Any Pokemon fans in chat

[DzNutsKong]

So, Pokemon. How involved in the series are you, if at all? Any big memories you have of it?

 

[Cephalobro]

I started by playing Diamond, then stopped for a few years until I resumed with Black and Black 2, playing the heck out of the latter, and basically played almost every main series game until Scarlet and Violet came out, except for the Let's Go games because I was tired of Kanto getting so much favoritism. Thankfully, that favoritism was slowly going away and wasn't shoved as much. The final Pokemon game I played as of typing this is Legends Arceus and they did so much of it right:

• A game based on the past with ancestors of characters we know and love? Check
• Catching without the need for battling? Check
• Not requiring trading at all to get the trade evolutions? Check
• A setting that's not afraid to be harsh towards the player? Check

I can go on, point is, Legends Arceus is a great Pokemon game for going completely away from the samey path that the main series games was doing, I'm looking forward to Legends Z-A once it inevitably releases in 2025.

 

[Mx_Diva]

I play Scarlet/Violet! I am also wiling to help with 7-star raids.

 

[isaac4]

I was a huge Pokemon fan when I was growing up.
A lot of the kids at my elementary school were as well so I have plenty of memories with playing the games, watching the anime, or collecting the trading cards.
I also had a running joke that my favorite Pokemon was Furret and one of my friends would call me a furry because of it (we were kids).

I find it funny that despite losing interest in the franchise years ago, I can't really say that it doesn't matter to me because I've become very fond of Mewtwo from my years playing him in Smash tournaments.
He's become my favorite Pokemon because of reasons outside of the franchise itself but I still thought he was cool as a kid.

 

[ThestralZ]

Top 200 Gen 9 LC player here, best games are gen 7 and Pokemon has been my life since I've been like 7. Favorite memories are going to my local card shop to play in the TCG league they had, and catching shiny Doudou in Let's Go Eevee full odds then immediately finding a shiny Dotrio a few steps later causing me to think that shinnies weren't that rare

 

[Masked_Katz]

I heard quite a lot about it growing up, only delving in myself with Pokemon Rangers and then Pokemon Black (when I was around 11 years old). I think I have about 400 hours in the latter, it was my comfort game for the longest time and was one of the few games that made me feel like I was in my own little ever-evolving world. This also encouraged me to get into collecting the trading cards, the art was great and it made me connect with kids on the playground. However, I realized that with new games coming out each year and card products releasing even faster than that, I was getting really stressed out since I didn't have enough time or money to enjoy everything I wanted to get, so I felt like I had to step back from the series. Much later, Pokemon Moon launched, and I thought that would be how I got back into the groove - but unfortunately it left a bad impression on me so I took that as a sign that the good times had passed.

Not long before Moon was released, I had the luxury of being there for Yo-Kai Watch's launch, and it would reignite that spark within me while I became obsessed with its many games and collectables, so Ive always cheekily claimed Yo-Kai Watch was my destined monster-catcher series of choice. Anyways, a decade has passed since I first started playing the series and nowadays I only ever passively hear about Pokemon happenings, but recently I've been trying to warm up to it again by properly sorting and preserving all the cards I've collected, and I even convinced my irl friend to help me make a couple of decks to play with in the future. (@briank913 is to blame for this)

 

[Hokuto]

My nearly lifelong special interest in Pokémon began when I was in first or second grade and these two kids I barely remember brought their Pokémon handbook or something like that with them. (Once. The substitute teacher told them not to bring it back or she'd take it away.) I bought the book version of DP anime episode "Good Will Hunting" and got Burger King promo cards that summer. (My first Pokémon was actually Eevee, no matter how much I'll insist Infernape is my first, last, and everything.) I got Pokémon Platinum for my eighth birthday and couldn't put it down until my mom made me. My Pokémon cards and guidebook taught me to draw during my brother's swim meets. Then I picked up SoulSilver and White, not that I completed either of those. (I still haven't to this day.) In sixth grade, I spent so much time reading a different classmate's Pokémon Black and White 2 guide that he got me a copy of White 2 with a Servine named after my dog and a bunch of hacked Pokes from Wonder Trades. That run was some of the most fun I've ever had with a Pokémon game, although I wish I kept the guide he gave me.

Don't talk to me about Generation 6, because I didn't have a 3DS 2DS until I got one specifically for Pokémon Moon. How could I live in IRL Alola and not play the Alola game? I got a bunch of the event legendaries and everything. Heck, just before Blaseball, Pokémon Moon was my lockdown comfort game. Thinking about how I lost the cartridge still makes me so sad.

I almost "don't talk to me about Generation 8"ed my way through Generation 8. Even though my sister and I bought a Switch for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the controversy behind Pokémon Sword and Shield turned us off to the games when they first came out. If I had bought one of the two then, I would most likely have been disappointed by everything except Toxtricity. Anyway, I took the Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl nostalgia bait for my 20th birthday and (against all odds!) had so much fun that I bought Pokémon Shield at a collector's expo just a few months later. Without the DLC, the advantage that 2022 Hokuto had over 2019 Hokuto was my recently acquired knowledge of emergent narrative. (Thanks, Blaseball!) I basically made up my own story that was so much better than the canon plot, I'm still obsessed with it nearly three years after starting Shining Pearl. Then somehow Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Pokémon Scarlet, and my Splatoon personal canon got tangled up in it, and I guess also my takeaways from the Zero Escape series? I'd say it makes sense in context if the context didn't take hours to explain.

Competitive Pokémon is unfortunately not my forte. This post is brought to you by the bird team sweep I pulled against my Shiny hunter friend, who brought both a Glastrier and a Spectrier that almost swept me with the power of Grim Neigh. I have never been able to make my gimmick teams work against anybody else. However, I can name every single Pokémon and its types if shown to me. Autism is good for something and apparently mine does this. You can talk to me about Pokémon at any time, literally any time.

Even though nobody asked:

• My favorite Pokémon are, in this order: Infernape, Marshadow, Minior, Toxtricity
• Pokémon White 2 is my favorite Pokémon game, according to hours logged and content played.
• I still collect Pokémon cards. I was going to say the best of my collection was (insert white-star full art card or whatever) until I found my OG Eevee sleeved at the top of my stack.
• I attended the Pokémon World Championships in August. Upon request, I will happily share pictures.
• My Pokémon player characters started getting their own personalities with Pokémon Moon, not counting my disastrous replay of Pokémon Platinum in high school.
  • Please talk me about my morphy worphy children. This is a threat.

 

[sevenleaf]

gen 5 was My Generation. i was in fifth grade when black and white dropped and... they weren't my first pokemon gen, technically, i'd played some of dppt (specifically i had diamond as one of many games on a flashcart my older brother had) and i think i got invested in it but i was not a fully conscious being when i played it lol. but i played through pokemon black in like, a week, i remember getting home from school and rushing to my ds to play more of it. genuinely one of my lifelong top 10 games in terms of personal importance. i need to replay it sometime

since then i haven't been able to get as invested in any mainline pokemon game. i miss being as into pokemon as i was at age 11 sometimes

i've always been more into the spinoffs than the mainline games though. the pokemon ranger games are underrated

 

[briank913]

.
(@briank913 is to blame for this)

How dare you blame me for your inability to resist the Poke Men?

I am a Gen Wunner. I was there since Red and Blue. I grew up with the Base Set/Jungle/Fossil/Team Rocket set in TCG. I grew up with Gold and Silver. I played FireRed and Sapphire.
HeartGold was the first Pokemon game I bought with my own money.
It's incredible how the franchise has survived and is nearing its 30 year mark. It's incredible how my kids at school recognize my Magikarp card. It really is a franchise that will keep going. That's why I started investing in TCG sets for the future. I've also started collecting cards because man these things are ART. They're also valuable commodities in the future so there's that.

Mystery Dungeon and the TCG for the Game Boy Color were some of the best spinoffs ever.

Gyarados has to be an all-time favorite Pokemon of mine.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Never really played the games but I probably have like a thousand pokemon cards in my house still. I didn't care about collecting them, I just loved it as a card game. Very good memories of playing that with my siblings.
Actually, I should start doing that again. Would be fun.

 

[RetroShark]

I started by playing Diamond, then….

DIAMOND FANS UNITE!!! Never finished it because victory road is a pain in my butt cheeks >:(

 

[briank913]

Never really played the games but I probably have like a thousand pokemon cards in my house still. I didn't care about collecting them, I just loved it as a card game. Very good memories of playing that with my siblings.
Actually, I should start doing that again. Would be fun.

Let's goooooooooo

 

[Mili]

Yeah I would call myself a fan, I think the only mainline I haven't played is SW/SH, I really like pokemon! I think about the pokemon a lot too, a fan of cool creatures in general and I've grown up with pokemon for as long as I remember I think, the games themselves also tend to be ones I play a lot, though the last one I truly played all the way through was Moon, without counting ones I've come back to like B/W and Emerald.

Despite it being a game that has never left me, I don't consider myself a huge fan, I'm sure I recognize all pokemon at least, but I can't really name them all at this point hahhah, I mostly engage with the designs of the pokemon themselves and watch a bit of people talking about competitive or making funny tier lists about which pokemon from RBY UU is the best social drinker lol.

I think some of the designs are still good, I really like quite a few of 9th gen pokemon, so I have that to look forward to at least, and I keep thinking about my favorite pokemon a lot to this day, like Haunter, Gengar, Rotom, Reuniclus, Deoxys, I have an Ivysaur amiibo and I really like it, I don't know, I still like thinking about pokemon, even if I play less.

I dunno if I have much more to say though, uhhh, my first real game that I owned was pokemon pearl, pokemon emerald was one of the first games I tried to play, pokemon X was also one of the games I had the most hours in at the time, it has been a noticeable presence in my life, but I never considered it as one of my favorites to the same level as other series or games like Mario, Mother, Cave Story, the Hylics games, and of course Splatoon.

I think pokemon games just aren't that polished anymore, at least not to the point where the experience feels smooth, despite the story being the most engaging I've seen in pokemon, I don't think much about violet compared to other of the games and didn't even finish it, I can chalk it up to maybe me being more invested in Splatoon at the time, I dunno, I just want to see pokemon games be better, also please give us a better model viewer... Bring back Pokedex 3D pro at least....

 

[QuagSass]

My relationship with Pokemon is... bittersweet? I think that's the best way to describe it.

Buckle in folks, it's gonna be a long one.

To say that Pokemon was my life back in the day would be an understatement. You guys know how I talk about Hydra sometimes, now imagine that but 10x worse and also it lasted for 2 decades or something.

Been a fan since I was concious enough to form memories. My mother would record episodes of the anime on VHS and I would watch them over and over and over. I had a Pokemon sticker book with Pokemon from gens 1-3 that I would spent all my allowance buying stickers for. Never actually managed to finish it before the stickers got discontinued, but I was only missing like 5. I would look through that sticker book constantly, to the point that some pages on the poor thing would fall off and the ones that didn't were holding on through the power of hopes and dreams.
Any media I consumed had to have Pokemon in it or I was probably not gonna be interested. Even as I grew up, I ended up consuming Pokemon media almost exclusively. I hardly knew anything about other games or shows. I thought Samus was a robot and Megaman a guy in a robot suit. I thought Kirby was a magical girl and Meta Knight his magical girl transformation.
So yeah, Pokemon was my everything. It was all I knew and all I cared about.

So fast forward to 2013 and the release of Pokemon XY. Pokemon is now in 3D!!! After playing every game since Platinum (took me a while to get a DS), I was so hyped for this game. I loved gen 4 and especially gen 5, so I thought gen 6 was gonna be even better and in 3D!!!!! Well it was good. I loved it. Then ORAS came out and I rarely went back to X. I instead played that one constantly. I did challenge runs, shiny hunted and even got into competitive! Doubles Trick Room teams, my beloved. But because I did competitive on my copy of Alpha Sapphire, I couldn't restart it anymore. So I figured I'd replay X instead, but then I noticed how much less I liked it than AS. Then I replayed White and realised how much more I liked that. That was probably the first time that I noticed myself liking a Pokemon game noticeably less.
But then Sun and Moon came out and I thought that now that Gamefreak is more acquainted with making 3D games, they're gonna knock it out of the park with gen 7! Well, kinda. I liked Sun and Moon plenty, but the slooooow start did absolutely drag on me. I find the most enjoyment from replaying Pokemon games with different challenge rules. Your nuzlockes and monotype runs and what not. But I don't think I've ever fully replayed Moon. I've certainly tried, but could never bring myself to go past the second island. And when Ultra Sun/Moon came out and the story, which was a part of the game I really enjoyed, was butchered? Well, I started to see the flaws in the series. I started to try out other games, expanding my horizons. Got into the absolute drug that is modded SA2 Chao Garden.
It was a blessing in disguise that I didn't have money for a Switch when it first came out. I would absolutely have fallen for the new gen hype trap only to be severely disappointed by whatever happened to Sword/Shield. At that point I had already started studying game graphics, so seeing the game and thinking "I could do that better" was kinda startling. Obviously I knew the devs were probably under a massive time crunch and that's why it looks bad. But seeing people defending the results of a massive time crunch??? That really rubbed me the wrong way and makes engaging with the series leave a bad taste in my mouth.

So yeah, I dont really play Pokemon anymore. Occasionally I'll play fangames or do a nuzlocke run of an older Pokemon game, but that's about it. I still hold some designs close to my heart.
A mutual of mine on Tumblr said it best I think: it's like eating your comfort food but then halfway through it starts to taste bad.

On the upside, I have played a bunch of really cool indie monster collectors ever since I stopped playing Pokemon. Ooblets, Monster Sanctuary, Monster Crown, Coromon, Anode Heart etc. I can't be too upset. I can still fill my life with little guystm

 

[Grushi]

I barely mention it these days but I used to be big into pokémon. When I was a kid, I'd watch the anime in secret because I thought it was the coolest thing ever. God I used to pretend I wasn't interested, but watch it over a book or something when it was on, haha. I even watched Yu-Gi-Oh when my parents weren't watching because I was sure they wouldn't let me LMAO. I was... weird lol
I used to watch the old episodes, and I was really into the XYZ anime. I used to love pokémon cards, bought pokémon Alpha Sapphire when it came out, played the absolute hell out of that game (I'm pretty sure I have around 500 hours of playtime on my DS, damn).

I was watching the Sun and Moon trailers religiously, checked every new pokémon reveal, I was obsessed. I talked about it with my friends at school, and I was even invested into the competitive side. I used to watch pokémon showdown analysis vids all the time, kept on checking the wiki for... some reason? And was watching like, meta analysis videos. All this, mind you, while I was like, 10 to 13 years old. It's kind of wild for me to look back on, this was in a way, my first competitive game.

But I gradually lost interest. I remember even as a kid hearing that the games weren't great from channels I watched, and the games were really easy too when you started thinking about your team seriously. I still wanted to get Sun and Moon, and then the Ultra rereleases, but I didn't want to ask my parents to get them, so I just... didn't get the games, despite how excited I was!

And then I heard about all the sword and shield drama for a while, my friends weren't interested either, the games looked meh, and I couldn't afford many of them anyway, so at that point I completely fell off the series. There was drama everywhere, and the games looked meh, so I'm not interested to get back into it.

I think my love for pokémon kind of transferred into other, better RPGs though. So I guess I'm grateful for that

 

[Cephalobro]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that Black 2 got me through a big part of high school. High school was really the worst time I had gone through when my mental health was at one of its worst, so I'm forever grateful to Black 2 for being there for me when I needed an escape from reality. I won't burden you with any more of the details, but yeah, as my own way to honor the game that helped me through a big part of one of the worst times, I have transferred my Reshiram from Black (managed to find someone else who could directly trade it to my Black 2 copy, I was finally able to use a White Kyurem thanks to him) as well as my Zekrom and Kyurem from Black 2 all the way up to Sword.

 

[DzNutsKong]

I guess I'll throw my story in. I have a lot more I could say but I'll summarize.

My neighbor first introduced me to Pokemon when I was 4 and I quickly became completely obsessed with it. Like, if you were friends with me during elementary school, I would get pissed off at you if you didn't want to talk about Pokemon and I'm not even exaggerating. I played other games, but not very many and all of them were for a tiny fraction of the amount of time I would play Pokemon. My outright obsession with this series didn't really stop until I was probably around 16 or so when USUM released but I've still bought all of the main series games up to this point.

Like what a few others have said, this probably peaked the most for me around Gen 6. X and Y were the first mainline games where I had big internet access and could actually watch over the game's pre-release cycle. I loved Mega Evolutions back then, loved seeing the new Pokemon as they were revealed, and when the games actually came out it felt like the hype delivered. Actually ended up buying both games so I could keep a static file on Pokemon X that I could keep special Pokemon in and replayed through Y like crazy. Had to have at least a dozen times and that's not counting all of the other Pokemon games I'd be playing as well.

Around BW's release was my first step into competitive Pokemon and this would take me down a rabbithole that I'm still somewhat involved in to this day. I still think that competitive 6v6 Pokemon is an absolutely fascinating game. I don't think it's very fun to actually play but it's extremely intricate and fascinating to learn about. There's an insane amount of depth to every single element of it that I could go on for hours talking about every little tiny detail and still have so much more to say. I haven't actually played a single match of it in a long time but I still think it's cool all the same.

On a similar note, more recently for me, some cracks in the main series games have started to show. I know a lot of people have said similar but for me even if the main series games weren't losing their polish I still would be stepping off the gas a bit. I'm straight up not having fun when playing even the older and technically better main series games. If I get any chance to play an interesting looking fangame or challenge then I usually will take it but there aren't many of those for me. I do want to enjoy the series, but haven't been able to the degree that I used to lately.

Still think Pokemon is awesome though. I'll always respect the creature design for how layered and unique they often get and I think there's room for a lot of cool stuff with the game's mechanics in general. More recently, people have been making escape room hacks with it where you need to use knowledge on the main series games to win seemingly impossible fights! How cool is that?

 

[Smash Arena]

I was around for the tail-end of the original Pokemania in the very early 2000s (albeit I was pretty young), wasn't interested in it during grade school and middle school, then got hyper into Pokemon during high school because my friends were playing. Gen V was when I was most interested, those games truly resonated with me and made me love the series. Gen VI was a huge turnoff to me compared to Gen V, fell off for a while after that and just played the newest games in passing.

Been more into it in recent years with Scarlet and Violet since my friends are still actively playing, but not happy with the lack of quality control in the series at this point.

 

[Azhdarcho]

I played the bejeezus out of Red, and when I finally upgraded to Diamond I was like "Wow this is so much better" lol. I was starting to get into the competitive scene with XY and SuMo, but I'm one of the salty sammies who was disappointed with what I saw of the Switch era games and I haven't played a mainline game since USUM (which I didn't finish because I was frustrated by tutorializing and the fact that I felt like I just bought the same game twice).

I gotta say though, Legends Arceus nailed it with the spirit of adventure feel that I loved about earlier games. Once you leave town and set off into the unknown, it's just you, the six Pokemon on your belt, and whatever equipment you can afford. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble in LA if you just wander off. It's the same feel as when you are just trying to get to Snowpoint and all your Pokemon are dying of chip damage and those Snover woN'T LEAVE ME ALONE AAAHH or when you finally get to the end of Rock Tunnel and all you have is like a half-dead Pikachu and then Gary Oak's theme song starts playing.

 

[BlueBeardGoat505]

I probably replayed emerald like 30 times when I was a kid before the age of 10.
I enjoyed it up to around soulsviler which is the best handheld installation of Pokemon.

Colosseum 1+2 were the most memorable however. They were apparently made by a different company than usual, which explains the creativity that has dropped away since around ~2010, with Gen 4 being the highest rated IMO.

I stopped playing it around 2019-2020 with sword/shield. That game felt like a pre-marketed, half-made beta test.
The worst game I have ever played was a harvest moon game on 3ds called animal parade, and sword came a little too close to that experience. I guess making 3D graphics games was not their best suite.

No idea what the Pokemon merchandisers are up to now. I was beginning to believe (without evidence) that they were selling out the new Pokemon which were added in, in terms of design and abilities, to the highest public bidders for Sword/Shield, as a mafia would do to increase influence and profits.

Lesson learned: Creativity dies, when the IP can sell itself through anything, no matter what.
'Buy more Pikachu. Why don't we? Pikachu sells himself, and nothing save god can stop him.'
The argument that serves the interests of corrupt corporations.