Today I saw this on my twitter timeline and just couldn't help about thinking everything I thought as a kid who got Pokémon Red pretty much as soon as it released in Europe and barely knew anything about it.
When you see your Magikarp evolving for the first time: pic.twitter.com/n6ITs7Tekc
— Pokémon World (@Pokemon_Days) August 3, 2015
So I'll be listing some really nostalgic things I remember and would LOVE to hear your input too!As the tweet above implies, the moment when you realise that you actually can evolve Magikarp (and in my case, Abra too!) was insane. Hell, Gyarados looks BADASS and Kadabra was just powerful! (Especially when I figured that he can evolve even further via trading!)
When I got the game, I had no idea that you could share the EXP by switching Pokémon around, so the only way I was able to evolve Magikarp and Abra was to waste their Splash and Teleport PP and struggle enemies to death. I thought that was one of the stupidest mechanics of the game and those two Pokémon would be super useless and training them wouldn't achieve anything.
But man was I wrong.
Some of the mechanics also caused confusion. Realizing what TMs did and accidentally stopping the evolution of my Pokémon for the first time were small, but enlightening experiences that just have stuck with me through the years!
Then pretty much year later the games were pretty much broken to pieces and rumours started flying around: "Trade a Pokémon with surf and strenght to your game before S.S. Anne and push the truck to catch Mew!" and other stuff like that which of course I tried and found out that were bollocks.
BUT afterwards I started doing research on the Internet and via couple of friends we found out about DV's (gen 1 and 2 equivalents of IV's, which still exist but rather than affecting stats affect stuff like nature and Wurmple evolving etc.) and StatEXP (Gen 1 and 2 equivalent of EV's, which allowed to max out EVERY stat) and most importantly, "The Mew Glitch" (currently known as trainer fly glitch) which allowed me to gain little bit of popularity in school by having Mew before even the Toys 'R Us event was introduced here in Finland and because you could do it so early I was able to pretty much mass produce them by doing glitch, catching Mew, trading it to my brothers Pokémon blue and doing that over and over again until I had a boxfull of Mews, which I afterwards traded back to my game for trading for other stuff like rare Pokémon cards or trade evolution only Pokémon from my classmates at school and siblings. That didn't last long before pretty much everyone knew how to do the glitch (as well as the MissingNO glitch) and Mews kinda lost their value. Still, that is one of my fondest memories from the early times of Pokémon games.
Returning to DV's and StatEXP, I never really knew about tournaments or competitive play, but we still had this small ring of neighborhood kids and my brothers who used to battle each other pretty much every weekend. We just built teams and discussed about sets (...which were REALLY bad, we really didn't know what we were doing, we were like... 11 years old at max!), but those were really fun times and I did enjoy those a lot!
Then Gold and Silver got released and honestly I do not have any as specific and fond memories of the games as with RBY, but I know I did enjoy PLAYING those games way more than the first gen ones. Really nothing too special came up and I didn't really care. At the end of the second generation my enthusiasm died a little, but...
Then came third generation and Ruby and Sapphire. I was at Jr. High School at the time and for some reason there was this small group of kids who got Game Boy Advances (me included) and Pokémon games and decided that "Hey, let's create a club-like activity with gym leaders and league play and stuff and have people battle us for things from school cafeteria!) and so we did. I was one of the only ones who knew about EV's and what Natures did so I quickly rose to be as a champion and I chose flying to be my typing. During Jr. High I was bullied quite a bit but our little club I was able to hide from bullies a bit and have just fun. :P
But yeah, that lasted for like an year or two and then people kept losing their interest, not me though. I kept training different kinds of flyers, breeding and EV-training and I really did enjoy that! I even remember my "tri-battle team" (3v3 team) with Spearow, Pidgey and Taillow that didn't do that well but still surprised many. That was fun!
In fourth gen, Smogon was founded and I found out about it like a year later. I never had DS at that point, but they had made a simulator called "netBattle" (which Smogon had a room in. The software later closed down due to popularity of Shoddy Battle -simulator), which allowed me to get into the competitive Pokémon once again.
I was SUPER bad but I still remember playing in the original Shoddy Battle for quite a bit and still enjoying about figuring things out in Pokémon gaming.
Later I got DS and just played through 4th gen games, mostly wanting to get to the postgame to get to breeding and playing against people and that is still the case. I do buy every single main series Pokémon game and just play through them as fast as possible to get to the part of games I enjoy the most: Breeding and battling!
Man. This became a "My Pokémon history" post and went kind of tangent, whoopsie!
Let's see when I will be writing again, see you!
Kim
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