Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2009 23:13:03 GMT -5
Ahh, Pokemon...let's see.
In the US, it came out in 1998, so I was in 8th grade. Thirteen years old. I remember that a lot of my friends were really into it, but I absolutely loathed the concept. I'm not entirely sure why, but I did. I swore off the games, the show, the cards, the manga...everything. I never saw the appeal and, with all the tact a thirteen-year-old can expect to have, basically flamed the shit out of the series. Despite not being connected to one of those interweb tubes at the time.
I remember something, though; either later that year or somewhere in the first half of 1999 (I was still in middle school, which only went up to 8th grade) that I received my monthly subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly, which had a feature on this awesome new Nintendo fighting game, Super Smash Bros. I absolutely engorged myself on that article, there were maybe three pages of it all said and done, but what I'd seen was nipple-erectingly awesome. I was so excited for the game that, when I found out Pikachu was playable, it kinda broke through the shell of pubescent rage I'd put up around myself. I even remember telling a friend of mine, "You know, I think I might actually try playing as Pikachu."
And from there, it was magic.
I 'borrowed' a copy of Pokemon Red from said buddy (eventually I paid him for it so I could own the thing for myself) and polled my friends and some acquaintances on which starter I should choose, a lot of whom, in hindsight, hadn't played the Pokemon games and largely didn't give a fuck. I made a sheet with tally marks and everything, and another friend made those stat-quintagons (?) and little doodles for each one. Regardless, Bulbasaur won by a landslide, and so I picked him...he's been my absolute favorite ever since. I played through the game and pretty much only ever raised my Bulbasaur...I think he was somewhere around Lvl 82 by the time I cleared the Elite Four. I think the only one that came close was a Pidgeot at a much, much lower level....and I remember the super effective/not very effective/critical hit things confusing the hell out of me.
From there, I caved completely...I bought hundreds of Pokemon cards (Charizard was my first rare shiny-backed card), grabbed up any manga I could find (I have the first five volumes of Pokemon Adventures and the whole series of the other one), and I even found an adorable Bulbasaur plush at a Warner Bros. Store. I believe my first anime episode was somewhere in Viridian Forest, and I used to be able to do a really good impression of James going "Koffing, use Poison Gas attack, now!" I remember only missing two episodes in the first season, and one of them was about Kangaskhan (I forget the other one), and when they came back around in the rerun rotation, I was up in Gettysburg and couldn't watch them. I had my mom record the episodes for me. XD And then I lost interest in it with that pre-Pokemon League episode involving Moltres' flame in an olympic cup thing...yeah.
I also remember joining the VGF forums thereabouts, and I stumbled across one of the, like, five Pokemon boards tied into the place. Fryguy was the admin at the time and I was just getting on board the Weeaboo Shithead train, and strained myself to the limit learning and constantly using the Japanese Pokemon names, and then having to translate them for the members that didn't know, sticking my nose into any topic and making throwing up-related actions (you know, using asterisks) because somebody had used the english names...it was such a pain in the ass. Eventually I caved and said I was being a dick, and everyone just kinda nodded and said, "Yep, you were." Fair is fair I suppose.
So, time moved on; I got Blue and Yellow eventually and fell in love with the latter. Then Gold and Silver came out - I picked up both, but had the misfortune of getting Banjo-Tooie at the same time. Alternating playing GS and BT, I eventually got really tired of Banjo's latest adventure; it proved to be a strenuous headache for various reasons I won't address, and that bad karma influenced my experience with Gen2. I wasn't used to Johto's layout following my years-long stay in Kanto, I didn't care for the starters (at the time), adding more routes in sequence to those Kanto had started...confusing, annoying, headachey. (Again, because BT had those same problems on a much, MUCH larger scale, and it helped accentuate what is, really, a small and ignorable set of issues.)
So for a while, I was out of love with the series again. I mean, I still played as Pikachu and Jigglypuff in SSB, as well as Pichu and (especially) Mewtwo in SSBM. They were all from Gen1 (aside from Pichu, but he was adorabibbles so I didn't mind him), so it was okay, those were good memories. Otherwise, I just didn't give a fuck about the franchise.
Until I played a Ruby demo in Toy Works. I didn't have to play for two minutes; as soon as I stepped outside of the moving truck (I remember being really impressed with that little arrow telling you that you were leaving an area), I was entranced. And two of the starters were actually pretty cool! Mudkip and Torchic were the absolute shit. Ralts came along as part of the generation, too, and Ralts is second only to Bulbasaur on my favorites-Pokemon list.
So it goes. After some time I'm ready to forgive GSC and give it another shot, provided an updated version gets released (which is a possibility, especially if they're repeating the pattern brought on by Gen1 remade to look like it was from Gen3). I'm fond of Totodile and Cyndaquil and their lines, and, weird enough, I dislike every Grass starter from Gen2 on back. Up until Gen4, where the starters are like wet ass, I've always liked at least the Fire and Water starters (again, Gen2's retroactively). But Turtwig, Piplup and Chimchar suck the rancid donkey (kong) balls.
I also remember trying to sell off my collection of Pokemon cards at a tag sale. At the time I hadn't understood the point of it, so I didn't know that there was bartering involved...I had a set price, some guy offered signifigantly less (because I was going by a card price guide book and pretty much took it from there), but it was still a substantial amount. I think he wanted them for $100.
I declined, because I'm an idiot. And of course the damn things never sold, they sat in my closet until last month when I threw the whole damn lot in the garbage.
And I've only recently learned that not every game tagged with the "pokemon" title is worth buying. Or even wiping my bum with. To be honest, the only exceptions I've made are the first Pokemon stadium (without a doubt had the BEST minigames) and Pokemon Snap. Both of them are awesomesauce. And Ranch is good for utility purposes.
So, yeah.
(even though when playing Pearl my final team ended up ditching Piplup for a Totodile (from TEi, no less)
;D I remember that. That was good times, we had so much trouble connecting! (reminds me of an issue I'm having with a member from Serebii.net, as he has an Event Mew and I have a Pokemon Colosseum Demo Jirachi...only instead of connection troubles we keep missing each other.)
EDiT: Woo, 2500th post~
In the US, it came out in 1998, so I was in 8th grade. Thirteen years old. I remember that a lot of my friends were really into it, but I absolutely loathed the concept. I'm not entirely sure why, but I did. I swore off the games, the show, the cards, the manga...everything. I never saw the appeal and, with all the tact a thirteen-year-old can expect to have, basically flamed the shit out of the series. Despite not being connected to one of those interweb tubes at the time.
I remember something, though; either later that year or somewhere in the first half of 1999 (I was still in middle school, which only went up to 8th grade) that I received my monthly subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly, which had a feature on this awesome new Nintendo fighting game, Super Smash Bros. I absolutely engorged myself on that article, there were maybe three pages of it all said and done, but what I'd seen was nipple-erectingly awesome. I was so excited for the game that, when I found out Pikachu was playable, it kinda broke through the shell of pubescent rage I'd put up around myself. I even remember telling a friend of mine, "You know, I think I might actually try playing as Pikachu."
And from there, it was magic.
I 'borrowed' a copy of Pokemon Red from said buddy (eventually I paid him for it so I could own the thing for myself) and polled my friends and some acquaintances on which starter I should choose, a lot of whom, in hindsight, hadn't played the Pokemon games and largely didn't give a fuck. I made a sheet with tally marks and everything, and another friend made those stat-quintagons (?) and little doodles for each one. Regardless, Bulbasaur won by a landslide, and so I picked him...he's been my absolute favorite ever since. I played through the game and pretty much only ever raised my Bulbasaur...I think he was somewhere around Lvl 82 by the time I cleared the Elite Four. I think the only one that came close was a Pidgeot at a much, much lower level....and I remember the super effective/not very effective/critical hit things confusing the hell out of me.
From there, I caved completely...I bought hundreds of Pokemon cards (Charizard was my first rare shiny-backed card), grabbed up any manga I could find (I have the first five volumes of Pokemon Adventures and the whole series of the other one), and I even found an adorable Bulbasaur plush at a Warner Bros. Store. I believe my first anime episode was somewhere in Viridian Forest, and I used to be able to do a really good impression of James going "Koffing, use Poison Gas attack, now!" I remember only missing two episodes in the first season, and one of them was about Kangaskhan (I forget the other one), and when they came back around in the rerun rotation, I was up in Gettysburg and couldn't watch them. I had my mom record the episodes for me. XD And then I lost interest in it with that pre-Pokemon League episode involving Moltres' flame in an olympic cup thing...yeah.
I also remember joining the VGF forums thereabouts, and I stumbled across one of the, like, five Pokemon boards tied into the place. Fryguy was the admin at the time and I was just getting on board the Weeaboo Shithead train, and strained myself to the limit learning and constantly using the Japanese Pokemon names, and then having to translate them for the members that didn't know, sticking my nose into any topic and making throwing up-related actions (you know, using asterisks) because somebody had used the english names...it was such a pain in the ass. Eventually I caved and said I was being a dick, and everyone just kinda nodded and said, "Yep, you were." Fair is fair I suppose.
So, time moved on; I got Blue and Yellow eventually and fell in love with the latter. Then Gold and Silver came out - I picked up both, but had the misfortune of getting Banjo-Tooie at the same time. Alternating playing GS and BT, I eventually got really tired of Banjo's latest adventure; it proved to be a strenuous headache for various reasons I won't address, and that bad karma influenced my experience with Gen2. I wasn't used to Johto's layout following my years-long stay in Kanto, I didn't care for the starters (at the time), adding more routes in sequence to those Kanto had started...confusing, annoying, headachey. (Again, because BT had those same problems on a much, MUCH larger scale, and it helped accentuate what is, really, a small and ignorable set of issues.)
So for a while, I was out of love with the series again. I mean, I still played as Pikachu and Jigglypuff in SSB, as well as Pichu and (especially) Mewtwo in SSBM. They were all from Gen1 (aside from Pichu, but he was adorabibbles so I didn't mind him), so it was okay, those were good memories. Otherwise, I just didn't give a fuck about the franchise.
Until I played a Ruby demo in Toy Works. I didn't have to play for two minutes; as soon as I stepped outside of the moving truck (I remember being really impressed with that little arrow telling you that you were leaving an area), I was entranced. And two of the starters were actually pretty cool! Mudkip and Torchic were the absolute shit. Ralts came along as part of the generation, too, and Ralts is second only to Bulbasaur on my favorites-Pokemon list.
So it goes. After some time I'm ready to forgive GSC and give it another shot, provided an updated version gets released (which is a possibility, especially if they're repeating the pattern brought on by Gen1 remade to look like it was from Gen3). I'm fond of Totodile and Cyndaquil and their lines, and, weird enough, I dislike every Grass starter from Gen2 on back. Up until Gen4, where the starters are like wet ass, I've always liked at least the Fire and Water starters (again, Gen2's retroactively). But Turtwig, Piplup and Chimchar suck the rancid donkey (kong) balls.
I also remember trying to sell off my collection of Pokemon cards at a tag sale. At the time I hadn't understood the point of it, so I didn't know that there was bartering involved...I had a set price, some guy offered signifigantly less (because I was going by a card price guide book and pretty much took it from there), but it was still a substantial amount. I think he wanted them for $100.
I declined, because I'm an idiot. And of course the damn things never sold, they sat in my closet until last month when I threw the whole damn lot in the garbage.
And I've only recently learned that not every game tagged with the "pokemon" title is worth buying. Or even wiping my bum with. To be honest, the only exceptions I've made are the first Pokemon stadium (without a doubt had the BEST minigames) and Pokemon Snap. Both of them are awesomesauce. And Ranch is good for utility purposes.
So, yeah.
;D I remember that. That was good times, we had so much trouble connecting! (reminds me of an issue I'm having with a member from Serebii.net, as he has an Event Mew and I have a Pokemon Colosseum Demo Jirachi...only instead of connection troubles we keep missing each other.)
EDiT: Woo, 2500th post~
