How did you get into Pokemon and consequentially, Smogon?

ScraftyIsTheBest

On to new Horizons!
is a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
I was first introduced to Pokemon when I was a young child, back in my grade school days. Both of my parents are working parents, so neither of them could really stay behind to take care of me either after school or on days off of school. Because of this, I was usually sent to a daycare in my neighborhood on such days. One daycare I used to regularly attend had a TV that was on regularly, and I would find myself watching the Pokemon anime back then. One day, it was a day off from school. The person who owned the daycare had two daughters (whom I was pretty close with), one of who was in high school at the time. I would bring my DS Lite with me to there on days off. At some point that day, she asked me if I wanted to play Pokemon, and I was like "sure". She gave me her copy of Pokemon Sapphire, and I briefly played it for a good portion of the day, and that piqued my interest in the Pokemon franchise. (for those of you who don't know, the DS Lite had the ability to play GBA games). For the record, as a side note, they also had a GameCube, PS2, and Xbox, and I was also introduced to the Zelda franchise (first game I played there was Wind Waker, and I really liked that too. I love the GameCube, and it was like my favorite thing ever when I was a child, to the point of obsession). So being there a lot sort of turned me into a gamer, not just a Pokemon or Zelda fan. I eventually actually bought Pokemon Sapphire itself and started playing it and enjoying the Pokemon gameplay, and later on Gen 4 too, since the Gen 4 games were really, really popular among kids my age at the time of my childhood (Diamond and Pearl were super popular, and later, Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver became really popular among us too).

Later on, towards my middle school days, I actually lost interest in Pokemon (and Mario too) for a while, since you know, that was middle school. That's the age when kids wanna be cool and start fitting in, and act like the "cool kids". Nintendo is looked at as a joke towards this age, and viewed as a "childish toy" company, and that kids this age think they're "too cool" for Nintendo, as we start looking at Call of Duty shit and the PlayStation and Xbox. However, I started to pick up Pokemon Black and White (both games), out of curiosity as a stumbled across their existence (I eventually bought a DSi when I was around sixth grade, the 3DS had already existed at this time), and mostly played Pokemon in secret during middle school. I liked both games, and started looking up shit about Pokemon on the internet. While I was looking up moves like "Dragon Claw" and "Dragon Pulse" (yes, I remember very clearly the specifics). One day, I clicked a link and stumbled across Smogon's page for Dragon Claw and Dragon Pulse on the MoveDex. I took curiosity in the Pokemon list on Smogon, and how they were divided into "tiers". I was still kind of childish during my middle school days, and I looked at the tiers, viewing Ubers as the "god tier", OU as the "strongest Pokemon tier", and NU as the "trash tier". I looked at OU like it had all the "best Pokemon" ever, and NU as the land of shitmons. I got a laugh at seeing how certain Pokemon were tiered, like how Druddigon was basically rotting in NU while Haxorus and Hydreigon were both OU, along with countless other Dragon-types, or sometimes being surprised at how Scolipede was NU or how Krookodile was RU. I witnessed the beginning of 2012 tier shift and got a real kick out of seeing NU lose like 12 Pokemon (Dugtrio shooting up to OU, and around 11-12 other Pokemon rising to RU). I loved seeing NU lose more mons over that year, such as Mesprit, Magmortar, and Cryogonal, and really got a kick out it all. I eventually joined Smogon when I was old enough, around September of 2012, when I started 8th grade, and year, here I am now, with a far better understanding of Smogon than back then. I have been here for a long time as a part of many tier communities, and later this one, and I've played Smogon's tiers, wrote many analyses, joined many discussions (particularly VRs), and yeah. here I am, as ScraftyIsTheBest. Btw, my name came to be because I was once a big Scrafty fanboy.
 
Oh, this is an easyone -- I still remember like it wasn't 18 years or so ago haha.

Cartoons before school on a weekday. World went crazy here in...1998? Cartoons, cards, RBY cartridge games -- it was a crazy time!

Smogon was an interesting one. I was playing through platinum and was looking for a misdreavus (or something) and ended up registering on the forums and went on IRC later on when I was trying to find Gen 1 starters for my younger cousin. It was here that DHR-107 poached me out of #pokemon and brought me across to Orange Islands. Been hanging around ever since!
 
My cousin used to play tons of games, like Resident Evil 3, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 8 and others that I was too young to understand. We used to watch him play Pokemon Blue, which he gave to my sister, who gave it to me when she got Pokemon Silver. I rented Pokemon Gold and thought it was meh as meh could be. Years later I got Pokemon Sapphire because ... I don't really know, seeing Pokemon in actual colour was cool? And thus I truly entered the world of Pokemon, getting most main-series games (well, one from each gen, I don't collect every single one like stamps).

Why I joined Smogon? I think it was a mix of wanting to see what it was about Smogon that makes some Pokemon fans so mad, plus the whole CAP process, plus maybe leaks about one of the then upcoming Pokemon games? I have no clue. All I know is I had no idea I had an account here since 2011, I thought I signed up in like 2015 or something LOL
 
I don't actually remember how I got into pokemon if I'm being honest. Being born and growing up amidst the Pokemon Fever is probably the reason why I feel like Pokemon has always been the one constant in my life alongside my parents. I cannot recall any point in my life where pokemon wasn't a part of it, be it through the anime, games or any other media.

Hell, I even had a pokemon bedsheet when I was little. I remember it had the Kanto starters + Mew stamped on the sides with a bunch of Pikachu printed in the middle.

As for smogon, this one is fairly simple: my go-to forum, where I've been a member on since 2008, died. It was some really outdated forum for a Naruto online flash game ( LOL ). It's a wonder why I sticked around there for as long as I did. I guess I simply grew attached to it over time. I mean, I bet there are still plently of people here on smogon whose membership is about to cross the 10 years mark, or is at least very close to. Oh well, the forum died and at that time I had found myself lurking around the Sun & Moon thread quite often, and thus I decided that it was finally time to move on. And here I am.

It is actually kinda funny how, despite pokemon being my favorite thing ever, I've never actually been a part of a community dedicated to it until now.
 
Last edited:
I was playing with some kids at the playground in 2nd grade until they said "Hey, let's play Pokémon!"
I had no idea what that was, but i still wanted to play "Pokémon"
They said i was Bulbasaur and i was fighting Mewtwo, and i kept saying "rawr", i actually found that fun.
In the next day.. Everyone was talking about Pokémon! Pokémon Red, Pokémon Blue, Pokémon Yellow, Gold, Silver Crystal, the games were everywhere!
Everyone had atleast 1 card, everyone talked about the cartoon, everyone talked about the games, it was on everyone's drawings, it was literally just everywhere.
So i decided to join in the craze by watching the show. I immediately fell in love with it, and i became another fan of Pokémon [even my parents liked it, too!]
And that's how i got into Pokémon!

TL;DR The school went crazy about it.
 
My story is very short. I have not even been playing the games for a year. For me it started in the tcg, when i bought a load of crap cards from dollarama. Then I managed to sucker people into some bad trades and traded my way up to a mass of team plasmas and a full art mega rayquaza ex. It was at that time that a friend of mine and I were doing a tcg battle, and he decided to grab his 3dsxl and show me pokemkn alpha sapphire. I WAS HOOKED. Lo and behold, he gives me pokemon sun for my birthday. I beat it, and bought alpha sapphire. Then I beat that, and now I am looking for the regis while also saving for the overpriced ultra moon.
Smogon was a different story. The same friend and I were talking about our conspiracy theories of pokemon and how the timelines worked. I did some googling and found a 107 page thread right here in the orange islands. I decided I wanted to post to it, and here I am.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top