When did you get your first Pokemon game?

[Imperator161]

As we all know, today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Pokemon Red and Green in Japan. But my guess is that most of us haven't actually known about Pokemon for the full 20 years, especially if we didn't live in Japan at the time. When did you get your very first Pokemon game? What game was it, and when did you first learn about Pokemon?

For me, I first heard of Pokemon sometime in 1998 (before the games came out in the US, I think), but I didn't know much about it. I picked up Red in August 1999. So I'm coming up on 17 years of actually playing.

 

[waveguidebuizel]

I first learned about Pokémon in fifth grade, so around 1998/1999. Classmates were talking about it, and I got curious. Eventually, I found out when the TV show aired and my brother and I watched it every morning before school (first episode we saw was "Ash Catches a Caterpie," which we caught halfway through the episode). Our cousin got Blue Version and a guide, so we kinda knew how gameplay worked by the time we actually got our first game later in 2000 or 2001, Gold.

 

[AliceBlaze]

When Pokemon first came out, I didn't care about video games so I only liked it for the anime. The first game I played was LeafGreen when I was 12 years old. Since FR/LG had a help system and are remakes of the first games, it was a good game for me to start with.

 

[noa]

I actually clearly remember it, it was night time and we were in my parent's bedroom and my dad brought me and my brother Red and Blue and he taught us how to play. We asked him for it after we saw some commercials on TV. Up until gen 5, I got all my Pokemon games from my dad. :D

 

[Mapleseruhp]

I don't really remember when I discovered pokemon (yes I was that young) but I do know that pearl/diamond/platinum were my first games, so roughly 2009-ish. I cannot remember the order, but I do believe diamond was my first. Its really funny because I can remember playing platinum while watching my bro play hockey, but not exactly when I got them.....