/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6561573
Go to your containment board.

>>6561573
>That kid who dressed up like Ash Ketchum for the Pokemon 2000 movie premiere

>>6561580
No they have massive autism meltdowns over anything before gen 3

My fondest memory would be during a major blackout caused by a nation wide storm at the end of 1999.

I was playing Blue by the window trying to catch moonlight to even see anything, and coincidentally, I was playing inside the dark cave that requires flash. It was pretty fitting.

i was the right age for it, literally the same age as ash when the dub aired on tv
also had blue then later crystal on gameboy
had the 2ba master soundtrack on cassette, a metal pikachu necklace, and a poster of all 150 pokemon
fucking loved it

i have no idea how someone remembers being in kindergarten, though

>>6561629
t. 1990/1991

>>6561630
1990
also, it didn't really last that long for me, while i did get a GBA, i didn't get any gen3 pokemon games, and haven't followed it since at all

I told my story in the thread about legit mews of how I traded a gamesharked level 100 mew for mine. Kinda sums it all up really. I enjoyed playing the game normally. I enjoyed seeing all the fucked up things I could do in it with a gameshark even more. Gamesharking any other game would just give you the normal cheats, infinite health etc. But in Pokemon there were cheats to make weird shit happen. I would print them off using the school's printer, just pages and pages of them, then bring them over to my friend's house. We would battle our super powered hacked pokemon and try whatever weird codes we found. Good times.

>>6561635
oh man, i got a whole second life out of those games once i got internet access and found out about all the glitches you could do
didn't have any kind of cheating device, but you didn't really need one

>>6561632
Those Gen 1 & Gen 2 memories are a great era of my life.

Gen 3 had shittier Pokemon and the formula was getting old.
I purchased Emerald Version, made a character and then never left the starter town.

>>6561639
i got a copy of pearl when i picked up a second hand DS in 2007, but only messed with it for maybe an hour, idk, the whole childish mystery of it all had long gone at that point, now it was just weird creatures with weirder names

>>6561629
I have a very good memory. Mostly for useless trivial things

>>6561632
Newest pokemon sucks as a game but some of the new characters would fit well into the first 2 gens.

>>6561637
Even just watching the glitching videos on youtube is fun for me. People are still finding crazy ways to break those games. That's part of the charm of the game. Once you've beaten it and seen all there is to see normally there's an alternate universe of weird shit in that game with people still finding new ways to trigger it.

>>6561657
well back then youtube didn't exist, i didn't have videos on what exactly happened, so i had to perform it myself to see

I was pretty much the peak demographic during gen 1-2. I was an older kid but pre-preteen. I could play the games, watch the show, buy the cards, hangout with friends around the neighborhood to vs them and such.

Honestly I don't have any standout memories other than it definitely ruled my world for a little while, I felt like a "dedicated Pokemon trainer" as I trained my teams, battled friends in the game and card game, traded cards, I was heavily invested in the little lore there was though and by the time of G3 I lost all interest as I realized the franchise was doomed to become what it is, a never ending recycle-a-thon for new generations of young kids in typical Nintendo fashion.

>>6561573
Pokemon red helped motivate me to learn to read.

I remember having a time limit to play as batteries costed money and the people I lived with had conservative anti-sloth ethics also.

I have the roms downloaded of the early games and even a hack or two.

I recall having a golden mewtwo card from some restaurant that came in a shiny pokeball case.

I also recall missing no glitch being gossip in school.

>spending hours in my school library looking for Pokemon sites and filling floppy disks (very cheap by then) with official images of the 151 Pokes
>being one of the few kids with a Link Cable, other kids were always interrupting classes and sending me messages asking if they could borrow the damn thing
>literally no one used strategies when fighting, every Pokemon just had the four most powerful attacks and/or a HM, kids just alternated between them
>the first movie was fun, some girls even cried
>lots of kids with the Pokemon theme MIDI as their phone ringtone, it got annoying fast
>eventually got a XPloder (something similar to Gameshark) and sold some Mews
>also, there was a code that allowed you to start with any Pokemon that earned me like 40€ because some kid just fucking loved Mewtwo and starting with him was his fucking dream
>Metapod vs Kakuna battles
>Hall of Fames always glitched for obvious reasons

When 2nd gen started people just lost interest, there were only two other guys who had Gold/Silver. The Poke fever was over.

I had Blue and while I thought it was decent me and my bro were always more into Digimon when it came a year later here. The series is really running out of steam though the only good designs are reserved to the girls

>>6561730
>the only good designs are reserved to the girls
Officer Jenny or Nurse Joy; that is the question.

>>6561740
Glad Brock never opened his eyes most of the time. Creepy condition he has.

>>6561729
>>lots of kids with the Pokemon theme MIDI as their phone ringtone, it got annoying fast
Kids didn't have cell phones in the late 90's, aside from maybe very rich kids....were customizable ringtones even a thing back then for cell phones?

>>6561748
>were customizable ringtones even a thing back then for cell phones?

Yes. Midi quality stuff.

I was a teenager during that period. Me and my friends where into videogames big time but all of us thought pokemon was trash for kids. Three of us played the original game on PC using an emulator that supported splitscreen (3 simultaneous single players basically) and never touched anything related to pokemon again.

Well except for watching the original cartoon a few times, ironically to laugh at how stupid it was, and get hard with misty or the rocket girl with big tiddies.

Looking back the whole fight-catpture-collect idea is great but the execution is so horrible. Plot, characters, pokemon designs, combat, world design... all is done awfully. A well designed game with more adult themes and designs and actually interesting well-designed combat would be excellent. I don't understand why no one has done this really. Every Pokemon rip-off I've seen seems even worse.

>>6561748
>Kids didn't have cell phones in the late 90's

My first phone was a 3310 and I was already very late to the party compared to my friends.
I probably should mention that Pokemon (the games) only got popular when the anime started airing here in my country (October 1999). We were already way into the 2000 when the fever hit.

>>6561748
>were customizable ringtones even a thing back then for cell phones?
yea, even my monophonic cellphone had a ringtone editor
a couple years into the 2000's brought polyphonic (midi-like) ringtones, many of which supported downloadable ringtones
i remember buying one by sending a text to some service and they'd send a special sms or something which had the ringtone in it
kids seems to think phones began with the iphone, but by like 2003 we had phones that could play mp3's, had colour screens, cameras, ran windows, etc

>>6561748
>>6561765
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCTVvSV2nZw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa8zWDA4VFI

>>6561765
I'm not a kid really but I just don't remember anybody at all my age having cell phones in 1998 - 2000, I didn't grow up in a rich area but not an uber poor one either, I was like 10 years old and no kids I knew had cell phones back then

>>6561776
None of my friends parents even had one. My dad didn't. My mom did. Most people who had them made a big deal out of only using it in emergencies and shit. My mom would talk on it for hours while driving. By the time she got a phone that had WAP she even let me go on the internet with it. The mobile internet fucking sucked but I would log into AIM and brag to everyone about how I'm on a cell phone then not see their replies until like 5 minutes later.

>>6561776
not 1998-2000, but 2001-2003 definitely
if you didn't have a cellphone by 2003 you were the odd one out
not rich at all, basic cellphones went for under $100 by that point and parents loved the idea of their kids being able to call them at any time when out
>>6561780
most adults didn't though, unless their work warranted it
me and by sister had cellphones in 2002, but neither of my parents did

>>6561727
>a golden mewtwo card from some restaurant that came in a shiny pokeball case
That’d be Burger King, I had a Pikachu.

>>6561776
Portugal here, by 1999 most kids had cellphones.
The reason? Expo '98 and the "free" cellphone with your first pair of glasses campaign.
Of course, nothing is free...there was monthly fee and it was all a fucking scam. But it was enough to kickstart the whole mobile phone trend.
Even before that both my mom and stepdad had phones as part of their jobs.

Best memory right here

>>6561573
Waking up in the middle of the night and quietly playing my Game Boy Pocket trying to find a Pikachu in Viridian Forest. I finally caught a Pikachu and used him for the rest of the game.

>>6561740
I meant the latter gens

Does anyone has any memories of the Porygon incident?

>>6561871
i read about it later, i'm pretty sure that only affected the original japanese airing, not the english dub

>>6561871
It was a jap only thing so not really.

>>6561747
heh

Pokemania did not last anywhere near 2005. Pokemon in the United States was 1998 until 2000.

>>6561573
I was a kid during the whole of the craze, it was basically all kids talked about for a solid chunk of years. Playing it on bus rides, trading cards and rumors at school (I heard if you level dragonite to 85 and use a fire stone you get yoshi!), and restarting the game just to redo the whole adventure, often to rename the rival funny kiddie words like "BIGBUTT". I recall it died down in my area around 2001 or 2002.

>>6561635
Same here, encountering wild shiny starters in gold/silver was amusing. Those games struggled to survive on such a tiny hardware.

>>6561748
I'm in your boat. We were in the rich part of town, but only your parents had a cell phone in '98. We also weren't allowed our own phones until we were teenagers.

>>6561760
You basically just described SMT

You guys ever got into the trading card game?
I remember buying a bunch of packs after getting the exclusive movie Mew card but never finding anyone to play against irl.
Fortunately the GBC Pokemon TCG existed, but it was not the same.

>>6561730
Digimon World was a beast even in it's incomplete and glitchy form.

'93 here, I remember seeing it everywhere. Main memories were I think Regis and whoever his lady co-host were at the time talking about it and maybe showing some kind of like Garbage Pail kid-esque knock off toy, the first movie coming out and trying to find out information on Gen 2 Pokemon prior to the english release. Back when people thought Marill was Pikablu

>>6561950
Haven't played a smt game since the mid 00s but as far as I remember there's no collecting, just monsters joining/leaving the party. I don't consider them the same type of game.

There's the Devil Children spin-off series, that's the pokemon-like game in the smt series, but I mean just look at the title. The designs are more childish than pokemon if that's even possible.

>>6561890
yea, it was hot shit for maybe 2 years tops in the west, i'm sure there were smaller waves later with different kids getting into the right age group, but i've not witnessed anything like what happened with the release of red/blue, the anime, and the trading card game (the trading card game i'd say was when it was starting to slow down a bit, i >>6561629 personally barely scratched that, i got ahold of just enough cards to play it maybe a couple times and that was it)

It was a fun time to be a kid. Everyone on the street had the games, cards, and watched the show at 4PM afterschool. I was the wierd one on the street that had Stadium, Snap, and the pikachu mic game. The kid across the street had a mom who was a pro artist and made her son's room entirely pokemon themed with an anime ash ketchum on one of the walls.
At around gen 3 I remember it died back down to normal levels. You were easy to pick on if you were still obsessed at that point

where does this kind of ilustration come from guys? i love this retro style "pre-tv show" gen 1 kind of ilustrations, mostly picturing red instead of ash

I saw a few pics from the Pokemon anime in some website and for some reason the designs were immediately memorable for me. A couple of weeks later I saw a guide for the GB games on a magazine and recognized it, so I started emulating it. I had a PC, SNES and N64 and was familiar with NES, SNES and Genesis emulators, but I don't think I paid any attention to the GB or handhelds in general before this. I started playing and loved it. I recommended it to some friends and soon the anime started airing, and it became our new obsession. We didn't have the money to get a GB, so we settled with emulating and swaping save files between Red and Blue to get both games' exclusives.

The peak of the fandom was around the time Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Stadium got released for the N64. I rented Snap and bought Stadium, it was fantastic at the time. Then there was about a year of hype around Gen 2, until we finally got to play the japanese rom. Around this time, the anime was midways through the Orange Islands arc, but for some reason we stopped getting new episodes and the series started over from the first episode, so with neither new games or new episodes on the horizon, the hype died down quite a bit.

This is when the Digimon anime started. I remember feeling silly about being so obsessed with the Pokemon anime, which barely had any plot or weight to it at all, once I moved to Digimon, which kept me at the edge of the seat almost every episode. I started emulating PS1 games and got Digimon World running on VGS. Though I recognized its flaws even as a kid, the immersion and excitement of exploration was unmatched, at least compared to anything I got from any Pokemon game. In hindsight, Pokemon Snap was probably the closest. There was a great sense of mystery on those early 3D games.

And that was it for me. I came back to play the Gen 2 remake on NDS, and still replay Digimon World 1 from time to time, but I think that'll be all I get from these franchises in my lifetime.

>>6562070
Google "ken sugimori gen 1"

>>6562048
>made her son's room entirely pokemon themed with an anime ash ketchum on one of the walls.

You wouldn't believe the amount of Pikachu cakes people ordered from my grandpa (a baker) back in the day.

My sister and I beating Brock in Pokémon Yellow exclusively with Pikachu because we had no idea how the game worked.

Red HP left but Brock missed. I wasn’t even as nervous during the 2018 AFCCG.

I grew up somewhere in Latam, nobody I knew had a gameboy, I wasn't even aware that the franchise was derived from a videogame, and yet pokemon was still huge, so huge that it caught the attention of religious freaks, who'd claim that Tajiri SAToshi was SATAN. Pokemon was crazy.

>>6562117
>religious freaks
This is why I hate living in Latam. I had a friend whose mom actually burned all of his Pokémon stuff, including the Gold and Silver edition GBC and some rare cards because of some douchebag on her church telling it was "from the devil"
AFAIK, as I'm still friends with that dude, she still believes it and it's not ashamed of what she did

I remember one day, around 1997 I think? my dad came with a newspaper and showed me a weird incident that happened in Japan: kids across the country had epilepsy seizures due to a strange cartoon that aired on TV over there. The newspaper included a color picture of Pikachu. I remember thinking he was kind of scary, probably because I related it to the seizures.
Probably around the same year, I came across an article on "Pocket Monsters" on a vidya magazine, and I loved the concept. At this point, I don't remember if I related this to the newspaper article or not. I remember calling up several game stores to ask if they had this "Pocket Monsters" game for game boy (I would have bought a japanese copy), but they had no idea at all.
Fast-forward to early 1999, and Pokemon finally arrived to my country, I remember watching the first episode and getting hooked on it, even if it was a bit too kiddy (for reference, at the time I was also watching stuff like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, etc), but somehow Pokemon managed to be entertaining, plus also I knew there was a video game, which I eventually got in the following weeks.
I also went to drawing classes, and met a kid who I became good friends with, he had another friend who also played pokemon, eventually he got his own GB too, and despite living a bit far from each other's houses, we'd meet up and do trading/battles. Lots of fun.
Also, my memory is a bit fuzzy about Smash Bros, I don't remember if I got it before or after I got into the Pokemon game, but I remember thinking Pikachu being there was super cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l08XV0nuhfE

>>6562179
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon
the episode aired on the 16th of december 1997 (well before the game or anime left japan)

>>6562179
Club Nintendo?

>>6562179
By any means, are you from Chile?

>>6562127
My mom did that with my stuff. Though I just rebuilt my collection and it ended up not being a big deal in the grander scheme of things, I could never truly be kept away from pokemon during the craze. She still feels guilty about it and I act like it really affected me.

I stopped with Gen 2, but I have a friend who's been playing every game since we were kids (we are both 31).
He tries to get me into whatever game is currently out, usually appealing to my nostalgia and the good times we had together, but I just can't get into it.

>>6562179
>Entonces el atractivo de ser coleccionable ha sido muy atractivo
>Por la temática y el modo en el que se desarrolla, es obvio que entra en la categoría de RPG. Como la gran mayoría de los juegos de este género.

They could've used an editor.

>>6561573
>I was born during the start of the craze
Zoomer piece of shit, I was in high school when Pokemon blew up in the US. It was viewed almost universally by the kids as my high school as "baby shit" but there were thesr two nerdy kids who were super into the games and cards. One lived down the street from me and let me borrow Pokemon Red for my Gameboy. Holy shit it was amazing and I got super into it too... but I couldn't let anyone know because I wasn't a nerd like these two faggots. I secretly would hang out with them and do nerdy Pokemon shit at the dudes house after school.

>>6562425
You mean those three nerdy kids.

My Pokémon memories are strongly tied to real life locations. There are places that remind me of specific parts of the game. Like there is a restaurant in the next town, I remember eating there as a child, back when I was going through the long wooden dock starting east of vermillion and going down to the fuschia city. Whenever I go there, it reminds me of that part. I even remember which table it was at. I have maybe 10 locational memories like that.

>>6561729
>When 2nd gen started people just lost interest
This is true. I remember getting gold for Christmas, I must have been 8 or 9, and it took me much longer to get through it, not because it was hard, but because I was putting it off.

However, I remember that moment when I realized you had to do Kanto all over again after finishing Johto, that was incredibly enjoying.

>>6562454
FUCK OFF IM NOT A NEERRRRRDDD

>>6562454
FUCK OFF IM NOT A NEERRRRRDDD

>>6561709
I was too young to play videogames during gen 1 and 2 so my main exposure came from the anime, toys and all the other merchandise that was getting thrown at you like cereal and that shitty speghetii that was suppose to look like Pikachu and Bulbasaur

>>6561573
>05

Pokemania was dead by 2001.

>>6561629
I remember being in pre school anon. I kind of don't remember anything prior (maybe due to having a schizophrenic episode) except for breaking one of the bars off my crib when I was a baby. Kind of a weird feeling not knowing who you were, your classmates or your immediate family

>>6561729
>When 2nd gen started people just lost interest, there were only two other guys who had Gold/Silver. The Poke fever was over.
GS was Pokemon's second wind in my area. People who never bothered to complete the RBY Pokedex got sucked back in: everyone wanted to see Pokemon 2000 for Ancient Mew, they started wanting Pikablue and Togepi cards, the race was on to who would catch Suicune first. It didn't burn as bright obviously, but it kept things going for another year or so.

I was born in '93, so Pokemon forms some of my absolute earliest memories. One thing that stuck out to me, though, was going into a department store with my mom and seeing a bunch of Pokemon merchandise. The reason that this had an impact was that I distinctly remember finding Pokemon stuff in sections that were on the opposite side of the store from anything to do with toys or games. While I definitely didn't fully comprehend it at the time, I think that's sort of when my little babby mind pieced together the all-encompassing nature of Pokemania. Like this shit was fucking everywhere.

>>6562959
I definitely got the sense that Pokemon had a second wind with the release of Gen 2 in my town, as well. Especially since that was when me and my friends were old enough that we started to get interested in competing against each other in link battles. I don't think things truly died out until just before Gen 3, where it was really just me and a few other kids who were still excited about it. But at no point was it ever the same as it was in '98-early '00.

>>6561629
>he doesn't have any memories from kindergarten
Stop drinking and going drugs, anon, it's rotting your brain.

>>6562021
You're remembering wrong, you have to convince demons to join your party. It's effectively "catching" them, they don't just come and go as they please.

>>6563324
i do neither

>>6561573
Red in this pic looks like Ash if Ash were a few years older and hooked on drugs. It's downright haunting.

>>6561629
>i have no idea how someone remembers being in kindergarten, though
what the fuck

I was the target demographic of the Pokemon craze, and I got well into Pokemon. I don't have any particularly fond memories about it and I look back and cringe. It's only in hindsight I realize what a steaming pile of garbage the Pokemon craze was. The videogames were pretty bad too. Pokemon Snap is one of the most shameless cashgrab games I know. And the strength of Pokemon Stadium(s) is the brand recognition, not the game quality.

>>6561821
Ah, my bunny-suit fetish ur-image

>you are now subscribed to Misty leotard images...

>>6564679

>>6564668
>Pokemon Snap is one of the most shameless cashgrab games I know
How?
There are literal of actual cashgrabs examples "tetris + any franchise, karting + any franchise, etc). Snap is an original concept, and has some nice production value. Only objection is it could have used more courses and add all 151 monsters.
Stadium also is a quality title, the 3D models and their animations are still well regarded to this day, and it had a lot of value into it, although admittedly best enjoyed as a companion of the GB game and post-game content for it than as standalone using rentals (multiplayer minigame was A+ though).
I also don't think you'll find many people who actually consider Pokemon games to be "pretty bad". At the end of the day they're nice RPGs, you might not like the genre, or you might prefer other RPGs to it, that's fair, but pokemon games, pretty bad? I think only anti-gen 1 zoomers from /vp/ are the ones actively hating on the old pokemon games.

>>6564680

>>6564683

>>6564684

>>6564692

>>6564697

>>6564702

>>6564704

>>6564705
(this picture is old enough to drink)

>>6564708
(that's all, enjoy)

>>6561890
This, no way in hell was Pokemania still around by the time Gen 3 came out lmao
Just a kid trying to pretend he was there for the cool thing that has taken a mythical status in his mind.

>yes! finally made it to the second gy--

>>6561871
I remember David Letterman making fun of it. And then later reading about pokemon in nintendo power and putting two and two together.

I like how Pokemania was so big that the Archie Sonic comics felt the need to comment on it
Just so you know real world pop culture references like this were pretty rare at this point in the comic's history so this is kind of a big deal, Pokemania was unavoidable.

>>6561639
Gen 3 committed to the formula. Gen 2 very much tried to be a sequel as well as a copy/paste of the game. Im torn on Gen 2. As Johto feels very small, and they made the new pokemon too derpy, too gimmicky or too hard to get.

I stand by, pichu is a dumb addition. I get they tried to think of logical reasons you never got some pokemon. You never went out at night and they super rare.... or whatever... they favored lore and marketability over gameplay at times.

Even still, it is now one of the most unique in the series. It is the only one to be a sequel to the previous gen. Has 16 gyms, two regions, opens things up for the previous games. It's an expansion and some how an outlier now.

Gen 3 moving forward..... stick the formula. 8 new gyms, 4 new elite 4, new starters, new derpy bird, new derpy fish, if it ain't broke don't fix it, megaman 3, 4, 5....

I've always been a weirdo and became fascinated by Farfetch'd and Mr. Mime. I had my mom make me a Mr. Mime costume in third grade. Turned out great, it was at height of the craze so more than half the kids were Pokemon. We go on the Halloween parade around the school and when we get into a fifth grade classroom this fat girl dressed as Ash screams "Oh Mr Mime you're a rare!" and throws a plastic pokeball hitting me in the chest. I just kept marching because I didn't want to make a scene. Very cute memory in retrospect

>>6565062
>they made the new pokemon too derpy, too gimmicky or too hard to get.
Their mentality in Gen 2 was to have the new Gen 2 Pokemon be special. Sure there were a few easy ones to find like Sentret but there were lots of Pokemon that were in only one area at night or you had to go to a route that was out of the way and optional to find one or you had to interact with the game's new mechanics like friendship, headbutting, or breeding to get them. Basically they were treated mostly like an exciting surprise, with the player getting a thrill when they managed to track down a brand new Pokemon. There were even Johto mons intentionally left for the postgame to give players even more postgame content because they clearly had a focus on giving players more to do and explore after they beat the Elite Four, even to the point of having a superboss.
Also keep in mind that Gold and Silver was made after they were conscious of things like competitive battling and they were making Pokemon Stadium games. Keeping Pokemon like Houndoom to the postgame keeps the players playing longer because they'll actually want that Pokemon to have a pretty good Dark/Fire type for Pokemon Stadium, where it's quite good. Basically the decisions they made boil down to treating the new Pokemon as special and rare.
For Gen 3 their entire design philosophy changed. Now the new Pokemon were most of the available Pokemon in the game. New Pokemon were not only outnumbering the old Pokemon, but they were highly abundant throughout the game. While this does make sense for Gen 3's "the same Pokemon you know and love but fresh and new at the same time" concept, it still made the new Pokemon less special and coveted overall. Pokemon mostly stuck with this mentality going forward, even going so far as to not include any old Pokemon for Gen 5.

The pokemania felt eternal to me, but apparently it was very short huh. When I look back on it, while there was hype for the new mons, I remember clearly how by the time the Jotho anime started on TV the craze was already waning. I don't remember too much excitement when the new mons were already here. Even though during the Orange Islands arc everybody was still big into it, myself included.

>>6565086
And of course for Gen 6-8 we've seen them kind of go into an amalgamation of the two where they seem to value old Pokemon OVER the new Pokemon to the point where instead of making new Pokemon they seem much more eager to create variants or new forms for older Pokemon. I'm not completely certain why they've taken this route, but it's probably just because nostalgia sells and they know the old Pokemon are more well liked than the new Pokemon. It's kind of sad really.
Anyway, my point in all this is to say that when it comes to Gen 2's new Pokemon and their availability, I just want people to take a moment to think about what they were going for. It feels like plenty of people just go "well obviously it's shit I mean you can't get Murkrow until the postgame and it isn't even good, Gen 2 is badly designed" without considering that they didn't fail to make the distribution correctly, they mostly succeeded in their personal goals and ideas for how a sequel to Pokemon would work in terms of the new Pokemon. AKA they didn't try and fail to do something akin to how Gen 3 handled it, they tried and mostly succeeded in their intentions and then changed their philosophy entirely for the next Gen. Not that you can't still dislike it, obviously.

>>6561573
Never caught the Pokemon mind virus. I don't mind turn based RPGs, SMT works for me , but Pokemon just puts me to fucking sleep. Either I'm just too much X/Millennial hybrid being an '84 baby, I was never social enough to appreciate the trading and combat, or this game does in fact suck dick and everyone's wrong.

>>6565110
The Pokemon games were never particularly deep RPGs but they were never trying to be. They want to be simple, kid friendly RPGs with lots of cool/cute monsters to collect and raise, and they massively succeeded in this goal, and it totally resonated with audiences. At least for a while.

>>6565110
>'84
I believe you might have been too old for pokemon.

>>6564705
guh

Jessie's still hotter

>>6565118
Knew people older than me who were way into it, but they looked like pic related

>>6565086
Yea, that's what I was saying. It doesn't work though. I don't mind heracross being hard to get, he's a cool pokemon. I do mind cleffa even existing. It's completely unneeded.
We didn't really need pre-evolutions of magmar and the like either, but you can't even find them in the wild. It's just time sink breeding to complete your pokedex.
Then you have unown which is cool in concept, but straight up a gimmick and pretty much unusable.
That's what I mean. You're mostly going to rely on old pokemon because of this. Sentret is not different enough from Rattata, why make it?

Again, no issues making pokemon rare and special, as the concept was "there's 150" and new ones should have been harder to find and all. The ones that weren't hard to find, weren't worth finding. They had an opportunity to really curate their catalog of monsters, and they didn't take it.

I think basically needing to beat the game to get certain pokemon is a bad concept too. A few being endgame ones is fine, but far too many in gen 2 require deeper work. Not to mention all additional item + trade evolutions.

>>6565118
Even Nintendo Power wasn't shy about saying it was a game for tiny babies.

>>6565152
Wonder why they didn't get the memo that they were going to market the fuck out of the franchise. You'd think they would have given it a higher score. I mean the entire magazine is bullshit so I guess they just never got the word from the higher ups that they're supposed to say it's the shit.

>>6565152
>>6565158
>Nascar '99 : 7.4
>Pokemon: 7.2

back when they didn't shill and hire brand whoring critics. Neutrality in reviews existed then. Nintendo didn't have to hype it up as the show was already out and it was a big hit. On top of the fact, what was nintendo going to do? Blacklist nintendo? That stuff didn't start to happen till the late 2000's. The people at EGM were pretty open about what happened to the industry. As they were neutral, advertisers pulled support with bad reviews. It didn't exist in the 90's. People who reviewed for one magazine didn't want to be tied to their and you'd need a good resume to move on to other publications. If you're reviews were 10/10 on every nintendo game and 2/10 for ropobon cause it's a rip off, you clearly lack integrity. That's clearly, totally changed now.

>>6561573
I'll never understand why they ditched the beautiful and unique watercolor style in the promotional art. The later stuff looks so painfully generic.

>>6565262
I loved the water color aesthetic, I miss it.

>>6565262
>I'll never understand
How hard is it to understand a company selling out and not putting any soul into anything to save time and money.

>>6565306
This. It's pretty simple. One is an artistic style produced by one person. The other is easily made by any artist. To keep control of a brand as a company, any one you hire needs to be able to make it. Also to keep selling it, it needs to look accessible.

>>6562179
why does it say pockemon with the japanese versions?

>>6561573
>the 90s and early 2000s, what are your fondest memories of those times
My back didn't hurt yet
>I don't think any other franchise has ever seen this level of popularity
You mean short or long-term? Either is false, anyway

>>6565262
>>6565291
It's a shame they don't really even try at all to homage the early gen style in the newer games. It's weird even considering how hard they nostalgia pander.

Like you'd figure they would try to design new pokemon that fit in line with the old kanto mons, rather than just endlessly digging up kanto mons to give them updated forms that look retarded.

I guess that's too much effort to ask out of gamefreak anyway now. They have like 20 people all designing pokemon now, a consistent vision is just not going to happen with this series now.

>>6565230
>back when they didn't shill and hire brand whoring critics. Neutrality in reviews existed then.
Tell me you aren't seriously trying to say that Nintendo Power was impartial. Please tell me that. Please tell me you're just joking.

>>6565054
Game Freak were also ex-SEGA devs

>>6565262
>they
Sugimori got lazy

>>6561637
Remember cheatcodes.com? They had some nice GameShark sections.

>>6561890
I would say from 98 to 2003/4 in Latin America.
It was fucking huge, inescapable. Great years.

>>6562072
>the anime was midways through the Orange Islands arc, but for some reason we stopped getting new episodes and the series started over from the first episode
>>6562117
>>6562127
>>6562179
>>6562207
>>6565704
Just how many chileans are in /vr/, holy shit

>>6565734
I didn't specify Chile. But yes I am.

>>6561629
I don't even remember most of the people in my high school and I'm only 25. I only remember the cringey and bad moments. I'd do anything for a second shot at childhood, just to make some memories.

>>6565152
>4MB
>96mb.
That is just crazy. And to think that nowadays people with all this advanced technology to make pixel art from AEsprite or use a game engine to this day can not make soulful games.
>>6565416
https://youtu.be/BdED9UAn7I8
To be fair they did do this weird watercolor style in Pokemon Rescue Team DX for Switch. Or at least tried to copy that style. I do think the problem Game Freak has is being able to have a consistent art direction. I would not mind if they do not fit with the other mons but the lack of consistency art wise does not help.
>I guess that's too much effort to ask out of gamefreak anyway now. They have like 20 people all designing pokemon now, a consistent vision is just not going to happen with this series now.
Without saying much I will tell you that its not as easy as it is made out to be. You can have a lot of employees but if you have too many Pokemon it can take awhile to do 3D versions. If I was Game Freak I would have done a 2.5D version like Dragon Ball Fighterz instead and just added effects on top of it.

>>6565734
holy shit? more like Conchetumare

>>6562936
Fuck I want to eat some Pokemon pasta again bros. I like the red can tho.

>>6561573
Playing Pokémon Gold in the back of the car during road trips

>>6561727
I learned to read because of Pokémon Blue lol

>>6565092
Pokemania is eternal. It is literally the highest grossing franchise in the world. We just aren't the targeted demographic anymore

>>6565763
>4MB
that's actually 4Mb
4 Megabits is only 512KiB
also, they're actually a little bit wrong there, since the original japanese versions of red/green (yes, green) are 4Mb/512KiB, the english versions of red/blue are 8Mb/1MiB (presumably spilled over to fit longer english text, i haven't looked it up, afaik the games are otherwise the same)

>>6565420
it was, prove me wrong.

>>6565262
They wanted to use additional (cheaper) artists so they made Sugimori change his style to something easier to mimic.

>>6565647
I highly doubt that has absolutely anything to do with this reference being included in the comic

>>6566574
It's okay to be retarded anon, I just want you to be honest with yourself about how retarded you are.

>>6566479
Red/Blue are actually based on the Japanese Blue, just split into two games and given the attributes of Red/Green. That being said I don't think that really matters and I don't think Japanese Blue is 8MB either.

>>6566964
ah my bad, yea, japanese blue is also 512K

>JP Red and Green US Red and Blue JP Blue
>ll the random differences and inverted version exclusive content between JP and US Gold and Silver

It's a fucking headache trying to look up concrete information for early gens holy shit

>Be born in 1993
>Be swedish
>One day, my dad brings home a poster with Kalles Kaviar on one side(Salted Roe sandwich spread) and the 151 first pokemon on the other side
>Guy in my kindergarten class gave me a Rhydon card from the jungle set
>Went on a cruiseship with a childs section, they had some kind of demoversion of pokemon stadium, played the shit out of that
>soon the show started and I was completely hooked

Got a purple GBC and pokemon blue the next christmas.

Pokemania here died out before gen 2, but me and a couple of friends still played it. Highlights including playing pokemon after school and solving the power plant puzzle in gen 2 (quite hard when you can't into english) aswell as collectively shitting ourself when we found "ash" in Mt Silver.

Also, since I used to play pokemon with my buddies after gym class I get incredibly nostalgic whenever I smell the dubbeldusch shower brand.

>>6561573
I bought a used Gameboy pocket and Pokemon Blue with money from my job at Burger King. I know 15-16 was/is too old to get excited as I did for a Pokemon game, but I also lost my virginity (snort* what was his name) that year so fuck you.

go back to /vp/ and kill yourselves.

>>6567246
>ll the random differences and inverted version exclusive content between JP and US Gold and Silver
What was swapped between US/Japan besides Teddiursa and Donphan?

>>6566956
Archie/Fleetway writers are also known to do snarky niche references zoomers won't get either.

My best memory is actually scrounging around the early Internet trying to find information on Gold & Silver back before they were officially announced. We had it so drilled into our heads that there were exactly 151 Pokemon, the idea of there suddenly being more than that felt like we were discovering a new element on the periodic table, or like an alternate dimension or something. It's hard to explain. Also since the internet wasn't centralized with wikis or news sites, you kinda just had to see whatever bullshit 100 different fan-sites were blurting out and separate the rumor from fact.

How can some zoomer faggot look at OP's picture and prefer modern day pokemon design?

>>6567336
Oh look, it's the schizo who can't accept the fact Pokemon started in retro times.
Love your obsession my dude.

PLEASE KILL ME

>>6567769
I agree old designs are better but if bad designs are enough to ruin the franchise for you I have to wonder just what you were getting out of it in the first place

>>6567970
Why are the new designs so shit?

Like wtf why do you need another fish?

Does anyone even know what pic related is even called?

>>6566961
damn, proved me wrong with all this proof.

>>6567970
>Flatfish looks silly
What's the problem?
>>6568079
Yeah, Finneon. Becomes Lumineon. Neither evolve from Eevee.

>>6568069
Not the gameplay that's for sure

>>6567619
I remember downloading badly translated versions of the Japanese roms to play them on emulators. I was not disappointed at all and even more hyped to buy the game when it came out. I also actually got a Japanese copy of Silver and beat the whole game without being able to read it.

>>6568069
Yea, the designs are not holding back the franchise, it's the core gameplay mechanics. Why update them?

The old park when I was a kid that was filled with baseball fields where the little leagues would go to play
It was down in this large ravine, right by the river, and surrounded by forest on three sides and a fairly steep incline on the fourth. Me and my cousins would go wander about, watching different games being played, buying stuff from the concession stand and wandering about in the woods. I was like, ten at the time, and we'd often bring our pokemon cards or our gameboys and while away an afternoon playing them on the picnic tables and shit

Halcyon days of my youth and I have great nostalgia for them

>>6567291
It's so weird how Pokemania lasted for different lengths in different countries, in my country it lasted well into gen 4 and then I swiftly grew out of it until 2016 when the whole world was obsessed with Pokemon again for a whole summer.

>>6561573
>born at the beginning

I don’t fucking get people like you. You don’t remember it. You weren’t a part of it. If you were born at the start of it, which was 98 in America, by the time you were old enough to know what was going on, it was done. Now fuck off.

>>6569546
hey he might have been able to walk by the time the crazy ended, so he was totally a part of it
/s

>>6561573
what do you mean '05? The hard cap for pokemania was 9/11

>>6561954
Based

>>6561573
Why was the original artstyle so soulful compared to now?

>>6561871
I remember evangelic people and religious fags using that new as an argument for "that cartoon was made by the devil", met tons of kids who were affraid of watching pokemon because their parents told them to.

>>6565734
I'm half chilean-half argentine, watching chile gets the best merch was heartbreaking as a kid. They always were better partners with nintendo stuff. During holidays and vacation I uses to buy tons of mini bootleg toys.

I liked going to toys r us every Sunday to do the Pokemon trading card league thing. Shit was pretty cash.

>>6561573
>got into Pokemon late because of my obsession with Gen 1 Digimon
I would have started with Crystal. Feels weird. Unpopular opinion, but I still think the Entei and Latios/Latias movies were better than the Mewtwo movie.

For me it was Tazos
Nobody I knew had gameboys so I guess this was our only way to collect and trade the mons, now that I think about it.

>>6569546
Why do people on /vr/ love to put other people's memories into question

>>6565746
Chile Sucks

Gens 1 and 2 are good to separate from modern pokemon:

Green (jap only)
Red
Blue
Yellow (cartoon show based)
Gold
Silver
Crystal

You don't need any more.

>>6565704
pokemonia was a first world phenomenon. you and your bourgeoisie friends don't make up your whole nation.

>>6565152
Why was there pokemania when nascar was the superior game?

I remember.
I want to go back.

Favorite memories include watching the anime before school every morning and sperging out with my best buddy who also caught the episodes before school. It was somehow very hype to us even if a whole lot of nothing happened. As long as they introduced a pokemon we hadn't seen yet, it was cool.

It was also the only time I was ever given a game console and a game by my dad without it being a gift giving holiday. He just decided to get me a gameboy pocket and a copy of red.

The first few seasons were great, especially the first season. The way they talk is cringe but - come to think of it it's like the games - simple and childish on the surface but with hidden depth. Every episode had some sort of interesting conflict. I guess some anon is going to mock me but it was great.

Imagine a grown man being so insecure and mistrustful of their intelligence and taste that all it takes is for one random person to say something is "for children" to make them run from something like a scaredy cat. There's plenty of things that are aimed at kids or "young adults" that are clever and good. Who could argue Pinky and the Brain isn't a good show period? Refusing to look at any show or play any game that is labelled or even intended for young people show a weak-minded person with a lack of maturity, mistrustful of their own likes and dislikes and whether or not they will be considered "acceptable".

The first few seasons were great, especially the first season. The way they talk is cringe but - come to think of it it's like the games - simple and childish on the surface but with hidden depth. Every episode had some sort of interesting conflict. I guess some anon is going to mock me but it was great.

Imagine a grown man being so insecure and mistrustful of their intelligence and taste that all it takes is for one random person to say something is "for children" to make them run from it like a scaredy cat. There's plenty of things that are aimed at kids or "young adults" that are clever and good. Who could argue Pinky and the Brain isn't a good show period? Refusing to look at any show or play any game that is labelled or even intended for young people show a weak-minded person with a lack of maturity, mistrustful of their own likes and dislikes and whether or not they will be considered "acceptable".

>>6570436
Let me ask you a question. Why would a grown man wearing a shirt that says "genius at work" spend his time watching a children's cartoon?

>>6570436
The way they talk is the best thing about the early seasons, especially Ash and Misty and the way they would shit talk people. Characters got way too clean and friendly in later episodes.

Anyway the second part of your post was probably not needed and it makes you sound like the insecure one.

>>6570451
>>6570461
I withdraw my second paragraph.

>that kid who showed you how to do missngno glitch
I couldnt believe that shit back then

>>6570508
Missingno is probably what singlehandedly caused so many people to believe all those buck wild rumors about video games in the late 90's like L is Real and Topless Lara Croft because if something that crazy is true, anything would be possible, right?

>>6570508
he was the same kid who showed me the green blood in the EU version of OoT

I remember around when Gen 2 launched in the US, the Orange Islands arc was airing on TV and there was a contest where you cut out cards from cereal boxes and answered Orange Island-themed trivia questions and mailed them in. It was the only time in my entire childhood that I actually won one of those mail-in sweepstakes contests that were constantly advertised on TV. I won a copy of Pokemon Silver, but I didn't own a Gameboy and we were too poor to afford one, so for many years I had a copy of Silver laying around teasing me with no way of playing it.

Actually found an old news article about it. Cool stuff. https://www.warnermediagroup.com/newsroom/press-releases/2000/09/05/ids-wb-kellogg-and-nintendo-join-forces-in-pok-mon-orange-island

>>6569890
We know, I want to get out of this hellhole asap

>>6569862
There was also an Ultra Figus album.

>>6570508
That kid fucked my Hall of Fame!

>>6569507
american culture is very corporate driven. Pokemon was a underdog in the start. No network picked up the first season of the show. Then suddenly there were movies and fast food deals. Thing is, other companies eventually want their thing promoted. No one wanted to just focus on pokemon. Disney, Fox, other companies had their product to push. Then games like GTA, halo and diablo started to happen. So in the US, it came and went because people were told it was done.

Gen 1 pokemon are still the best

Been into Pokémon from the very start. Only hit a lul during gen 3 when my copy of sapphire was stolen and my replacement copy of ruby went missing over vacation. Skipped over gen 4 entirely and came back for gen 5.

My parents indulged in my pokemania desires for the most part. Went to a catholic school and the only thing that happened was it got banned because everyone was bringing shit in like cards all the time.

My family lived adjacent to some baptists and that's where I heard about the devil worship garbage. Offers to trade cards closed because other kids parents shut it all down because kadabra was a Satanist. It was at this point that I was seeing all of the religious fundamentalists take to the news and media crying about it.

If I learned one pre-millennium lesson early on it was that people are highly ignorant of other cultures. Pokémon of all things taught me this and it's a lesson that has never been proved wrong.

Still play to this day. New and old.

>>6571819
curious to know what religious parents thought of evolution playing a critical role in pokemon
i know not all religious people are against the idea of evolution, but what about those who are?

>>6564681
Pokemon Snap was excellent. Best depiction of pokemon in 3d so far. Incredibly soulful game

I just got into Pokemon Stadium 2 / Gold and holy shit this could take 1000s of hours to do everything in the game without using rentals
>getting the perfect team of 6 level 5 pokemon
>level 55 team
>level 100 team

>>6569867
Because if he wasn't born until 1998 he sure as fuck didn't have memories of something that started in 98 and ended in 2000, retard.

>>6569862
Nice pogs anon.

>>6569546
op considers the start to be 1996 (thread topic), so he'd be ~2-4 during the western peak, far too young to have been much of a part of it

The hype for the new gen 2 Pokemon and getting a Japanese holo of one at the card kiosks in malls. It was a more novel time for anime in general with anime shops, bootleg subs, fan sites, and the sort.

>>6563324
>>6564118
some of us just block out the bad years

>>6561890
Usa here. I knew a normalfaggot girl that liked pokemon up to the ds stage of it in 2009ish.

Not everyone was into it, sure, but then again not until pokemon go was literally everyone into it either.

If you want to split hairs it's over when it stopped being put on the air in the USA, along with Sailor Moon. That'd have been the early 2000s but I don't recall when, but the USA is a big place so why split hairs?

I have memories of a kid at my school who got stuck in Vermillion and just spent all his time in the game grinding to the east of the city. He had a Charizard.
I don't know if that's actually a real memory but I think it is.

>>6574181
>If you want to split hairs it's over when it stopped being put on the air in the USA, along with Sailor Moon. That'd have been the early 2000s but I don't recall when, but the USA is a big place so why split hairs?
Pokemon never really left TV. It did go from Kids WB to Cartoon Network in 2005 or 2006 or something and it went to Disney XD around like 2016-2017 or something like that. It didn't actually leave television until now with the new season airing on Netflix instead.

>>6561730
>>6562072
This also ran contemporarily before Yu-Gi-Oh! came on the scene.

Pokemania gets in my craw because I was there but I pretty much missed everything.
>get interested in Pokemon thanks to these cool toys from Burger King promoting the first movie
>start collecting Pokemon coins from Mac and Cheese boxes and playing with them, eventually want to try playing the games, get either Red or Yellow and play the everloving fuck out of it
>get Pokemon Stadium later in 2000 and love that too, and Pokemon Snap, and Pokemon Pinball, and basically jump on the entire bandwagon and don't get off
But
>wasn't able to watch Kids WB for a good amount of time, probably until 2001-2003 or something so at first I could only experience the show through VHS tapes from my library, end up not being able to watch the show a lot as a result
>nobody else in my grade gave a shit about Pokemon for some reason
>never once opened a pack of cards until years later, did get stuff like the TCG game and some starter kits and the PC Play It! thing but never got that experience of trading and pulling a holo, etc. That was completely foreign to me
>didn't see any Pokemon movies in the theater
>didn't really see anyone else talking about it or caring about it ever, I saw two or three kids TOTAL playing Pokemon during Pokemania
>never owned a link cable so the only time I ever got to trade using one was one time where a teenage girl traded me a Squirtle since she still had the game from when she was into it years ago

>grow up and see all these stories of kids pulling holo Charizards and then playing Pokemon Stadium minigames with their friends for hours and catching rare Pokemon and trading them and then going to the First Movie premiere and having it be the best moment of their life
Makes me feel kind of sad.

>>6574250
I experienced most of those but the thing is that going into the teen years as well as prior there were numerous competing interests. With Toonami I'd also watch DBZ, Tenchi Muyo!, and catch on to the Gundam model kit fad. Soon after that Adult Swim aired with multiple anime series such as Cowboy Bebop. Also the transition from 5th to 6th gen vidya.

>>6574225
That happened to me too. In fact I had a Charizard when fighting Misty. I'm ESL and didn't read a lot of english back then, I remember beating Brock with Charmander, then getting btfo by Misty's Starmie over and over so I went to Vermillion, and grinded a lot until I got Charizard. I was stuck in vermillion for a while after beating Misty because I didn't knew I had to teach Cut to one of my pokemon to get to the gym. Farfetch'd was my Cut guy.

>>6574250
>nobody else in my grade gave a shit about Pokemon for some reason
because you got into it from promotions of the first movie, which was when it was already slowing down

>That kid who said he got Pokemon Gold and Silver from his dad when he came back from Japan but conveniently never brought it with him to school.

>>6574250
>>6574297
Kids my age hated pokemon from the start, idk if it was just the city I grew up in but kids were all so edgy and too cool to show interest in anything marketed to kids. They sure as shit jumped on Pokemon Cards though, only because they were assured they would be worth money someday. Hah.

>>6565230
LMAO Nintendo Power was explicitly brand whoring critics. That was the entire point of the magazine, it was owned by Nintendo and used to push Nintendo stuff. This wasn't secret either.

>>6575029
Oh, I was that kid.
Turns out it was a Vietnamese bootleg.

Pokemon was the first time I ever heard of a cheating device, my friend was using a GameShark to get all the Pokemon. I asked "isn't that cheating?" and he said "No, if it was cheating Nintendo wouldn't allow GameShark to be sold and wouldn't program the codes in the game, so it's ok" and I believed him.

>>6561573
My first memories of anything Pokemon was that a kid brought some Pokemon cards for show and tell, and I remember seeing Machop and thinking it was the coolest shit ever and I wanted some.

I think my favorite memories overall would be the PokeGods and other schoolyard rumors. I always tried to accomplish the complex inputs and mechanics to get them to work, but they obviously never did. By the time I had been shown Missingno. I had mostly given up, so I completely lost my shit when I saw it was real. It completely rekindled my belief in these rumors for the last year or so they were relevant.

Was looking through my old binders of cards just yesterday, in fact. Good fucking times my frens

>>6561951
I was into collecting the cards but never really got into battling.
There are some great guides that discuss the card game, strategies and full color pics of all the cards. Look up gamebooks, Brian Brokaw, Pokemon Card game trainers guide (or something.) It hit me right in the feels, to be seeing it all again

>>6562127
>not ashamed of what she did
Based

>>6562308
The remakes (fire red, and the soul silver) are a good way to get used to the new battle system (Abilities etc) and to get used to *some* new pokemon.

Once you have played FR or SS you could move into gen 3 or gen 4 proper.

Also, try pokemon showdown.com for quick battles across any gen.

>>6562939
As a massive craze it was still going in 2001. I would say it died down in 2002/03.
In about 2005ish the gen 2 cards clocks began to die off, and that put a nail in the coffin for me. I never got into any past gen 2. The music was never as good (music is a KEY factor in how much I will like a game.) Also, the cards became ridiculous after the Neo decks; designs were weird (entire card was shiny and not just picture) , hp and damage absurdly high, too many """rare""" cards, etc.

The monster designs post gen 2 have never been as good either

>>6564668
Stadium and Stadium 2 have really difficult single players, where the gameplay battle mechanics become extremely deep. I would say they are one of the hardest, most rewarding and most replayable experiences in 5th gen gaming.

>>6565076
This is pasta-worthy

>>6565076
Would of been better if her Pokeball had hit you in the nuts, and she had been a girl you had a crush on. And there you are, in your dorky costume, clutching your painful nuts, a lesson in humility

>>6565086
>For Gen 3 their entire design philosophy changed. Now the new Pokemon were most of the available Pokemon in the game. New Pokemon were not only outnumbering the old Pokemon, but they were highly abundant throughout the game. While this does make sense for Gen 3's "the same Pokemon you know and love but fresh and new at the same time" concept, it still made the new Pokemon less special and coveted overall.
Interesting. An unsung reason why gen 3 never really caught on.
>>6565092
It lasted (late) 1998 to late 2000, early 2001.
For fans it stayed big thru 2001 and 2002.

>>6565108
Yes, good point. The new mon ARE difficult to get, and I think partly what grates about that is most of us were still kids playing it (I was 9 for gen 2) and kids are not that good at games - i.e. I knew loads of kids with g/s carts but basically nobody had e.g. heracross, girafarig, houndoom, blissey, and the 3 dogs were a bit too hard to catch. So maybe like a longstanding gripe that they were too tough to get (sort of).

And big agree over the inclusion of new mon now : "Kanto-pandering". I even see it on the merch; kids NOW are into Pikachu, Squirtle, Meowth, Snorlax, Eevee, its like, dont you guys have new mon to be into? It is a bit weird

gen 2 was like an add-on to gen 1, yea. Rather than a full new game in its own right. So johto feels "small". But at the time it was mind blowing

I wasnt really paying attention to any game magazines and got the game for Christmas. Going in blind was great.

>>6565146
What is annoying is that some monsters are one-per-file; i.e. Kings Rock for Slowking OR Politoed; Steel Coat for Steelix OR Scizor; etc. So in one file you literally cant get em all and it requires quite co-ordinated forward planning from two files, preferably quite closely linked (i.e. you and a sibling). And not everyone has that, and on solo playthrus (or emulators) it kind of sucks.
But Cleffa etc is fine, IMO. Some pokemon are just there for fun. You would see trainers in the game with weak pokemon like Cubone or something but the thing is its about your favorites. And cute ones count into that.


>>6565230
Vidya reviews were always fake and ghey. They were probably paid by NASCAR for a good review. The weak review score on Pokemon is weird though, it got wall-to-wall 9 and 10/10 scores here (Britain).

>>6575483
>Stadium and Stadium 2 have really difficult single players, where the gameplay battle mechanics become extremely deep. I would say they are one of the hardest, most rewarding and most replayable experiences in 5th gen gaming.
The Stadium games are bullshit because the AI is literally programmed to cheat. It always knows what you're going to do and chooses its move after you choose yours. It'll also manipulate RNG in their favor. Fuck the Stadium games. They're only good for QoL shit like the Lab.
Don't defend bullshit artificial difficulty.

>>6575527
>Kings Rock for Slowking OR Politoed; Steel Coat for Steelix OR Scizor; etc.
Nope. Both King's Rock and Metal Coat can be found on wild Pokemon. At stupidly low rates mind you (like 2%), but they were technically infinite.
The real problem are the evolutionary stones, you get 1 of each in Gold and Silver. Believe they're infinite in Crystal though if you get lucky and trainers pick them up for you if you have their phone number.

>>6564118
i literally can't remember anything from before the age of 8, i've probably blocked out so much shit.

>>6561951
I'm way into building decks out of my old cards now (and newer ones, have for a number of years now) but I also only collected as a kid. I actually think that the Gameboy TCG game is fantastic, it taught me how to play with them and that stuck with me for decades until I actually picked up the physical game. I think it covers core mechanics really well, it's a comfy way to learn the game. I wish we could have got a modern pixel based RPG instead of that abomination of a MOBA they announced.

The first day of my first job was Black Friday in Electronics Boutique, 1999
Holy shit... Pokemon hit in earnest that year and the store (which at that time was still a legit software store mind you) was converted almost entirely into pokemon theme.
I learned all 151 of them just from being around it so much.
I had grandparents come in (more than once, I swear) asking for a game their grandson wanted called "Poker Man". Poker, card game, makes sense.
Did they mean Pokemon on Gameboy? Or the card game? Or the card game on Gameboy?
Christ. I remember thinking I'd be glad for this fad's fucking 3 months of popularity to die so I never had to see these ugly critters again

...welp...

>>6574250
Yu Gi Oh swiftly dethroned Pokemon during my early school years.

>>6575991
Get good

>>6575991
this >>6576526
I played it lately and even if you aren't playing serious you easily defeat most gyms

>>6575991
> the AI is literally programmed to cheat. It always knows what you're going to do and chooses its move after you choose yours.
Citation needed.
I know its very difficult, but if it always knows what I am going to do how come against Selfdestruct Trainer (in Giovannis gym i think??) when I switch out to Gengar, he still uses Selfdestruct (but normally if you start with a ghost type he will use something else -? And he doesnt just necessarily spam Explosion either.

>>6575994
>At stupidly low rates mind you (like 2%)
I am aware of that but certainly I never came across that on my first playthrough in 2001. And most kids probably didnt. Besides, catching wild mon w/ items is easier now than it was then so retrospectively it doesnt seem such a big deal.

Plus, in terms of trading, you still have to trade Steelix, Kingdra, Porygon2, Politoed etc to evolve em and if youre playing thru it now theres probably no way to trade.

So basically the Johto mon were just a bit too hard to find.

>That reverend who took a Pikachu plush from a child who brought it to church with him and ripped it apart with a sword

>>6578147
I guess I remembered the news incorrectly, because he didn't steal it from the child. But he did take a sword and a blowtorch to a shit ton of pokemon merch in front of kids after ranting about how it was poison to them.

http://www.theescapist.com/pokemon1.htm

>>6578157
oh i'm sure watching some cute plushies get burned and mutilated while a man man screams about poison is leaving a far better impression on those kids

>>6568079
>Why are the new designs so shit?

Gen 4 is still passable, and noone except people on this board would call that gen "new" but I don't mind that.

You clearly haven't seen the transformers-mon era

>>6574227
Where I live dbz, sailor moon, pokemon, all three were playing in the 90s and to about maybe 2003, but then it stopped being on the local channels. I've not seen it now on the local channels so at some point it definitely stopped.

Every morning before elementary school it used to play. Now it's new cartoons they made.

So, here's my story. When I was 7 or 8, don't remember, I finally got my gameboy color. And everyone was playing this fucking Pokemon game, it was all the rage. My parents where a bit wary of it, so all I had for a while was fucking game and watch gallery 3 ("anon, it's 5 games in one, you will have fun much longer than with Wario"). Now you need to know, I had an uncle. Was hit hard by the whole stuff happening in 1989/1990 and struggling to earn enough money to keep his own family. Fell to alcoholism and was regarded as the black sheep of the family, nobody in the family was keen on his presence. So imagine my surprise when one day he comes to visit and fucking hands me a brand new Pokemon blue. Back then I didn't understand why my mother was so mad at him for it, but today I understand he must have really, really scraped together the money to give it to me. Just so I could be a part of the hot new stuff.

I cherish the memory and the cart still has a special place.

>>6576543
Yeah, in Round 1. And Gym Leader Castle is the least of your worries.
>>6576571
>Citation needed.
Watch werster videos. He's done hundreds of hours of Stadium speed runs and there are many, many examples of the AI cheating contained within. Yeah, they won't ALWAYS cheat, but they are perfectly capable of making decisions which only make sense if they are reacting specifically to knowing what you're about to do.

Who remembers the pokegods rumors?

It felt like everyone was connected and part of a big, fun world that had some charm for everyone. Even the most introverted of kids were huge Pokemon fans and knew all about it. You had something to know, something to talk about, something to watch, and something to do. It was a worldwide event that broadened every horizon and even helped people begin to connect online. Even stuff like the playground yarns and fake IGN submission secrets created a sense of wonder and taught people to be cautious of what they heard or read to boot. Missingno being real felt like discovering a massive, extremely special secret too.

'05? I didn't play the games until '02 and by then most kids I knew thought it was uncool.

Going to one of the Nintendo events and getting a legit Mew transferred to your cart was probably one of the most soulful experiences in vidya, right at the end of the soul era

>>6561573
pokemainia did not last to 05. it lasted to 02 tops.
It actually had a resurgence after gen 3 and then died again after gen 4 before coming back with lets go.

>>6579167
More like when Ruby and Sapphire came out a lot of people played the games again but by the time Colosseum was a thing, (and most certainly by FireRed and LeafGreen,) it had died down again.

>>6579167
>>6579170
Also, you're thinking of Go, not Let's Go. Actually, people seem to forget when Black and White came out there was a new craze for a brief period but most of those people who played it probably don't even know there's a Black 2 and White 2...

>>6579170
>>6579174
underage. Pokemon died with gen 3 and become very uncool. Gen 4=new gen of kids after it.

Outside of GO, pokemon has not been a cultural power and has just been a bad videogame series for an obsessive fandom.

BW had no "craze" whatsoever. It's the bottom point of the series.

>>6569862
I had a ton of those too. I cleaned out some drawers a few weeks ago and found plenty of the things. Those were some great times.

>>6579178
I'm 25. Ruby and Sapphire was nowhere near as big a deal as what came before, but I still remember quite a few kids playing it when it came out. Everyone in my high school played Black and White when it came out, and I remember seeing a YouTube video at the time where someone was complaining about how adults are now actually playing these games.

>>6561629
I remember some stuff as far back as being 3 years old

>>6579165
I missed out on getting a Mew since I didn't know a distribution would happen at a local tournament and was only there to watch other players. Because I was just there to watch, due to being averse to competition against other people at the time, I didn't bring my game and Gameboy with me. I was super disappointed that I lost my chance to have the final, most secret of all Pokemon, but my father somehow pulled strings and got someone to put a Mew on my cartridge days later. From how he described it, a place at the mall still had the data -- I was never too clear on how it happened, but my genuine cartridge had a Mew on it. I came home from school, found my Gameboy (with the cartridge inside it) sitting on the middle of the table, and when I turned it on a Mew was in my party. It was one of the best surprises ever and a fond memory that sometimes my dad could be cool instead of obnoxious.

>>6561573
I was born in '90 so I was the target age for the franchise. Pokemon was huge in the states, nothing before or after has come close to how dominating it was. Everything we did was in some way related to pokemon. Things quickly started to settle down around the time Gen 3 was coming out. I don't know why exactly but finally the hype ran out of steam.

What I want to know is just how big was Pokemon in Japan? If it was huge as it was in the states, then I can only imagine how even more massively popular it was in Japan at the time. Did Japan's interest in pokemon wane around Gen 3 as well, or were they more like beta testers for the western market?

>>6579210
Good story. Do you still have it? or remember what the OT was?

>>6569384
Very vividly described anon, might be worth writing this down elsewhere rather than 4chan. You made me feel nostalgic for a place I've never even visited.

>>6569740
Pokémon the movie 2000 was incredible to me, remember the teaser for it on the first movie's VHS tape. In fact I loved that tape, might rewatch it today.

>>6579228
I don't recall the OT tags, and I don't know if the save battery still works. I do have the cartridge though, as well as a Game Boy Advance to play it on. I even have my Game Boy Color somewhere.

>>6573809
4 would be believable but 2 isn't. The science of memories is fuzzy at best but 3 seems to be the earliest age from which most people might remember a few key events. I remember getting a Power Rangers morpher, falling down the stairs and drawing all over our dining room's wall when I was 3 but not a whole deal more comes to mind. Sometimes objects or places might jog some more memories, helps if you've lived in one place all your life.

>>6579239
My earliest memories seem to be of my third birthday party at a pizza arcade place with a ton of the neighborhood's kids attending. IIRC, even some random kids who were there were allowed to participate too.

>>6579239
i'm not talking about just remembering it, i mean actually getting and enjoying the anime, games, and card game
sure he might have technically watched the anime, and maybe wandered around pallet town for a bit, but he was considerably younger than the target audience

Sad I cannot find it on YouTube, but it was the Spanish advertisment of Pokemon gen 2. A map appeared with some Pokemon and location being highlighted. It was a short ad that aired while taking the breakfast before going to school, it was the first time I experienced hype since I already knew and played Pokemon gen 1.

I wonder if children get hyped reading Twitter tho.

After all these years, there's still no Digimon X Pokemon game. Shameful.

>>6565158
They were pretty stingy with points in that period of the mag. You could count the number of games scoring a 9 or higher on one hand.

>>6570650
Only sweepstakes I ever won was for Pokemon shit too, I won a base set charizard from a local game shop.

>>6568079
The new designs are made with merchandise in mind, that's why. They need to be able to easily turn them to plushies.

>>6579414
Pokemon doesn't crossover with shit, the only thing they'll ever crossover with is other Nintendo properties, and only due to obligation since Nintendo partially owns it, and even then it's usually limited to just Smash Bros.

Your best bet is getting Agumon into Smash, but I'm not holding my breath, feels like Digimon's popularity never recovered when the first anime ended. Real shame, being willing to swap protagonists is one of the things that made Digimon an objectively better anime than pokemon.

>>6579165
I would argue early gen 6 had some soul.
I feel it was online play that really killed soul off (This goes for music, socializing, relationships, shopping, and various other things too. Even warfare - soul = sword-to-sword , semi-soul = rifle-to-rifle, soulless = fat Mexican tranny pressing a button in Langely and dronestriking based Iranian generals before going off to wipe its shart pants in the gender-neutral toilets, before going to remedial Holocaust studies class

>>6579142
>It felt like everyone was connected and part of a big, fun world that had some charm for everyone.
Absolutely. It was huge. We were following the anime contemporaneously, and I remember big conversations about whether Ash should have kept the Primeape, or the Raticate, and so on.
I also remember well one day the teacher came in with a Voltorb card saying, "Okay, so someone has lost a Pokemon Card? Its a ... *checks card*, "Tackle" card? Anyone lost their Tackle?"

We had a big laugh at that. CLUELESS BOOMERS! Lol.

I also remember vividly Team Rocket cards coming out. (Maybe early/mid-2000?) The shop that sold cards (and other comic-type stuff) was down a little hill from my school. Some older kid came in with these new cards, everyone was talking about it "Dark" Arbok, "Dark" Charizard etc with an "R" where the Jungle/Fossil logos were. It was a rumour at first and I was like "as if" but eventually joined the crowd all huddled round looking at them. Took a bit of courage cos it was all older kids. And we were all like WTF is this?!?! So the minute lunch bell went we ran down the hill (the clumsy kid tripped up) and literally jostled to get in the shop. And for some reason they were 90p for a booster packet (usually £2.50), because the Rocket cards were a bit weaker (in playing terms) and underpowered and less valuable. So I would always scrape together £2.50 with every penny I got (Poorfag, no "pocket money" so it was hard to do) but I got so many fuckin Team Rocket cards it more than made up for it. I remember distinctly pulling a Dark Raichu (which I honestly thought was a misprint at first because its numbered 83/82) and that feeling of childish buzz is difficult to recapture nowadays. But it was good, good times.

>>6580784
I should clarify i mean gen 6 of videogame consoles (PS2, XBOX and GameCube), not gen 6 of pokemon.

>>6579170
>>6579174
>>6579178
Yeah, Gen 1 was the Pokemon craze really. It peaked in the summer of 2000 I would say. Gen 2 was for fans more than neutrals, and older kids (who were say 12/13 for gen 1) grew out of it by Gen 2. But Gen 2 was still really big. There was a definite drop off for Gen 3. But, compared to most videogames (esp. handheld), Ruby and Sapphire were still big games. I was in secondary school by R/S release, and there were still a good 20-30 students playing those games on GBAs in the corridors and at breaktime and in an afterschool gaming club I was in at one point.
Anyone saying Gen 4 onwards was a craze (outwith Pokemon go in 2016) is talking crap.

>>6579103
Well possibly true. But they tend to spam (theres a guy who spams Dragon Rage in one of the lesser cups) and you learn to strategize around that. In many cases your opening Pokemon is KEY to winning. I know from experience they do not always "read" your opening Pokemon, and they take set-teams based on who you pick. (Reacting to type, and move-types, broadly). The suggested teams on an online guide (may have been Smogon) did accurately predict who opponents would pick based on who you pick / lead with.

Round 2 is extremely difficult, though. I think I got to Elite Four but cant beat them. Mewtwo isnt hard though, theres a strategy for him (paralyze then spam OHKOs, basically)

The minigames, ability to play gameboy game on big screen, and 2 player battles (as well as perks eg Amnesia Psyduck, etc etc etc) make it a good game and it was a great companion to RBY at the time (same goes for Stadium 2)

I do feel like there was a small boom in gen 5 tho, but not even close to anything before it. Gen 5 brought in a lot of people who cared more about the human characters and story than the actual pokemon themselves. I feel bad for those people because gen 5 was also the only time the series had a strong focus on characters and story... Relative to other pokemon games that is, it's still really weak by other JRPG standards.

>>6580897
I have heard that B/W tried to do a more cohesive storyline. I got a DS recently for the first time explicitly to play HeartGold and SoulSilver (and they are 10/10 games, I should have got them at the time but I was too much of a diehard oldfag. Plus, money). So now I have a DS , i might actually get B/W.

>>6580917
I recommend it. It's the only Pokemon game I consider a decent RPG on it's own merits, a lot of the gym leaders actually have active roles in the story outside of just sitting in their gyms, the evil team's motives are more down to earth than the typical pokemon villains but still crazy enough that the stakes are higher than the rockets, I also feel like they pander to gen 1 fans in the right way by adding exactly 150 new pokemon, having pokemon that are obvious paralells to the originals but still being completely their own thing, There's no babies, no alternate forms of pre-existing mon, you can't even get old pokemon until after the main game, and I'm also relatively sure there's no mandatory HM usage outside of post game.

>>6561573
>be in idkwhatgrade
>9 or 10
>gold and silver just released
>go get tested for allergies, 10 needles in each arm
>sitting in mcdonalds after with mom
>"you wanna buy that new pokemon game anon?"
>"REALLY?? OMG THANKS MOM"
>go to RXplace across the street
>mom bought me gold
>show up to school next day with it and my purple transparent gameboy color
>30 now
>game still is comfy as hell

There's something really nice about the time of day chances. Also Ecruteak city is beautiful.

>>6580963
If you havent played HeartGold or SoulSilver on DS yet I highly recommend them. I would say theres almost *too much* to do in those games. Absolutely 10/10.

>>6581000
I got it when it came out actually.
>go into store
>ask for heartgold
>"You don't want heartgold."
>"I don't?"
>"Yeah look at this gay ass fire turkey. Man you're cool, I'm giving you SOULSILVER."
I was like lmfao

>>6561573
05? Pokemon died off by 2002.

>>6581013
I was always a Silver guy. I had Silver and my brother had Gold. I remember a car trip up north with my dad once, us 2 in the back seats, both on our own GBC, getting up early each morning to do Mystery Gift (only to remember we had stayed up to 12 to do it the night before), comfytimes

That said I think Ho-Oh and Lugia are equally cool. Actually honestly if I had to pick one it would be the phoenix. And yet, I am a Silver (and Blue) guy through and through.

>>6561573
I never got into it despite trying at the time. The games were too grindy and the show too formulaic even for my ten-year-old sensibilities. I guess I'd already been spoiled on good RPGs like FFVI and better GB games like LoZ:LA and DK94. I just never saw the appeal to doing the same thing over and over again until the game finally moved forward just to be rewarded with yet another series of gym battles.

That said, looking back on it, the game does possess some charm that I didn't really pick up on back then like how the towns all had different themes and their own "personalities" so to speak. I did like the monster designs and music too, just not the game/show as a whole.

Oh, and my first rival's name was SHITGOD.

>>6561629
I'm like this guy, except not a faggot about it.

>>6581131
This is a better rpg than ff6

>>6581140
>except not a faggot about it.
how was i being a faggot about it?

>>6581146
gr8 b8 m8 i r8 8

>>6581149
Because you LARPed a cartoon. Everyone liked Pokemon, but only the faggot weird kids did that.

>>6580862
>Gen 2 was for fans more than neutrals, and older kids (who were say 12/13 for gen 1) grew out of it by Gen 2
I was that kid who was 12/13 during gen 1.
by gen 2, I was 15, and thought I was over pokemon, but then my friends kept bugging me about getting Gold because they were playing it (and I think they all had Silver, so they needed a Gold), I remember going to the game store and being short of $10 to buy the game, and one of my friends loaned me the $10 I needed, lol.
I got hooked again, it was lots of fun playing with them. I played some multiplayer during Gen 1, with 2 friends, but by Gen 2, my group of friends was bigger.
I never played any other gen beyond that, but in recent years I revisited gen 1 and 2 due to Stadium, had a blast.
I remember renting stadium 1 back in the day too, but since blockbuster didn't give the transfer pak, we only played the multiplayer, which was still lots of fun.

>>6581484
i didn't roleplay as ash, i just said i was the same age as him, as evidence that i was exactly the target demographic for it
i never dressed up, pretended to be, or otherwise roleplayed as ash

>>6580768
There was Pokemon Conquest and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.

>>6574250
>grow up and see all these stories of kids pulling holo Charizards and then playing Pokemon Stadium minigames with their friends for hours and catching rare Pokemon and trading them and then going to the First Movie premiere and having it be the best moment of their life
literally me

and i’ve got some merchandise somewhere around here from pokemon tour 1999

I really feel sorry for the little zooms that missed out on that little pocket in time when there wasn’t a single kid in school who wasn’t obsessed with pokemon

>>6581813
Imagine living in the past like that, get a grip retard. Nostalgia isn’t just some warm blanket you pull over yourself to forget your problems.

>>6561573
I was around 7 when this weird ass commercial aired https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAo9HzOgtQ
I think what made the early gen 1 game great was all the mysticism and playground rumors about the game. Mainly all the glitches kids would find and not know if they were intentional. Like the glitch city. Then the cards also helped hype it up more since it appealed to people who didn't play the game or just watched the show. I remember being pretty hyped for Gen 2. Especially since some of the new Mons were on the Japaneses cards that you could get from specialty shops that sold weeb stuff. By 2001 it was extremely un-cool to still like pokemon and even as a kid I remember seeing the new designs and asking where the soul went. Then around 2009-10 when the Gen2 remake came out tones of people started getting back into it at an older age.

>>6581816
I’m not using nostalgia to forget my problems, I just enjoy thinking back about how much fun I had as a kid, I was witness to a monumentally good time

>>6581825
It wasn’t that great, mostly younger kids getting ripped off in card trades or link cable mon trades. You exalting that period of your life the way you’re doing is troubling to say the least.

>>6581830
>mostly younger kids getting ripped off in card trades or link cable mon trades
All part of learning life’s lessons, fuck the cotton wool kids get now

>>6581861
Look where that sort of “life experience” got you lmao

>>6581784
I'll give you conquest but Mystery Dungeon is not a crossover. Yeah, Mystery Dungeon itself is a series of games, but it's not like Pikachu is working with Torneko Taloon or a Chocobo or anything like that.

>>6581887
Also I'm trans btw if that matters.