I first got into Pokémon through the TCG. It was in 1999, Pokémon had just reached Europe. I was 8 years old and in second grade at school. Since I am born in the early 90s, I was right in the target audience for the franchise at the time. But it took a while before I got hooked, because at first, I was not interested in Pokémon at all! All the hype surrounding the Pokémon TCG at my school just made it seem extremely overrated, there was no way it could be that good. I also found it very difficult to understand, and the names of the Pokémon were so strange. I remember thinking that "Charizard" was an unnecessarily complicated name, why couldn't it be something simple like "Zazad" instead?
However, my interest gradually grew stronger (it was hard to not care about Pokémon when everyone else was so into it), and I eventually started to buy and collect the cards myself. I first got into the TCG, then the anime, and finally the games as well. I had seen some other kids in the schoolgrounds bring their Game Boys with the games (R/B/Y and G/S/C) and play during the breaks, and it seemed really fun. I ended up getting a Game Boy Color on my own, and Blue became my first Pokémon game. After that, I never really quit Pokémon. I continued getting the games, with Violet being my latest game at the time of writing this. I have played almost all main series games, the only ones I have skipped completely are LGP/E and BD/SP. My interest in Pokémon hasn't always been super high, I have also been burnt out on the series on a few occasions, but I'm still keeping up with the series... and at this point, I'm not sure if I am even able to quit Pokémon (not that I want to).