"How Pokemon Go was my first Pokémon game and how I fell in love with it."

#PokemonGO: I just wrote a post in /r/GiftOfGames regarding the Pokémon Go Plus. As I was writing it, I realized that I should share some of my story with this community. Here is the edited version of that post. But this is how Pokémon Go became my first Pokémon experience and how I fell in love with it..I am a 90’s kid! I got to experience growing up in probably the coolest decade ever. I was a really big Nintendo 64 player at a young age! Maybe you saw one of my recent front page post about how my grandma would hangout with me for hours and watch me play my Nintendo 64’ . I’ve literally been a gamer my entire life.Even though I was a big gamer starting at a really young age, I missed out on some things. Pokémon was one of them. For some reason I was never interested in it. The cards, the video games, the show, nothing. It’s one of those extreme cultural phenomenons that happens every so often, and I am somehow missed the entire thing. I know I had that Pokémon Tetris game for my 64’. But other than that, I believe that’s the only Pokémon game I ever owned personally. I always thought Pokémon Snap was super cool, but I only played it sometimes at my buddy Brice’s house.I grew up and got interested in other stuff and still had no interest in Pokémon whatsoever. I remember trying to watch episodes once I got older of reruns of the original show. But I always got uninterested. From that point onward, Pokémon obviously never went anywhere, but it was so far in the background of my mind that I didn’t care at all about it.Many years later, Pokémon Go came out. I remember always rolling my eyes at the herd of people running around catching virtual Pokémon. Absolutely all of my friends had the app downloaded and played it constantly. I figured that I would give it a shot just to see what it was all about. I went onto the App Store after months and months of seeing everyone I knew obsess over this game only to instantly be shot down. My phone was too old at the time to be able to download the app (When Go was released, I owned a Galaxy S3.) I got really disappointed, but figured it wasn’t meant to be and went on with my life.Last year, I finally upgraded my phone. It was a much needed upgrade. After having the phone for a few months, I decided to go onto the App Store to see what kind of games were out. I’ve never been huge on mobile games. Ever. The only kind I ever download is trivia games. I completely forgot about Pokémon Go until I stumbled on it just looking around the App Store randomly. I downloaded it along with a few other games to check out.I opened up Pokémon Go. Up to this very second, I was only able to name off the top of my head 3 Pokémon. You guessed it... Pikachu, Squirtle, and Charmander. I was absolute clueless on the entire universe. I started walking around a little bit catching random, common Pokémon for the next 30 minutes. I remember going up to my friends and asking them if I was catching rare Pokémon. Needless to say, I got a few laughs when I asked that question and flipped my phone around to show them a Pidgey or a Rattata. I had no idea!After around an hour I decided to walk down from where I was just a little bit. I was playing with the AR camera on (which I believe is an amazing feature that doesn’t get enough love. But I still play with it turned off). All of a sudden on the map, I saw a Snorlax. Even though I didn’t know the name off the top of my head, I still recognized him. I clicked him on the map and all of a sudden a massive, towering Snorlax was looking down at me! I have no idea why but my adrenaline shot up instantly! I ended up throwing every single ball I had to try and catch him. I don’t know the exact number, but it was for sure over ten. He escaped! I sat there looking at my phone in defeat. My heart was racing and my adrenaline was pumping.And that very second...I got hooked.I have had my Go account for coming up on a year and in the last year I think I’ve only missed maybe 5 days total where I didn’t open up the app at least once during the day.I absolutely adore it. So much. I don’t care at all about doing battles or raids. I’ve tried doing one raid during the entire last year of actively playing just to see what it was all about. I don’t have any interest in that part of the game. I play the game because I love evolving Pokémon! The grind excites me. My account is super far from being anything even close to amazing. But scrolling through what I’ve caught and evolved makes me happy and satisfied.Here are a few screenshots of just a few of my collection:https://ift.tt/2TOLz6x I said, absolutely nothing amazing. But it makes me sorta proud in a strange way.The app is pretty much dead. I hear very often, ‘You still play that?’ from people. It bums me out in a lot of ways that I wasn’t able to experience the app during its peak. I usually am the only one I see walking around catching Pokémon on the same streets and stops that had crowds of people running around catching Pokémon a few years ago. It’s a little lonely sometimes that I don’t have anyone who I can share this hobby with or get excited when a cool Pokémon pops up near me unexpectedly. But at the same time, I value the app a lot because it’s ‘me’ time.I have had extremely bad depression since I was a little boy. I have always dealt with it very hard. Because of that, I have a hard time convincing myself to go outside to do things. I am perfectly fine with not stepping outside for days and days until I absolutely have to. Now in recent years I have gotten engaged and my soon to be wife makes me leave the house pretty much daily. It drives me absolutely insane. But I understand it’s better for me in the long run of things.But I simply don’t want to always depend on her on making me crawl out of my hobbit hole. It should be something I pursue more myself on my own. Pokémon Go has helped me a lot with this.I have been trying to save up for a Nintendo Switch since it came out, but I keep having pretty huge financial setbacks and it’s just not realistic for me to even start to think about tucking away money for a Switch. But one day in the future, I am super excited to play the new Pokémon game. Even though I won’t be able to join in on the adventures and fun, I’ll be able to at least get excited about people’s success and stories on that game, instead of scratching my head like I did for so many years.But in the meantime, I’ll be on Pokémon Go. Just trying to evolve my digital creature friends.My Pokemon accountThe absolute very last thing I wanted to add for anyone who is curious, is some of my favorite Pokémon currently in my collection.And if you’re wondering which one is my number one favorite, it’s definitely the reason Pokémon Go ‘clicked’ for me. I got one many months after my first encounter and happy to say I have three total now. But my favorite ever is the first one I was ever able to catch - Bigman :) via /r/pokemongo https://ift.tt/2HGWTuk