Did you ever connect with anyone before WiFi was a thing?

[Sheep]

Before WiFi, the only way to trade/battle/etc people was in person. Did you ever connect with friends (or others)? Or were you mostly a solo player?

 

[Nah]

A few times with my sisters and neighborhood friends I think. I don't think that we ever owned a Link Cable so that limited my already limited ability to trade/battle with other people.

 

[alisaie]

i had a friend in elementary school i connected with to trade a few times i suppose but otherwise i was a solo player especially after i left elementary and went to a different middle school from said friend.

 

[pkmin3033]

My next door neighbour had Pokemon Blue, so I traded with him! For GSC I was mostly a solo player because they came out just as I was going into Secondary School, at which point admitting you still liked Pokemon was basically social suicide, and this continued with RSE.

 

[Janp]

Sadly no. There was no one playing Pokémon around me that I could trade or battle with.

 

[Megan]

During the first two generations I got to play/trade with a couple people. When gen 3 came out I moved to another school and sadly nobody was playing the games anymore. I could still trade/battle with myself, which is a benefit when you have a link cable and at least two GameBoys. But of course, that's not the same as having others to do that stuff with.

 

[Hybrid Trainer]

For a hot minute Pokemon was cool again in my secondary school, around the time Ruby/Saphire/Emerald was out and thriving, and one kid had a link cable which I was about to borrow to trade/mix records with my friends.
Trading combined with the clone glitch in gen 3 meant that I got irritatingly close to finishing my Hoenn dex, but nobody had Pokemon Sapphire at my school so we were missing Lunatone ):

 

[TwilightBlade]

I primarily traded and battled my twin brother. I also had 4-5 classmates that would actively play through the first three generations. Emerald allowed Double Battle style link battles so 4 of us would battle every couple of weeks just to test our skills. The Emerald cloning glitch allowed me to give a copy of my shiny Poochyena to my classmates. Back when shinies were actually very rare...

Either way, taking my Game Boy to school was the only way I could connect with people my age since my parents never let me do sleepovers or visit other kid's houses... I did have a neighbor or two that would play Pokémon, but they moved around the GSC era.

 

[Sheep]

Glad to read others connected with people too!! I was obsessed, but I think my peak in connectivity was during RS for mixing secret bases. Swear I must have restarted my secondary game, went through it from start to finish, and mixed those records back to my/my friends' main games like, at least 10 times.

 

[Sydian]

wait aha what y'all had friends to link up with i thought that was a myth

 

[Palamon]

Since I didn't start playing Pokemon full time until maybe a year after diamond/pearl came out, not really? I did trade through ds wireless communication, though, does that count?

 

[LordWayback]

I started playing Pokémon in 2014 , but hear me out I didn't start to use the WiFi function until like 2015 and between then I got white version 2 (don't own it anymore) and was constantly using infrared to trade with my best friends I since then lost the shiny lugia i got from him (traded for something) miss ya bruh , the simple days of me actually going outside on my 3DS and infrared trading hoping the 3ds's stayed aligned and had so many memories making Pokémon X my favorite game of all time

 

[Meganium]

Really wish I did when I was younger. Because I had a friend who also played Pokemon, but she didn't have a cable to use the function.

Wi-Fi really changed everything, though!

 

[Fairy]

Oh you better believe I did. With Pokémon being the phenomenon it was with my age group, we all had game boys and we all had link cables. Made so many fun and silly trades based on absolutely nothing of value when it comes to Pokémon.

"I beat the Elite 4 with this Tauros on my team! I'll trade it to you for that Dewgong that has Aurora Beam!"

 

[Lucifer]

My best friend and I used to link cable battle, trade, and exchange mystery gifts between our copies of Gold and Silver all the time. Such great memories.

 

[icycatelf]

I used to connect with my younger cousin back in the GSC days. Also traded a little bit with said cousin in RS (I had Ruby and he had Sapphire) and mixed records with a small handful of friends back in middle school.

Super bummed that none of my old friends got ORAS so we could share Secret Bases once again. :/

 

[colours]

other than an irl friend of mine that i would visit occasionally, no. :c had some good memories with him, though!

 

[TheClassyHerddIer]

Sadly not. I was born in the year 2002. Do the math. And I really started gaming in the transition between DS and 3Ds

 

[Gardevoir1]

I mainly played solo but on occasion I met up with friends from school and in my neighborhood with our gameboys (or DSs later) to trade and battle. We couldn't really figure out many features besides that though lol (RIP FEEBAS FISHING METHOD)

 

[Drayton]

There were no one interested playing pokemon in my area because they didn't know what pokemon is or owned any console, so I just spent time playing alone on my GBA