Pokemon Experience

by charizardf1 Mon Apr 01, 2019 1:03 am

Hey guys in preparation for gen 8 later this year I'd like for us to explore the depths of our origins when it comes to us as fans of the Pokemon franchise. Through the last couple generations as a group we've been declining in our love for pokemon but we hope to get back into things if this gen gives us what we loyal fans deserve. To help us get the drive and feel for pokemon again I feel it would be a good time for us all to share our complete journey as a community so we can have a better vibe and remember the good memories throughout our childhoods. Depending on how gen 8 goes it potentially could be the end for most so we might as well gather people's stories now.

My Pokemon Experience

As a kid small child I watched the anime on TV and really enjoyed it. Being a normie I quickly was drawn to the cool Charmander line and decided Charizard to be my favorite automatically. I started playing the games when I was around 8 in 3rd grade. I received my Gameboy Advanced along with my first Pokemon game Leafgeen. Being a big fan of Pokemon i really was interested in the game and it was the only game i played for 2 years straight, replaying it multiple times without ever getting bored of it. Around Christmas of 2005 Mom had bought me Firered and I was extremely happy and thought it was a completely new game but i put it in and discovered it was actually the same game but i didn't complain. While playing through i noticed it had slightly different route Pokemon which i thought was kinda cool. Also sometime in this year I had gotten Pokemon Mystery Dungoen Red Rescue Team, which was my first spinoff game, and enjoyed it quite a lot.

In late 2006 in 5th grade I found out that there was this system called a DS and this girl was playing a pokemon game on it. I had no idea at the time that there was any other handheld than a Gameboy and also didn't know there was a new Pokemon game out. Around that year's Christmas I had used my money to buy Pokemon Pearl and was excited to play it. I had also upset my Mom because she expected me to get her a Christmas present and was kinda dissapointed. When I got home I was kind of excited to play it and tried to figure out how to put it in my gameboy but I realized it doesn't go in there. I felt sad since I didn't have money for a DS and also didn't want to bother Mom to get me one because I usually never ask her for anything. My best friend, Swamp, spoke to me and gave me a DS Lite since he said he had muliple ds's and I was so grateful.

When playing through Gen 4 I felt so amazed by how the game felt. It was a total mindblow in comparison to Leafgreen and I was happy every second of my playthrough. I always was caught surprised by how good the game looked, the amount of content, and the introduction of online. In this generation was where I began to explore many other spinoff games thanks to Swamp. I was mostly amazed and aweshook by Pokemon Revolution. It truly blew my mind seeing Pokemon Fight in 3D with pretty neat animations. Though my experience has been the best it's ever been so far I still never explored the online when it came to Pokemon. When Mom got a desktop into the house I decided to search for Pokemon chat rooms so I could battle with wifi and came across VGChat. As somebody who was completely new to online I had gotten stumped pretty easily.

When I had gotten 6-0'd at that moment something snapped in my brain and all of a sudden my casual mindset got destroyed and I began to think as a competitive battler. Using my collective base knowledge of matchups I went back in to rematch the same person and 6-0'd him back. Feeling proud of my development I went about destroying most battlers on VGChat until I came across Joe. He had destroyed me in a 6-0 and I admired how good he was. He sent me a message and convinced me to go to Youtopia to start up a Pokemon group along with Chick and ShinyCharizard(SC/AD). Being a complete noob to the real Pokemon competitive scene I didn't actually know what I was doing completely. Joe taught me about EVs/IVs and how to train them as well as teaching me team synergy. From that point I further began to understand how complex Pokemon could get. While in 4th Gen after discovering what exactly breeding was I actually tried the ditto thing in my Leafgreen and was amazed how i could have multiple Charmanders and from there I made like a family of Charizards and I was so happy about that.

When hgss came out I just couldn't believe how well they made that game. Along with Platinum they both seemed to forever hold amazing content. Pokemon following you and being able to interact with you added so much to the experience. Around these times I also used a lot of my action replay to do fun things like walk through walls and make maxed number of every item. Also hacking in event items that I wouldn't have ever experienced if not for the AR. I also used to use this EV booster cheat that maxed EVs for every stat and thought it was legit but later down the line realized that it's illegal. One of the most WTF moments was when I looked up the Arceus event and Swamp and I thought it was fan made BS and then Swamp contacted me saying that it actually was real and then he sent me his Arceus and I did the event and was like Shocked

. Last thing with Gen 4 that I found amazing was when I had transferred my Sapphire Pokemon to Platinum and looked at manectric and luxray and thought about what would happen if they were put in daycare and I was shocked that my theory was correct about them. So here I am thinking some hybrid Pokemon is going to pop out the egg and it was just another Shinx. At first i was kind of dissapointed but then I noticed that he had an additional move which was quick attack. I thought it was really super cool after that. This was how I was introduced to crossbreeding and egg moves because afterwards I looked online about wtf happened.

When i got into 5th Gen I was pretty spectical about the game because I was sorta misunderstanding people when they would say there was a HM slave and stuff like that. So I mildly thought some racial shizz was relating to the game lowkey which i thought would be kinda funny maybe? But When Gen 5 came around I was becoming more seasoned as a comeptitive battler and I knew a decent amount at this point. I was neither a noob anymore nor was I a really skilled trainer yet. What made me go further from where I stood before was when I had met Fizzy/Sara. She was so strong at the time that she even destroying Joe. Sara at the time was also a Smogon Elitist who fully believed in their ideals and utilizing their strats to win. Sara and I always would fight amongst ourselves about what was right or wrong about playing the game(I find it kinda funny that the generation itself also has that struggle of black and white aka truth and ideals which is very fitting never really noticed that until now). As time went on throughout the Gen both of us rubbed off on each other in our progress as Pokemon battlers. I had made it my goal to best her and show her that my ideals have no fault in the competitive scene which forced me to go through great lengths of studying and researching combinations and expanding my overall knowledge on battling. Sara developed the understanding of not being shackled by the Smogon community and reached a higher plateau from thinking for herself and finding true enjoyment with her own playstyle from seeing how much a challenge I actually gave her with my own ideals.

After a good amount of time I eventually met up with Hmado in pms when inviting him to the new WPE site. When I challenged him to a battle I swept with 6-0 with a Torkoal and afterwards I ended up taking him in as my pupil. Flashbacks came from when Joe had first taught me Pokemon and it made me feel really accomplished that I had grown to this point in my journey. Mado and I shared similar views when it came to Pokemon so teaching him came pretty natural and it was easy to catch him up to speed. I also had taken in Vik and somebody named Firechicken as part time students. Both Mado and Vik ended up becoming really strong trainers which made me more happy.

When Pokemo x and Y came out I knew this would be the game where I would really show what I was about. This was where I thought myself at my peak in terms of competitive Pokemon. I dedicated the most time into researching, creating strategies, movepools, theories, and synergy. I also bred and battled almost nonstop. I felt very confident in my ability to show that most Pokemon have the ability to show they can do something in a team regardless if the majority thought it useless or inferior. During this gen I also started to grasp the perspective of the Smogon community's mindset while still being disgusted with how they were about. At this point in time the only thing Pokemon had to keep me going was just the competitive since barely anything else on the casual end appealed to me as well as the side games beginning to diminish in quality. I did however loved the PSS and always used that feature in X/Y and ORAS. In ORAS I am probably in the minority where I truly adored and loved the game but since many others weren't that attuned to it the competitive aspect was starting to fall but ORAS had some side features that still kept me going until the next gen came.

Pokemon Sun and Moon came out and I had one of the biggest expectations for this Gen. Thinking it would expand upon the 3D from XY and based off trailers give us a real good quality story as well as the illusion that is content. Going through my first playthrough I was hyped and enjoyed it so much but afterwards that's where everything began to fall for me. The post had close to no content I could enjoy, the environment as a whole seemed to feel empty and bland, and competitiv seemed to have gotten even more linear and bland making IT uninteresting as well. Replacing PSS with festival plaza which makes me head hurt when just being there a lot of times. So with Pokemon both being unappealing as a game and competitivewise I was starting to lose it and fell hard with disappointment. Ultr Sun came out soon after and I tried to be positive with it but it threw me off again with more disappointment even though it did improve a lot but somehow still didn't kick it. There wasn't even any spinoffs to enjoy to keep me engaged but even then my expectations at that point were down the gutter regardless. LGPE came out after that and the game looked like a complete ripoff just being a game of visuals for the most part and having borderline less content than gen 1 itself which is kinda insane. The first Pokemon game remake I actually had to skip....it had gotten to even that point. Now I look at Gen 8's reveal and only expect bad things to come from it due to GameFreak's conduct for the last good number of years.

Share your experience!

That was my whole journey throughout Pokemon. I really hope to read how al of your own journey's went. You don't have to give a complete summary like I have just give your greatest memories if you want.

by Onoxdorf Mon Apr 01, 2019 7:19 am

Early Days:
When I was young I used to watch the anime every Saturday morning at like 5am. I then started collecting pokemon cards and got really good at scamming dumb dumbs on the playground. I then got my first game which was Ruby, mudkip was my first ever pokemon. Pokemon was great in primary school anyways. Everyone there had pokemon cards or the games and everyone was battling all the time. As I moved to high school though nobody liked pokemon. It became a secret that I played it or watched the anime because obviously you'd get bullied if people knew you did that.

Later Early Days:
I would often battle my brother tho and he is the person who taught me how to IV and EV train my mons and the importance of natures. I never truly knew how to battle until I learnt these things and probably would have carried on being a casual otherwise. When he first taught me I was in denial and felt like it sucked the fun out of the game, but after using what he taught me I learnt that my pokemon were way stronger and the effort it took to breed IVs into my mons and EV train was worth it.

Later Not So Early Days:
When I started college I was probably at my strongest at pokemon, I was playing ORAS at the time. I ran into some people who played pokemon and I ended up sweeping them all with a yanmega... It was a defeat they took badly and they never battled me again. I haven't battled anyone who wasnt my bro face to face since that day. Every other person I battled since then was online.

I carried on playing the games over the years until in my opinion the franchise changed. When I bought Sun I really tried to enjoy the game, but I couldn't handle how much the in-game characters talked at you. I just wanted to skip it all, but like every character and their grandmother would come out of the bushes and have something to say at every bit of progression you made. A majority of the time I felt what those characters said either uninteresting or patronizing at best. I ended up putting down the game and never played it again before I even made it to the elite four. I had just finished the final trial, but I had no more endurance after that. I just wanted to play the game and they forced too much dickery down my throat. Pokemon Showdown was the only place I would play pokemon from now on.

Present:
I'm looking forward for gen 8 and seeing the mons, but I won't be buying the game. In fact I wont be buying a switch in general. I don't like the way Nintendo is becoming. I didn't like the fact they made you pay for pokebank just to transport your mons to a new game because I still remember back when transferring something that was already yours between games was free. Just the same way as I remember back when playing pokemon/smash online was free. On the switch I've heard it's not free to play online and you have to have membership. This is enough for me not to support their company or buy their console. Nintendo directly said that the Switch wont be replacing the 3DS, so hopefully they'll release a new handheld console in time. If I buy it though is anyone's guess and all it takes is some feature where you have to pay to play online and I'll drop the franchise for good. S/M pretty much destroyed my faith in any future games anyway with all the babying they did and the way all the characters talked at you like you were 5 years old.

by Unright Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:25 pm

Like most people I got into pokemon through the show. I'd wake up every morning with my bro to watch it. At school a friend got me into pokemon cards by giving me some freebies and that's how I became addicted to collecting them. When I was around 5-7 me and my school friends would battle using the cards and I would always win because I'd make up the rules and they never caught on hahaha

My first ever game was Sapphire and I think it was one of my favourite pokemon games because of that reason. My first ever pokemon was a Treecko and I used it to powerhouse without using any other pokemon through the whole game (which was no easy feat). The Sceptile was called "BRIC" because it was as tough as bricks lol. Later on I got Fire Red and me and my best friend at the time used to hang out at his house and play it together. We also used to trade and show off our newest cards we bought. Those times were fun.

As I got older and started high school it was no longer cool to play pokemon. Liking things such as pokemon would some how automatically get you bullied so I quickly learned to never talk to people about it. Around this time I started watching pokemon online which is how I discovered WPE. I used WPE as my way to discuss my interests without unnecessary backlash which was nice. I never really battled anyone irl other than family. Me and my brother would battle each other a lot on Diamond/Pearl and the game didn't seem to be getting old for me despite me putting hundreds of hours into it. During this time I still didn't quite grasp EV's or IV's or natures so I just used whatever I had. Eventually I got the game Pokemon Battle Revolution and battled my first online opponent which was Surge. I sweeped him with a Charizard which wasn't even properly bred or EV trained. This was my first ever victory against an online friend.

During the time when I was in late high school, Mado and I decided to found Novastorm. This was just before X/Y's release. When the game dropped I had a blast. I learned how to breed competitive pokemon and learned how to EV train. I also studied the game to and tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible. This time was the happiest I've ever been while playing pokemon. I'd battle my online friends every single day and it didn't seem to be getting old anytime soon for me. I tried push myself to use really unique sets to ensure battles were as enjoyable as possible for both sides. Multi-battles were the shit back then. Man, I had so much fun. I miss those times a lot.

Shortly after this I started college and discovered pokemon was suddenly socially acceptable again. Here I battled many people at college but I won every single time. I used to dominate in singles and carry in multi's. At one point me and my friends were on a coach to attend Eurogamer and my friend wanted to battle me with gen 4 teams. He declared there was no way he could lose and during the battle he sent out a hacked wonderguard spiritomb. He was adamant that due to the lack of fairy typing in gen 4 he could beat me, but I just toxic stalled him and won the match. People on the coach who watched this unfold lost their minds and it was pretty funny. After this victory everyone kinda decided I was impossible to beat and then no longer wanted to play against me so things got kinda boring after that.

Then ORAS came out. I didn't really enjoy how the game held your hand through the whole story. Everything felt like it was too easy and that they babied you. I was so hyped to test out new things because of the move tutor and had a lot of fun experimenting with new movesets. I still did a lot of research into the game just like before and enjoyed some pretty cool battles against my online friends. I played competitively a bit during this time but not as much as I used too during X/Y. Around this time I got quite interested in the VGC doubles format.

Eventually Sun and moon came out and I bought the game immediately. I had high hopes for this game but I was left disappointed. The dialogue and tutorials didn't feel like they ever had an end. This is where my interest in playing the game died. I just couldn't keep going through the story as it felt like a chore. I put down the game one day and then simply never picked it back up. After that I played on showdown to mess around with the new gen but never finished moon.

With the upcoming gen 8 I am both some how worried and also excited. Part of the reason I bought a switch was due to the fact pokemon will eventually come out on it. I truly want this game to be good but I have this feeling that I will be met with disappointment. I am basically crossing my fingers that this game will be the best pokemon game yet and will be less handholdy compared to the previous 2 games. I'm not usually this hopeful, but I really want this game to be good. I really want to enjoy pokemon games again. The overall quality of this game will dictate if I drop this franchise or not.

by stew Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:28 am

My memories about Pokemon and I are kind of blurry, but I know I got introduced to the franchise by the cards. When I was younger, collecting was my thing. I collected action figures, lego, yugioh cards, bayblade, Pokemon... I collected a lot. I didn't think much about pokemon at the time, I just thought a lot of the cards were cool looking. I wanna say i really got interested in Pokemon by the gen 3 / gen 4 time ( so like 2007 or something? ).

After getting bored of the very small number of games I played on my GameCube and gameboy, my mom got me a ds with Pokemon platinum after finishing another school year. I honestly don't remember much of like how much i liked the game, but i know i really liked infernape. Infernape was my absolute favorite on my team so I used it the most and it always overleveled throughout my entire playthrough. After beating the game I definitely became a fan of Pokemon.

I started talking about Pokemon to my friends ( even though they had very little knowledge on it), started trading my cards with people, having Pokemon card battles against people, watching the anime, watching a bunch of YouTube videos about Pokemon, drawing Pokemon... Pokemon was like the new thing I was obsessed with.

I beat pokemonbattle Revolution, Pokemon Xd gale of darkness, Pokemon Colosseum, pokepark 1, Pokemon soul Silver, Pokemon Emerald and finishing all the first few seasons of the Pokemon anime ( up to hoenn ) in maybe a year. After a long fun run of Pokemon, i took a long break from the franchise.

I started doing more things in life, going to a sleep over camp for weeks away from my games.. I played sports... I was really outgoing and social at the time and I never bothered fitting games into my schedule. So i stopped playing games from about 2008-2012. In 2012 i got a ps3 and started playing shooters competitively. After that joyful time in my life ended, I went straight back to Pokemon because i was getting lonely and bored.

I randomly one day decided to go to the gamestore to buy pokemon White a long with 3ds XL and got back into learning everything about Pokemon and since then I kept buying the main games until Gen 7. I enjoyed gen 5 way more than i remember enjoying platinum and soul Silver, but i didn't really enjoy the story or characters or MUSIC of Pokemon Y.

The last game i bought was pokemon Alpha Sapphire because i wanted a primal kyogre and mega rayquaza. i wanna say i bought that game 5-6 years ago. i completely stopped watching anime once ash entered unova, because the anime didn't feel the same anymore ( imo it started getting worse once the hoenn episodes began). Though i don't buy the games, play much showdown or watch the anime, i still like keeping up to date with the franchise because i already put so many years learning about pokemon..

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