fact that a red gyarados was catchable then too. My favourite moment of that game was when I miraculously found a shiny graveler for the first time and it would have been my second shiny of the game until that it would rather faint than be caught by me (explosion rip) so yeah. 10/10 would watch a shiny graveler explode in my face again!