I was 9 when the anime first aired in the US, in 1998, and was hooked almost immediately. I got a GameBoy Color and Pokemon Red for Christmas, along with enough money to go buy Pokemon Blue the day after. I’ve purchased and played at least one game from every generation since - one of my favorite collections! I’m actually working on figuring out how best to introduce my son to the game, now - I want to play through some iteration of every generation with him if I can manage it.

I saved and bought a Gameboy color. I had enough to get one game. Pokémon Crystal was just out, so I got that. My mother got me Donkey Kong Country for having saved. Man Crystal was so cool! I got to be me! Surely I’ll be able to do that in all games!

My friend from Japan showed me this cool new franchise that was coming over to America. I also got to see a Pokémon green cartridge in person.

I assume it was the original tv series broadcasting when I came out of school, but it could also have been the Pokémon cards that my classmates and kids in the neighbourhood had. Really not sure what came first. But what completely sealed the deal for me and why I love Pokémon still 25 years later was one of my best friends in primary school. She had the gameboy color with Pokémon Yellow and Crystal and I got to play on it every time I was at her place. At one point we also started collecting the cards together. Since I had no borthers or sisters, my parents took my friend on vacation with us as well, and we would spend all day playing on the game or sorting our cards. Thinking about that is still one of my favorite memories ever.

I cant remember what came first, all i know is i had a vhs of the first pokemon episode and the first thing i bought with money i earned myself was a gameboycolor and pokemon yellow.

It was the Gameboy commercial when red/blue came out.

I saw it and was like, “What’s this game about? Those creatures are so cute! You collect them? I need to check this out!” I babysat a bunch, saved my money, bought Pokemon Red, and I was hooked. I started watching the animated series, collecting the TCG, and playing with friends. Been engaged ever since.

many other kids in my school when I was ~9 playing it (the original Hoenn games) and enjoying watching them over the shoulder, then deciding I wanted to play this too

The hamster had lightning wizardry.

In 2003 my 4 year old daughter wanted to play. I went whole hog and got us a gameboy color, pokemon red and yellow. We did not play much, but the next year Leaf Green released. So I traded my GBC for a GBA SP and have been playing ever since.

I was a teenager in the late '90s and the Pokémon anime show started airing on TV in the US. I remember catching the very first episode to air on TV and thinking that this show seemed really awesome! If I hurried, I could just barely catch it every day as I was arriving home from school.

Also, the Pokémon trading card game became a national phenomenon and everyone my age and younger was collecting the cards and trading/battling with them. I was awful at card games, but I collected a decent amount of first generation cards. I still have them to this day, neatly arranged in a binder.

I never got into the games. I watched some of my friends play them, but I hardly ever owned Nintendo consoles, and never Pokémon games. When I did finally get a chance to play a Pokémon game, it wasn’t really fun. Not my kind of game, anyway.

I remember someone releasing a fan-made 3D open-world Pokémon game online a little over a decade ago and it was the coolest thing I’d ever played! But Nintendo refused to make an actual open-world game for… reasons. Fans demanded it, but Nintendo wouldn’t budge. They wanted to stick with their old formula, which keep loyal fans loyal, but also kept other gamers out of the franchise.

The success of Zelda: Breath of the Wild must’ve changed their mind, though. Just the other day, I was watching a buddy of mine live-steam a Pokémon game and it was an open world 3D map to explore, so I guess Nintendo got there eventually. But video games have progressed a ton in the past decade and it’s not that impressive anymore, so I’m still not that interested in playing it.

I have been a fan of anime in general since I lived in Japan for a few years in my late teens/early 20s. It was my lifelong goal to find a complete collection of Pokémon episodes in its original Japanese, since I don’t like English dubs. It always loses some of its original culture and context when it’s translated into another language. However, Pokémon is the one anime series that’s eluded me all these years.

I couldn’t figure out why this show didn’t have an easy-to-find original. Turns out, it was dubbed in the era of 4Kids, when they didn’t care about preserving the original show’s story and instead made up their own American-specific dubs to appeal to American audiences. As well as arranging the events in each episode to match their new dub, so you couldn’t just play the original Japanese audio over it. Finding the original show in America is pretty much impossible, thanks to the 4Kids version being extremely popular in its day and dominating the US market.

I just recently found the original show in high(ish) quality on Japan’s Amazon Prime. So at 40 years old, I can finally watch Pokémon in its original Japanese format and not the butchered American version that changes everyone’s (and every Pokémon’s) names, removes Japanese cultural references, and mixes up the plot and whatnot. I’m already a handful of episodes in and it’s excellent!

It was probably around '98, I saw a Pikachu keychain at the local card store and I absolutely had to have it. It just went from there.

The show was on TV when I was 6 and my parents bought me a booster pack or whatever it was called at the time. Got a shiny Zapdos that my bully later stole from me. Never saw it again.

I was losing weight. I had lost as much as diet by itself was going to change. I needed to move more. This was right as Pokemon Go was released and the headlines were “Kids aren’t used to walking this much.” Well that’s exactly what I needed for those last 10 pounds.

I miscalculated. Accidentally lost 20. But the plan worked.

In 2021 I broke my back. It took years just to get the goal of “I would like to be able to walk five miles again.” A few weeks ago I pulled it off. Pokemon Go was there with me to keep me moving. I hurt. I hurt a lot. I probably shouldn’t have done it. But I pulled it off.

1999 got an N64 with Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Snap.

Kids WB