I can't even remember where to start, but I'm gonna give a little history...
First Experience with Emulators:
When I was in Culinary School, a friend of mine was playing Crystal on his laptop, and I was bewildered. I asked how he was playing and he showed me the site (I can't remember but I know it wasn't Vizzed)
A couple weeks later, one of my other friends was playing Diamond on his computer, and I asked if it was on the site-that-I-don't-remember and he told me no. He then began to open my eyes to the wonderful world of Emulation.
First Pokemon Rom Hack:
I'm pretty sure it was either Touhomon or Pokemon Crono.
I thought Touhomon was really cute, but unfortunately do to my horrible attention span and the fact that it was just a replacement, I eventually dropped it.
Pokemon Crono...I have so many issues because of this hack. It was amazing, but as far as I could tell, when I first downloaded it I'm guessing the only available version was the Alpha. This ROM hack was single-handedly my inspiration to get into ROM hacking, this was what I had aspired to accomplish, and it's the reason I want to try my hand at making my own custom map tiles because I thought it was insanely beautiful.
Well, I've probably typed up an eyeful that I'm not even sure people will actually be interested in.