Random Origin stories

What was your introduction to pokemon?
First memory, episode, game?
What was your first favorite pokemon and why? And is it still?Thought it would be fun to start this chat and we could all see into each other's souls.
One thing I'm wondering is how youngsters came into pokemon a few generations later then decided to go back and master rby.

As for me, I was 7. I remembered seeing pokemon toys and commercials when it hit the U.S., but I didn't think I'd get into it. Until my first episode on a Saturday morning. I missed several episodes and came in on Ash's gym battle with Misty. Staryu ko'd Butterfree, and Pidgeotto ko'd starmie. Pikachu sat out because he loved Misty. I was immediately hooked and started musing about what pokemon I'd run with in my imaginary world. Since I had only seen a handful of them from that episode, I began to create my own. I loved to draw at the time so I tried to put all my ideas on paper.
I play gen 1 because I only played rby and gsc on Gameboy. After that I went through my Pokemon is lame phase in middle school. I never bought another cartridge game but did pull out stadium 1 to try to beat the various cups which was quite hard with rentals. After failing quite a few times I discovered Smogon and used the rby set guides to find the best equiped rentals to get it done. Ended up relying on Jynx heavily because she did have lovely kiss+ ice punch and psychic.

So Smogon led me to showdown and meeting good players led me here.
First favorite pokemon was Charmander. Before pokemon i was all about Mario games. Yoshi was my favorite character to play and draw. When I saw Charmander my first thought was it's a cute little orange Yoshi that has fire powers. Fire was my favorite element so it was fate.
My favorite today is Charizard. I guess as I matured my favorite did too.
As new generations came out, there have been plenty of cool pokes that could have dethroned zard. But at this point he is like my spirit animal so thats that.

Alright that was my turn. Now you.

 

I like the idea of this thread, I don't get to ramble enough.

I found out about Pokemon the same way you did, and I suspect the same way most people found out about it. It was impossible to ignore, and caused another "Satanic Panic" in the United States (did you know controlling monsters is SATANISM?).
I was 5 and got hooked on the cartoon, one of the few bits from the first season I clearly remember was Ash vs. Blaine. For some reason that fight was so hype to me, I had to keep watching to see the whole thing, it was hard to keep up with anime without at TV guide or memorizing the Kids WB schedule.
And I wanted to draw all of them too, I used some Pokedex book I had a reference. And they made SO MANY drawing books back then, also a resource.
So naturally I wanted to play the games and have Pokemon of my own. I rented Blue and Stadium all the time from Blockbuster (well my parents rented them for me), and Gold was the first game I owned. So despite starting in Gen I, GSC is my favorite (aside from being one of the best game sequels of all time; you'll never see a modern game sequel, or even a modern Pokemon game, add as much as GSC did).

Being naturally competitive and hotheaded, I wanted to battle all the time. I didn't know half as much as I thought I did, though. I stuck around the series long enough to still be playing in Gen 4, when someone at camp showed me Smogon. As cliche as it sounds, that changed everything.
Played up until Gen 6, quit until Sun/Moon, and got disenfranchised with the power creep and Megas. I told myself in Spring I'd quit Pokemon for good. I ran out of things to do one day and decided to play RBY on a whim. Won a lot right out of the gate and wanted to seriously play a video game again, that desire led me here.

 

Interesting thread, I'll join in.

I was first exposed to the pokemon series through the anime, as I loved watching Cheez TV in the mornings, which mostly showed Pokemon, Digimon and DBZ. Later on my dad decided to buy me a GBA, and we were looking at games and it basically came down to a choice between Mario and Pokemon Crystal. Mario held no interest for me, while I loved the Pokemon anime, so it was an easy choice. Thereafter I played the series extensively until Diamond. At that point I was getting bored of the games, but the battle tower still intrigued me, as I'd never made any significant progress on it and it seemed very different to regular gameplay. Looking up that kind of thing on gamefaqs led me to learning about advanced game mechanics and the existence of competitive pokemon. This absolutely fascinated me, and eventually I ended up installing Pokemon Online, which was then the premier simulator.

When I started on PO, I decided that starting with older gens was the best course of action, as fewer gameplay elements and fewer overall pokemon theoretically meant that learning the meta would be less daunting. I also didn't want to jump into current gens (BW by the time I jumped on PO), due to bans and tier shifts meaning the rules would change regularly, forcing me to redevelop my strategies, which I figured would be tough for someone who didn't know what they were doing to begin with. So I started with GSC, as PO didn't support RBY back then. Because GSC wasn't all that active, I expanded to ADV OU, then DPP OU. They weren't all that active either, but between them I had enough games to entertain myself.

Eventually, PO added in gen 1 (initially it was Stadium, then they eventually switched over to RBY). At that point I was the kind of player I consider to be "dangerous trash". This is the kind of player that good players should consistently win against, but is nonetheless capable of taking a game if the good player slips up or gets unlucky- at which point the skilled player probably tilts into oblivion at having lost to someone so bad (I do when I play PS's RBY ladder these days). I was also beating other noobs. Anyway, I would think I was getting good at the game, then I'd try a new team and realise nothing worked, and that my previous success had been a result of learning a specific team, rather than learning the game as a whole. This frustrated me, and the newly released gen 1's simplicity suggested that I could legitimately learn the meta and achieve genuine skill.

So I jumped into RBY and started learning the game. At this point, the RBY ladder wasn't very active, but the few players that were active played regularly and it was a very competitive environment- I recall facing players like Marcoasd and GGFan a lot, as well as some RBY2K10 veterans such as Crystal. M9M also played at this point in time, and they suggested I try tournaments on this site. I was hesitant because I had like zero self-confidence, so I tried an intermediate tournament (we used to have rookie/intermediate/master tournaments initially, but the lower level tours didn't really take off). It went alright, so I moved onto master tournaments. Iirc it was here that I played and won a series against Dre89, which was a revelation for me. It was a really competitive series and I didn't expect to win, so when I did I was stunned, and realised that I could genuinely become good at the game, and that I did have the ability to compete against good players*. Anyway, the rest is history, I started joining more tournaments, got better, and eventually started doing really well, before transitioning into more of a leadership role here.

*Dre89 was also notorious for abusing Wrap, iirc at the time their favourite team was Cloy/Bel/Dnite/Don/Zam/idk. Prior to this series I was adamantly anti-Wrap, but this series made me realise that Wrap actually wasn't all that bad, and thereafter I was in favour of keeping it legal.

 

Don't forget your favorite pokemon dudes

 

My introduction to Pokemon was when my babysitter would let me play Pokemon Yellow on her Gameboy Colour. When I was 6 my parents got me a Gameboy Advance SP with Pokemon Sapphire. I picked Torchic first, but by accident because I was spamming A lol.

Although when I was a kid the anime was in its Advanced era, I grew up watching the Indigo series on DVDs because we didn't have Sky TV until later on. My favourite Pokemon at that time was Butterfree because of all the emotional episodes it got in the anime. Dewgong was one I remember using a lot on my babysitter's game, and I really liked that.
My favourite Pokemon now changes all the time. It's probably one of Golduck, Blastoise, Mudkip, Blaziken and maybe Misdreavus. My favourite type is Water, and my favourite character from the anime was Misty.

I played Pokemon from RBY to Platinum and the first Mystery Dungeon games before hanging up my Pokeballs when I got to secondary school. I got back into it when I was 16 and ORAS came out, so I bought Alpha Sapphire that Christmas and relived my old memories with the modern twist. I then went back and played all the old ones and played BW, B2W2 and XY for the first time too. I then found out about EVs and IVs through (I think?) Shofu, or one of the many Poketubers of the time, so I bred my first ever team of Raichu, Swampert, Tangrowth, Hydreigon, Rapidash and Mega Gardevoir which I used in Wifi battles.

A couple of years later, SM came out, and I saw some Smogon tournament videos on Youtube from people like aim and blunder. I made a Smogon account, but didn't use it. I got onto Showdown around that time but it was mainly just messing around. I watched Youtube coverage of WCoP 2017 and that made me want to play a bit more properly, so I learnt and played OU a bit more rigorously, making a lot of friends in the process. Then I came here and picked up the older gens. GSC is my favourite atm.

 

I was first introduced to Pokémon when I was in primary school. I saw many of my classmates playing with and trading Pokémon cards, and my friends were also talking about the Pokémon Animé, which they were watching on television at the time. Shortly afterward, I watched the Squirtle Squad episode of the Pokémon Animé, and then Squirtle became my first favorite Pokémon. Later, my grandparents bought me all four of the original Pokémon Trading Card Game theme decks (Overgrowth, Zap!, Brushfire, and Blackout), along with a few booster packs. In the rulebook that came with the theme decks, I saw the base set Charizard card, and I saw how it had 120 HP, along with an attack that deals 100 damage. At that moment, I thought Charizard was the strongest Pokémon ever, and it became my favorite Pokémon.

Later, I got Pokémon Red, which I played through and completed. During that time, I also watched all of the Indigo League episodes of the Pokémon Animé, along with the first Pokémon movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back, which taught me that Mewtwo was the most powerful Pokémon at the time.

In Pokémon Red, after catching Mewtwo in the Unknown Dungeon, I immediately wanted to test its powers against the Elite Four, so I returned to Indigo Plateau. I easily swept my way through Lorelei, and especially Bruno and Agatha, given Mewtwo's natural type advantage over them, before I found myself standing face-to-face with the dragon master himself. Under my command, the Psychic-type Pokémon easily slaughtered the fourth Elite Four member's Gyarados, Dragonair, Dragonair and Aerodactyl, before his Dragonite appeared before my eyes. At that point, my Mewtwo was at least nine levels higher than my opponent's Dragonite. Then, my Mewtwo used its most powerful attack, Psychic... which, in accordance with my opponent's claim that his Pokémon was "virtually indestructible"... failed to knock out its foe. After that, the mighty Dragon Pokémon fired its Hyper Beam at my Mewtwo, knocking it out in a single blast despite the fact that it was at near full health.

Thinking back, my at least level 71 Mewtwo taking that much damage from a level 62 Dragonite's Hyper Beam could only have been a result of a critical hit... but my eight-year-old self did not know what critical hits were or what they did. As such, I was thoroughly impressed. At that moment, Dragonite became my favorite Pokémon ever, and it remains as such even up to this very day, while Hyper Beam also became my favorite Pokémon move ever, up until I learned about how bad it was competitively in 2003 or so.