What Got You Into Pokemon?

[AkameTheBulbasaur]

What got you into Pokemon? Did you hear about it from a friend/family member? Did you see it on TV and think "Wow! That's awesome!" What were your first experiences with the franchise?
I first heard about it when all my friends started getting into it. They all had either diamond or pearl and I remember being so jealous of them. It looked really fun.

 

[moon]

Me too got into it when my friends did. I was only about 8 or 9 at the time and everyone got Pokémon Trading Cards that the whole school went around trading and playing with. No one really played the trading card game though; we mostly pretended that we were trainers and our deck of cards were our pokémon :p Great fun. My first card ever was a psychic energy card, if I remember correctly.

Only a few people had the game on a Gameboy. Back then, we thought the difference between Blue and Red was that in Blue you got to choose between Charmander, Bulbasaur or Squirtle but in Red you had to go out and catch your own starter (so it would be Spearow or Rattata or something) so everyone thought Blue was the best game for that non-true reason haha.

And then, I think a bit later on, we realized that there was an anime and most people watched it even though girls thought it was silly and I remember thinking it was unfair that boys could watch it while girls "shouldn't".

It wasn't until I was about 13 that I got a GBA and Yellow version (I could have picked Gold or Silver but I chose Yellow to be my first pokémon game for some reason! Sometimes I wish I had picked a Johto game instead, but done is done).

So what got me into pokémon was the TCG, or at least the cards and the trading culture rather than the actual game. Even though I did play a little later on and enjoyed it I guess :3

 

[AkameTheBulbasaur]

I got the trading cards before I got the games, so when my friends talked about things that only existed in the games (like the dragon type. This was before it was implemented in the TCG) I would be so confused. At first I only traded/collected cards, but later my friend taught me how to play the actual game. I still remember how to this day. I later got the TCG Game Boy game and played that a ton. It was easier on the Game Boy because you didn't have to remember things like status conditions because the game took care of it for you.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

I got into Pokemon by Super Smash Bros. for the N64, as well as the anime. It wasn't before long that I found the games for me to play.

 

[Powerserge]

Excellent question and thread for this site, hehe.

Well when I was a kid, Pokemon was just coming out. With the anime and the games becoming a worldwide sensation, all the kids at school and elsewhere were soon affected. My mom originally didn't want to get it for me, because she saw it as some crazy fad that would do more harm than good, but she ended up getting me Pokemon Yellow for my 9th birthday. It was a complete surprise too. I had borrowed Pokemon Blue from a friend on and off, but never got to play through it for very long.

And the rest is history......

 

[Kikaito plush]

It was due to seeing an krabby card that my cousin had.
I want one so I asked my dad to buy me pokemon yellow for my birthday that year.

 

[Sweets Witch]

When the games first came out in the US, my aunt bought Blue for me and Red for my brother. I was young so I had no idea what I was doing and I thought the old man laying on the path in Viridian City was a Pokemon.

 

[Blayze]

It was this ad in the back of a "Disney Adventure" magazine.

Spoiler:

I really liked the looks of all the little creatures - especially the dragon one - so I looked into it.
Around that time I discovered the anime and toys. I watched it faithful everyday after school.
Then the games came out. I got Red and my brother got Blue.
I've been playing the games and collecting the paraphernalia ever since! I also plan to cosplay my Team Rocket OC sometime soon. Probably at the next con I go to as my "relaxation costume"

 

[nimbo]

It was back when Pokemon was super popular and I would watch it everyday on tv. Then I got the games, then cards, and slowly became obsessed. I had a Pokemon birthday party and I went as Pikachu for Halloween one year.

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

A massive media blitz circa 1999. Months before the games came out and the anime aired on TV, there was this hype like I'd never seen or heard before for this new property called 'Pokemon'. I had no idea what it was about at the time: all I knew was that I wanted it. When more information about the games were released, I knew I wanted the Blastoise that was on the cover of Pokemon Blue. Then, when the anime started airing, I wanted Ash to get to the end of the Pokemon League. But it was all a perfect storm of hype that got me into the series! :D

 

[Thergox]

I kind of had Pokemon cards the first day of my life. I wasn't quite aware of them until about age four, and they were all probably either hand-me-downs or stuff found on the street (Yeah, you see a lot of scattered TCG stuff where I come from), but I loved them to death. The anime found itself on TV often, so I watched that whenever I could, and my first game was Crystal (And Gold, but I liked Crystal the best because of its cartridge). It kind of went on from there.

 

[AkameTheBulbasaur]

Excellent question and thread for this site, hehe.

Thanks! I thought it would make a good conversation starter and there was no thread for it.

I was young so I had no idea what I was doing and I thought the old man laying on the path in Viridian City was a Pokemon.

That's pretty funny! I'll admit when I first played FireRed and saw the man lying on the ground, I didn't know what to think. The game claimed he was grumpy from not having coffee, but it never explained why he was on the ground. Later I learned that in the original Japanese versions, the old man had passed out from being drunk. It explained a lot.

 

[Altair1]

It was 13 years ago, I remember moving houses, while unpacking at our new home, another family was moving in to the house next to us. They had a young boy, same age as me, 5 years old. We talked for a bit and then he introduced me to Pokemon. I don't think I would have gotten into it if it wasn't for him!
We used to play with cards, games, toys and watch the anime.

Now, I haven't seen him in years... he moved away.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

My mom bought me Pokemon Blue and I was immediately hooked!

 

[JesterLegacy]

I got introduced to Pokemon from the first movie. My parents bought me the VCD of the first movie, probably because of the art that seemed to suit me. I watched it, than I started thinking that it is quite good. Then, I watched more and more of the Pokemon series, though I stopped watching halfway through the Kanto series as I didn't see much Pokemon VCDs being sold. A few months after that, I bought a Game Boy Advance SP as I still didn't own a handheld console then, so it was my first one. After several days of owning it, I saw Pokemon FireRed, and decided to try it on as I still didn't know how will they present Pokemon in a game. Hence, It was really interesting to me, and I played more Pokemon games, whether previous series like Crystal, or the other generations.

 

[amerininja]

My story is quite long actually. It all started pretty much like most I saw the first season of the anime and was hooked but I had never heard of the game. At around the age of 9 I had to have an allergy shot twice a week for about 2 years and low and behold the doctor's office had 3 Game Boys so each day for 30 minutes I played Pokémon Red Version. I didn't really know what I was doing though until I had a DS Lite and a friend gave me Pokémon Ruby Version at around 11. I loved that game and that very year I bought Pokémon Fire Red. However, this whole time I was being constantly teased for my love of Pokémon so at 12 I gave it up and returned both games to Game Stop. At 13 I made a new friend who I later found out was a huge Pokémon fan. He got me back into the franchise so I bought Diamond and Fire Red. However, that same year I had to give it up again for the ridicule. Luckily things changed and I gained confidence in myself and now my parents do not mind my love for that little fantasy world we call Pokémon.

 

[NightOfRemorse]

IIRC it was my cousins who got me into it, they came over very often and they had R/B/Y on their Gameboys. I'd watch them play it and around the same time I had a plush of Pikachu and a VHS tape with three episodes of the anime. Not sure what introduced me to Pokémon for the very first time but I'm pretty sure it was my cousins. It's sad, one of them says he dislikes Pokémon now and he mostly plays Call of Duty... I mean, really. Of all things to replace Pokémon it had to be Call of Duty. Ick.

 

[alisaie]

I'm fairly certain that I got into it when I watched my first episode of Pokemon, which was Mystery of Mount Moon on TV. After that on my eighth birthday I received both Gold and Silver as my first Pokemon games. I don't quite remember when I got into the TCG part of Pokemon, but I do remember that it was because of my cousin that I did. At least, I think it went in that order.

 

[Brendino]

I got caught up in the initial wave of Pokemon popularity back when it first migrated away from Japan, but I can never quite remember if it was the games or the TCG that sucked me in (I didn't get into the games until at least 2 years later).

I can distinctly remember watching the very first preview episode of Pokemon air (Battle Aboard the St. Anne), which they played a few weeks before the first episode. I've always wondered if it was just coincidence that I saw this, or somehow already knew about the franchise through the card game. Either way, I got caught up in the craze just like everyone else in my school did at the time, except I've just stuck around a little bit longer than they did.

EDIT: After doing a quick search on Bulbapedia, it looks as though the anime debuted 4 months before the TCG came out, so I can safely assume that the show got me hooked on the franchise first.

 

[Firox]

I believe I got into Pokemon via the anime.

I just remember changing channels after I got back from school and at first I didn't paid much attention to it. Next 8 or 9 days I didn't actively seek to find more episodes - I now believe that first episode I saw didn't caught my attention right away. Back then I didn't know it was Pokemon.

Another day again searching through channels to find cartoons and Pokemon showed up again and got interested, I watched it from beginning to end.... and had to check out at what time I saw it. Next day at the same time, I turned tv on after school and Pokemon was on again......

as they say "rest is history"..... as for the games? - I didn't play them until 2004.

I was hooked on for life. I don't remember dates, when the new episodes premiered every Saturday morning I would wake up to watch it... almost 14 years later, I still wake up Saturday mornings to watch the new episodes

[by the way, really enjoyed reading everyone else's history.]