Pokemon LARPing as a kid

Started by Indigo January 6th, 2015 9:07 PM
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  • 21 replies

Indigo

The Novelist from Panju

Male
Seen November 7th, 2019
Posted March 10th, 2016
136 posts
9.5 Years
So as a child I used to get with the neighborhood kids and we'd play pokemon. Not the game, but we'd act like they were there in real life. I always acted like my dog was a growlithe. I even got a raft in my pool and would "Sail" on it for 3 hours from Kanto to Sinnoh. xD did anyone else use to do this? I'd like to know your stories!

moon

they/them
Seen 11 Hours Ago
Posted 22 Hours Ago
37,443 posts
15.5 Years
When you're a kid it's not called LARPing. It's just playing. LARPing is just a name grown ups have invented to make it more okay for them to play pretend. :)

But yeah, me and my friends at school used to have a corner of the schoolyard where we had one pokémon each as a pet and worked on a farm. xD I had a Vulpix and when my buddy told her Pikachu to make a fire with its lightning attack I got angry because fire making was my job, not hers. Ah, the good old days xD
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Age 28
Female
Oregon, USA
Seen April 22nd, 2015
Posted April 22nd, 2015
126 posts
8.4 Years
I was a country kid, so I would run around in the endless desert outside my house. I would put on my Pikachu baseball hat, get my Pokemon Handbook and my backpack and my plastic Pokeballs, and then I would scatter my plushes around the desert and then go around pretending to catch them and using my handbook as a makeshift Pokedex.
My cousins and I would also play like we were Pokemon. Why I was in Kindergarten, I had this game I'd play with my cousin where I'd be Pikachu and he'd be Raichu and then he'd pretend to die and I'd pretend to get all sad and then he'd come back to life and we'd do it all over again. How that was fun? I have no clue, ahaha.

Ice

Seen October 16th, 2022
Posted February 3rd, 2020
3,448 posts
8.8 Years
I and me friends always played pokémon on the trampoline, jumping around as if we were pokémon and trainers. And I was an amazing trainer. We'd have adventures, and improvise little plays in which we traveled to get all ten badges. Sometimes we'd use pokémon we'd drawn ourself, and othertimes we used the carts we have as pokémon. I remember it being so much fun. We even invented our own type: Blood. Looking back on it, it was a real dark and twisted thing. It basically had all the water type attacks, but instead of water it was blood.

Zeffy

g'day

Male
Seen December 1st, 2022
Posted January 30th, 2021
6,395 posts
14.1 Years
LARPing? Back then we called this playing. Did this suddenly change over 10 or so years? D:

And you bet your ass we played pretend Pokemon. I remember pretending that I was Ash's Charizard and my brother was Ash--I think you'll be able to tell what happened next :P

Alfieri

aka Ronnie

Age 27
Male
New York City
Seen June 23rd, 2019
Posted June 23rd, 2019
2,850 posts
9.1 Years
What the hell is LARPing? And why is it in caps like that?

Anyways yeah me and my friends and cousin used to pretend we were pokemon and we'd run around the field shouting out attack names until one of us was defeated lol.

Arma

The Hyena

Age 30
Male
The Hague
Seen 4 Weeks Ago
Posted June 9th, 2020
1,681 posts
13.4 Years
Hahaha yeah, good times. We always did this with a group of around 9 kids. Two or three of us were trainers, the rest pretended to be Pokemon, I almost always was Squirtle. (I only recall doing this when were still only the first 151 Pokemon.)
There used to be a link to an Imageshack picture here. Lmao.

moon

they/them
Seen 11 Hours Ago
Posted 22 Hours Ago
37,443 posts
15.5 Years
What the hell is LARPing? And why is it in caps like that?

Anyways yeah me and my friends and cousin used to pretend we were pokemon and we'd run around the field shouting out attack names until one of us was defeated lol.
Live Action Role Playing. Basically grown ups playing, as I've understood it.
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atmmachine11

Jumping portals since 1997.

Age 26
Male
Canada
Seen January 11th, 2023
Posted July 9th, 2018
136 posts
10.8 Years
Well, back when I was a kid me and a specific friend would do this all the time. We would pretend there were actual Pokemon out there, and we would pretend to catch them than battle etc etc. It was really cool because he had a Forest near his house that we would go into and that was great enhanced by our imagination as kids.

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Pendraflare

Age 32
Male
Pennsylvania
Seen July 30th, 2021
Posted March 29th, 2021
6,263 posts
9.8 Years
Not sure if I really understand what we're talking about here...

But I can't recall a time i've exhibited Pokémon-like behavior in public, except maybe in my younger pre-teen years.
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Sylphiel

Between your fantasy and my reality
Seen March 28th, 2023
Posted January 9th, 2023
13,114 posts
18.5 Years
I was a little bit past the whole "let's pretend to play as our favorite video game characters" even when Pokemon was first introduced, sadly. But this still sounds like something I totally would have done if I weren't.

Megan

She/Her, It/Its
Online now
Posted 12 Minutes Ago
17,736 posts
10.3 Years
I suppose I have. When I think about it, there was this one time when we pretended to play Pokemon Pinball. Oh, the hillarity was big in that one. {XD}
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Female
Seen June 14th, 2015
Posted February 17th, 2015
22 posts
8.4 Years
Oh yes, my brother and I pretended Pokemon were real a lot. We made a few videos called "Pokemon Animated" (it wasn't animated; it was live action, I don't even know why we called it this) where my brother was Ash getting his first Pokemon and going on his adventure, and I was the cameraman/Nurse Joy. We used a plastic Pokeball with a stuffed Pachirisu in it for our props/Pikachu. I remember us going outside on the wooden playground we had and filming. There were bees there sometimes and we would pretend they were Breedrill attacking and run away from them xD
We also pretended to be Pokemon while swimming in the pool; mostly water-type Pokemon. My brother would be Kyogre and I would be Manaphy xP ah those were fun times
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Thursday

Age 30
Male
South-East America
Seen April 6th, 2023
Posted August 9th, 2016
456 posts
13.3 Years
I use to do this when I was a kid. Running around acting like Articuno or something, including flapping my arms around and squawking. God, it must have looked so stupid. So glad no one has pictures of it happening XD
Thursday
1006-0591-1577

Age 28
Female
Michigan
Seen January 23rd, 2016
Posted February 18th, 2015
14 posts
8.2 Years
I was a country kid, so I would run around in the endless desert outside my house. I would put on my Pikachu baseball hat, get my Pokemon Handbook and my backpack and my plastic Pokeballs, and then I would scatter my plushes around the desert and then go around pretending to catch them and using my handbook as a makeshift Pokedex.
My cousins and I would also play like we were Pokemon. Why I was in Kindergarten, I had this game I'd play with my cousin where I'd be Pikachu and he'd be Raichu and then he'd pretend to die and I'd pretend to get all sad and then he'd come back to life and we'd do it all over again. How that was fun? I have no clue, ahaha.
^^I'm one of her cousins- my brother played Raichu.

I remember running around the desert by myself pretending to be chasing Team Rocket. It was great! We also always had some outdoor cats who would run around and I remember them playing all kinds of characters for me.

There was also one time that Ruma and I went with our siblings to swim and she brought her little Pokemon toys and I don't even remember the game we played, but we will never forget how we LOST ARCANINE! It was honestly a tragedy for us.

EDIT: Oh! My brother and one of our best friends, Zach, had a toy Pokedex that you could look up any of the original 150 on and it would show you a pixelated black and white image and it was THE BEST THING EVER. We also had a toy Pokeball that we would simply hurl at each other as hard as we could to "catch" one another. Haha! Sorry, getting excited.

DyingWillFlareon

Burning Candle

Age 24
She/Her
Under a bucket (still)
Seen March 11th, 2021
Posted March 10th, 2021
4,308 posts
8.5 Years
My cousins would be babysat by my mom and before that our aunt babysat me and my sister so we're very close, and I recall every other day doing this. XD I was usually Pikachu, Mudkip, or Eevee, one cousin was Machop, Squirtle, Turtwig, or Riolu/Lucario. One of them didn't like to play as much and my sister refused to aknowledge me as her starter. :T Soemtiems, all four of us were Minun, Plusle, Pichu, and a made up one like them, mostly because of the Destiny Deoxys(i think) Minun/Plusle. We made up a couple of them too.

At my dad's house, we had a different group of cousins that was a lot bugger. There were two boys older than me, one girl older than me, two girls sloghtly younger than me, and I think there was another baby but I'm not sure. I haven't seen them in forever, but we used to get together in one of the elder boys' contry home and play outside in the dirt and grass, we prefered Pokemon stadium and other N64 games over playing for real though. Him saying my Eevee wasn't as good as Eevee could be because I only got him to lvl 25 really hurt too. :T
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Juno

OK I PULL UP

Age 28
Female
Seen 4 Hours Ago
Posted 4 Days Ago
4,561 posts
9.5 Years
Okay, I'm glad my friends and I weren't the only ones that played as Pokemon rather than trainers lol. I don't know how we even understood what was going on or what "story" we were playing, since we always stayed in character and only spoke in the names of the Pokemon we were.

I had the toy Pokedex and many Pokemon plushies - why it never occurred to me to play as a trainer instead of a Pokemon is beyond me. That probably would have been more fun.
I still do this. My little brother is on the autistic spectrum (don't ask me where; I have no idea) and he likes re-enacting bits and pieces from his favourite TV shows and films, including the first and third Pokemon movies. I know the script as well as he does by this point, and I've got no problems playing one of the parts for him...usually Mewtwo or Entei, although I've been Brock's Onix a couple of times. It's fun. If that means I'm LARPing (whatever THAT means; I'd never heard that term before today) or being childish...well, guilty as charged.

As a kid I had my own Pokemon adventure every day for a couple of years, naturally. That occasionally involved other kids, but as often as not it was just me fishing in the local stream trying to catch a pike that I was convinced was a Gyarados, or trying to catch the biggest grasshopper Scyther I could in the summer months. xD

Penelope

fluffy Flaaffy

Age 34
Female
Hampton Va
Seen April 10th, 2016
Posted April 10th, 2016
87 posts
9 Years
Yesss! After school I would go to my cousins where we'd be in the back yard "catching pokemon" we'd be ourselves as trainers and our pokemon teams during battle. It was the best times I had as a kid

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Male
Maine, USA
Seen April 25th, 2015
Posted April 16th, 2015
23 posts
8.2 Years
I didn't do that with Pokemon... at recess at school, I would play Digimon with one of my friends. Not sure what our rules were if we even had any, but yeah. Pokemon I would play by myself in my room. I had a bunch of beanie babies that would be the pokemon (or digimon depending on what I was in the mood for) and then I had a couple Bratz Boys "Action Figures" ;) that would play as the trainers. As well as my sister's Barbies. I didn't get out much as a kid, but damn did I have a good imagination. lol


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