Member-only story
A Lifelong PokéFan’s Journey in Honor of 25 Years of Pokémon
Gotta Catch ’Em All…Right?
I don’t have a lot of memories from my childhood (for whatever reason), but a lot of the memories I do have involve Pokémon.
Spending hours looking through my cards, just for fun.
Building decks.
Playing against my dad, who constantly wrecked me as a 5–9-year-old.
Organizing my cards by my favorites and by holos (not having any idea what kind of collection I COULD have had someday).
Then, one day, I remember sneaking away at my babysitter’s and turning on someone else’s Gameboy to turn on Pokémon Red version. Whoever owned the game had already started. They chose Charmander and gave him the nickname “Joe Blow.”
Oh, man. That was amazing. I battled Pidgeys and Rattatas and fainted so many times, all before discovering Viridian Forest!
My love affair with Pokémon started in earnest with collecting the cards around 1998 and expanded to the video games in 1999.
Getting my first Gameboy Color, and my first Pokémon game, was the beginning of what would become an obsession lasting well into adulthood — cycling through the phases of being cool, being lame, and being cool all over again.
