How much has Pokemon changed our lives?

I'm sure a thread like this reminiscing old times has been started somewhere else, please point me to it and bear with my rant. These questions have been nagging me for a while. (AH fan), Please if you can post this in the other 2 major forums (Serebii or Bulbagarden) and link here.

Anyways imagine back in '97 the infamous Episode 38 was shown. Massive hysteria engulfed Japan, and in a twist of fate, in another part of the multi-verse the flagship Pokemon Anime was Cancelled Completely even with the new restrictions. (I know it was highly unlikely but I am talking about a hypothetical timeline here.) Try to remember the impact of the so-called "PokeMania" of 1999-2000 in the Anime-Manga fandoms which unleashed a new generation of fans. And without the flagship Anime will Pokemon have the same impact? Where would fans be nowadays? where would you be? Where would the DS & PSP be?(The handheld industry?) The games? How will the face of Fandoms be?

I might change the questions since there pretty long. And Thank you for reading!

For me, Pokemania allowed me to meet new friends from all across the world that I would have never met otherwise, sometimes over something as simple as a screenshot from the show. (I literally met one of my e-friends this way). For a game to have done that, I can say Pokemon is a very special game.

Well, I don't know what I'd be doing, personally. Certainly not writing fan fiction, not shipping any characters, not playing any good video games other than Guitar Hero and Harvest Moon, and...quite frankly, my life would be the most boring thing this side of the country.

Pokemon has been a major part of my life since it came out and I can't imagine life without it.

Without Pokemon, I'd probably turn out just like my older brother: extremely popular, always has money, awesome clothes. Now this may seem nice, but now that I have Pokemon, I wouldn't trade it for any of his stuff. Pokemon (among many other things) has made me who I am today and quite frankly, I'm happy about the direction my life is headed.

Of course it has, the only way someone could answer "no" to this is if they've never heard of pokemon before in their life.

Yup,what woul i be doing on my spare time anyways?
and the card collecting?Also reading its Manga comics
And getting me addicted to Anime and Manga

You could say it changed my life...
It allowed me to become a Sage at the Nintendo Forums before they closed, got me Brawl 50% off, some free things, plus opened me up to online forums to further my typing skills ;)

I agree complete with YOOM-TAH, I'd say it's changed a lot of people' lives ranging from the facts that nearly everyone can identify a little yellow mouse and call it Pikachu, and that some people in the year two thousand and eight are writing Pokémon Fan Fiction. Without Pokémon, there would be way more Mario and Zelda games than you would be able to count, and Nintendo wouldn't be as big an industry as it is today. Without Pokémon, I'd probably do better in test results (although I do well enough as it is), I wouldn't have devoted a decade of my life to it learning random facts that aren't going to help me get into university, I wouldn't have improved my English skills immensly by posting my fan fiction among literate people and getting help at every corner. The most important thing that Pokémon has given me is loads of freat friends, on forums and in real life, and without it, I wouldn't know the people I respect here, which would be a terrible thing, because the people that I respect here get my respect for a reason, and that reason is because I like them.

Interesting thread, vtommy1.

Thats true....

Oni Raichu said:

Without Pokémon, there would be way more Mario and Zelda games than you would be able to count, and Nintendo wouldn't be as big an industry as it is today. Without Pokémon, I'd probably do better in test results (although I do well enough as it is), I wouldn't have devoted a decade of my life to it learning random facts that aren't going to help me get into university

Click to expand...

That applies to me A LOT, but I know the boundaries of school, and fandom....Usually....
Also when people criticize PM they don't know how much it contributed to peoples lives.

Also I think this thread goes in hand with the "Are you embarrassed?" thread....

It has changed my life a lot! Without it, I probably wouldn't have so many names called at me but who cares about the prats who critisise you just through it back at them. I probably might think about more other subjects than pokemon and make my life a whole lot more borring. People who critisise me, I just imagine them being flung out of a catapult into an electric chair. Pokemon has had the biggest impact on me since I can't remember but the people who critisise me are quite less popular and have a smaller number of friends. No-one however has the right to name-call to you anyway.

That said, there is no rules or laws saying you can't, it is not very nice but there you go, another stupid mistake by society.

Pokemon gave me something to do in my free time.

Hmm... This is a good question. I've been living as a Pokemon fan since I was five or six. Not a day in my life has gone by without me at least thinking about Pokemon in some way or another. It's given me a lot...

Without Pokemon, I doubt I would ever have become as "creative" as I am today. Sure, I've always loved and been fascinated by animals from a young age, but Pokemon was something more than that. It was different, yet similar, to my animal-lover-personality. And today, I'm consantly writing Pokemon fanfiction (Like Oni said, this GREATLY improves writing skills). Whenever I draw something (and I love to draw) more than half of the time it's a Pokemon. Never has a simple franchise given me this much insight and creativity. Without Pokemon, I would not be a good writer. I would not be nearly as skilled an artist as I am now. I would not be quite so "talented" with a pencil and paper.

Without Pokemon, I wouldn't be a video gamer. It's as simple as that. The first handheld game I ever played was Pokemon Silver, and the first console game I ever played was Stadium. While I've played plenty of other games that weren't Pokemon-related, there is simply no way any other series has or ever will affect my gaming like Pokemon has. Sure, I may pick up a Zelda game or two, or spend hours in front of Brawl, but at heart I'm a Pokemon fan when it comes down to it. Without Pokemon, I would probably be doing something more productive with my spare time. XD

Without Pokemon, 99% of what I go online for would be gone. I would not be posting here. Serebii updates would be meaningless. I wouldn't even know what an RPG was, much less enjoy posting in them. And, I'd be, put simply, a "n00b". Pokemon forums have sort of made me more mature in a way. They've helped me understand some things about communication I wouldn't have understood otherwise. While I'm not saying typing words into a computer and putting them on the world-wide-web is actually being social, it's a unique kind of communication that has its beinifts. Without Pokemon, I'd lack any interest in the world-wide-web.

In conclusion to this long, drawn-out, perhaps pointless post, I think Pokemon has really shaped my life. Had I not grown up with it, I'd be a very different person than I am now. Maybe more reserved and... um... less video-game-obsessed. Yeah... :P

Without pokemon I wouldn't be a nerd.
And nerds. rock. =]
I wouldn't be who I am today without it to be honest.

it was pokemon that lead me to here
it was here that led me into irc
it was irc that led me into *nix system administration
it was *nix stuff that made me program a bot for the channel
it was pokemon that eventually made me actually program stuff(even if its in only in mirc)