I don't think I've heard the words "darkness" and "black" so many times in seven minutes. Were you there in the chair the whole time? The corner was so dark I couldn't make out a figure..
I think I also played the card game before picking up Blue version. I actually took a massive gap from playing Pokemon TCG from the age of 12 but have picked it up casually again since around a year or so ago.
It's actually the opposite, I grew up playing the card game then Red, so Sapphire is still relatively new to me. Got some 230 hours and I'm just starting to feel like I have something of a grasp on all sixty billion Pokemon (inb4 there's now TWENTY billion)